Punishments for gambling, and swearing.
Fantastic shapes and beings of another world, while they awed, pleased their imagination, for they, too, had their sirens, of which their poets sang. Nor were they without their sea-serpent. More marvellous and tantalizing than even that of modern times, which matter-of-fact men are always disputing, the sea-serpent of the dark ages was adorned with a mitre on its head and had a dalmatic robe across its shoulders. Indeed, many of the credulous world on shore believed as firmly in the bishop-fish monster as the sailors themselves, especially since a learned Jesuit confirmed the actual existence of this prodigy of the ocean. But the sea monsters of the Middle Ages, unlike those of our own day, were happily at times instruments of good. One of them, and the statement is attested by a whole boat’s crew of seamen, actually swallowed an unbelieving sailor who had been playing at dice, and who, while at play, had wickedly defied the Virgin Mary. So thoroughly were the authorities convinced that this marvellous story was a fact, that to prevent any more sailors from being thus summarily disposed of, the playing of dice was afterwards strictly forbidden on board ship. This happy change appears to have extended to the ships of England, for when Richard I. repaired to the Holy Land he enforced a regulation, that if any seaman played at dice, or any other game of a similar character, without licence, he should be plunged into the sea three mornings successively by way of punishment.
Seamen of all ages would seem to have been grievously addicted to swearing;[712] and, although the Church and State of every nation have endeavoured to control this wicked and foolish practice, it still prevails to a large extent on board of merchant ships, and is only now curtailed or stifled in ships of war by the strict discipline maintained in them. It was almost universal in the Middle Ages. The French and Mediterranean sailor swore by his bread, by his wine, and by his salt, in the same way that King Richard[713] swore by the “very eyes of God.” The Church of Rome reproved in the strongest terms the sailor’s oath, alleging that, under an apparently simple expression, it covered one decidedly sinful. In the opinion of the Holy Father, bread, wine, and salt were the bases of their daily food; they were also the sacramental elements; they were the symbols of life itself here and hereafter; to swear, therefore, by bread, wine, and salt, was to commit indirectly, in their judgment, an act of horrible atrocity. Accordingly, by a decree of 1543, the most severe penalties are inflicted upon this most “damnable custom;” and these are renewed in a later decree of 1582.[714]
Sailors have ever been a cosmopolitan race. As citizens of the world, they have had almost a common language as well as a common religion. The song which they still sing in lifting the anchor or in hoisting the sails, of “Ye-ho, cheerily, men!” or some such words, for we have never seen them in print, is the song, or at least the same tune sung a thousand years ago by the Venetian sailors, and resembling, we dare say, that lively and invigorating air re-echoed along the shores of Syria from the ships of the ancient Phœnicians as they manned their oars or spread their sails for sea.
Superstitions.
Their superstitions were universal. These may have varied in name and form, but from a very early period even until now sailors have considered Friday to be an unlucky day, and one on which no vessel ought to take her departure from a safe harbour. In the Middle Ages it was dreaded by seamen as the day of all days of ill-omen or misfortune: again, salt being spilt horrified them, and knives placed across were, in their opinion, the prognostications of calamity. Divination, sorcery, witchcraft, and necromancy, were then practised by even “thinking minds.” What, then, could have been expected from the thoughtless sailor, who, to obtain a fair wind, invariably had recourse to prayers and incantations? In the midst of the gale he invoked a return of fair weather by various superstitious practices. The Greeks of the Mediterranean during a storm threw small loaves into the sea, which they called the loaves of “St. Nicholas.” The Russians, to appease the evil spirit which stirs up the boiling waves, and charms the mountain which the sea cannot pass, offered in humility a cake made of flour and butter. The Portuguese, when in imminent peril, fixed to the mast of the ship an image of St. Anthony, and to this idol prayed until the wind changed to his liking.
Nor were these superstitions confined to the sailors of Europe. Some of the Indians, when in danger on the ocean, supplicated the protection of their prince of evil spirits, who was one of their gods, and drank the blood of a cock, swallowing with it a small piece of burning coal, the heat of which they did not feel in the excitement of their insane delirium. When a waterspout was discovered ahead of the ship, the practice prevailed, especially in the Mediterranean, for a sailor to pull out his knife and make the sign of the cross or triple triangle in the air, as representing the Trinity, uttering in his despair some mystical or cabalistic words. If the handle of his knife turned black the water spirit would not reach the ship, and they were safe; but if the danger increased, two sailors resorted to a more powerful charm, a practice which in some measure still prevails in the Levant. They drew their swords and struck them against each other, taking especial care that the weapons formed the figure of a cross every time they clashed. This remedy, in their judgment, was sure to succeed. Some misbelieving sailors would fire a gun against the waterspout in order to disperse it, but these practical fellows, who had no faith in necromancy, deserved to be drowned.
The sailors of the latter portion of the Middle Ages were, however, though superstitious enough, not so superstitious as some of their forefathers had been. They no longer believed that to cut their nails or their hair during fine weather was unlucky, and that such necessary and homely operations inevitably brought on a gale; but they thought, as many sailors still do, that to whistle in a calm would bring wind, and that to continue whistling when the wind came would arouse the anger of the gods and create a storm. They rejected as an idle fable the notion, that if a sailor heard a sneezing from the left hand when going on board ship, it was a fatal omen to which he ought to yield obedience; or, on the contrary, that the voyage would be propitious if the sneezing sound came from the right. But they still implicitly believed it to be a most unlucky sign if, at the moment when they were shipping provisions, the vessel gave a list to starboard. They believed devoutly in a goblin, and considered it a very mischievous imp, which delighted in tormenting sailors during the night by opening their knives, tangling their hair, tearing their bedding, and which, in some of its freaks, would be bold enough to attack the ship herself, tying the ropes into knots so that they would not run through the blocks, carrying away the anchors in a calm, and tearing holes in the sails when they were closely reefed.
Manners and morals, A.D. 1420.
General severity of punishments.