Legends Of Florence Part 36

"I too through jealousy Of one whom I still love Can neither drink nor eat, Nor even talk with friends, I love so much-so much- Yet am not loved again As I would fain be loved.

Through his indifference I So jealous have become, I do not know what sin I would not now commit; I cannot sleep at night For dreams in which I see Him faithless unto me.

"Moon, moon, O beauteous moon!

As thou art fair and bright, I pray thee, pray for me; _Cain_ who from jealousy Slew his own brother born, As I would punish well The one whom I yet love, Yet would not cause his death, So may he suffer thus: May suffering be his lot By day as in the night, May he not eat or drink, Nor may he sleep at night!

"May Cain who bears the bunch Upon his back, of thorns, Stand by my lover's bed, And make him rise from sleep And hasten to my home.

"O Cain! O Cain! O Cain!

Three times I call to thee, Call with my loudest voice, Just as I find myself Between the sea and sky, And my two friends with me.

"Cain, by the jealousy Which once thy brother caused, And which I now endure, For him whom still I love, Make love return to me And never leave me more.

"Thou who from heaven on high Seest all things, here behold This casket well prepared!

The mystic tapers four All lighted, look on them!

Then in this mirror look.

Then if thou wilt but speak _Three words_-then all the thorns Which on thy back thou bear'st, All in a bundle bound, Will pa.s.s into the life, The body and the heart Of him whom yet I love, So that he sleep no more, And be compelled to rise, Compelled to clothe himself, And hasten to my home, Never to leave me more.

"Now, with this branch of rue, Which I dip in the sea, I sprinkle both my friends, That they may speak these words: That ---, {259a} by the aid Of Cain shalt seek thy love, And never leave her more.

"If thou wilt grant me this, Cause a high wind to blow, Extinguishing the lights.

O Cain! O Cain! O Cain!"

Before proceeding further, I would explain that the use of a photograph, which must be a negative on gla.s.s, instead of being, as was suggested to me, a modern interpolation, is, strangely enough, a proof of the antiquity of the rite. In the old time, a picture or portrait painted in transparent colour on gla.s.s was held up to the moon that its rays might pa.s.s through it and enchant the subject. And among the Romans, when one had a portrait of any one cut on diaphanous stone, it was used in the same way. I had in my possession once such a portrait-gem, {259b} and a fine needle-hole had been bored through the right eye so as to blind the original of the likeness. And I had a friend who lived in Russia, who discovered that a person who hated him had obtained his photograph, and p.r.i.c.ked holes with a very fine needle in the eyes to blind him. The negative of a photograph on gla.s.s would very naturally occur as a subst.i.tute for a picture. But what is most important is that this mention of the translucent negative proves fully that the whole ceremony, in its minutest detail, has actually been preserved to this day, and that the incantation, long as it is, exists as I have given it, since every line in it corresponds to the rite. And as I know that it was gathered by a witch and fortune-teller among others, and carefully compared and collated, I am sure that it is authentic and traditional.

Fifty pages are devoted by the Rev. T. Harley in his "Moon Lore" to the subject of the Man in the Moon, and since the book appeared in 1885 there have been great additions to the subject. This human being is declared by myths found in India, and especially among the Oriental gypsies, in Ireland, Borneo, Greenland, and South America, to be a man who is punished by imprisonment above for incest with his sister the sun. As he wanders for ever over the heavens, just as gypsies wander on earth, they claim him for their ancestor, and declare that Zin-gan (or gypsy) is derived from two words meaning sun and moon. _Kam_, the sun, has been varied to _kan_, and in gypsy the moon is called _chone_, which is also _t-chen_, _chin_, or _sin_. But the point lies in this, that Cain was condemned to be a "a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth," which gives much apparent strength to the idea that Cain, whether Shemitic or Aryan, was, for a great crime, or as chief of sinners, imprisoned in the moon.

This sufferer, in different legends, has been represented as a Sabbath-breaker, as Judas Iscariot, as Isaac, and many more transgressors, almost always with a _bunch_ or _bush_ of _thorns_, for which there has been literally no real explanation whatever. This I will now investigate, and, I think, clearly explain.

Dante in two places speaks of the Man in the Moon as Cain, and as if it were a very popular legend (_Inferno_, xx. 123):

"Ma vienne omai che gia tiene 'l confine D'ambedue gli emisperi, e tocca l'onda Sotto Sibilia, Caino e le spine E gia iernotte fu la Luna tonda."

"But now he comes who doth the borders hold Of the two hemispheres, and drive the waves Under the sibyl, Cain, with many thorns.

And yesternight the moon was round and full; Take care that it may never do thee harm At any time when in the gloomy wood."

This twentieth canto is devoted to the sorcerers in h.e.l.l, and ends with allusion to the full moon, the sibyl, and Cain, as allied to witchcraft, prediction, and sin. When the moon is full it is also "high tides" with the witches, now as of yore:

"Full moon, high sea, Great man shalt thou be: Red dawning, cloudy sky, b.l.o.o.d.y death shalt thou die."

Dante again mentions Cain in the moon, in the _Paradiso_, ii. 50:

"Ma ditemi, che con li segni lui Dio questo corpo, che laggiuso in terra Fan di _Cain_ favoleggiare altrui?"

"But tell me now what are the gloomy marks Upon this body, which down there on earth Make people tell so many tales of Cain?"

To which Beatrice replies by a mysterious physical explanation of the phenomenon, advising him to take three _mirrors_ and observe how the moon is reflected from one to the other, and that in this manner the _formal principio_, or first creative power, pa.s.ses from light to darkness. The reader will here remember that with the witches the _mirror_ is specially devoted to conjuring Cain.

It is worth noting that a _spechietto_, or small looking-gla.s.s, was specially (Barretti) "a little mirror placed at the bottom of a jewel casket."

I would now note that the _thorns_ which Cain carries signify, not only in modern Italian, but in old Roman sorcery, the sting of hatred and of jealousy. It is a most apparent and natural simile, and is found from the crown of thorns on Christ to the Voodoo sorcery in Western America.

Miss Mary Owen knew a black girl in Missouri who, as a proof of being Christianised, threw away the thorn which she kept as a fetish to injure an enemy. But in early times the thorn was universally known as symbolical of sin, just as Cain was regarded as the first real sinner.

Therefore the two were united. Menzel tells us in his _Christliche Symbolik_ (Part I. p. 206) that it is a legend that "there were no thorns before the Fall; they first grew with sin, therefore thorns are a symbol of the sorrow or pain which came from sin." Of all of which there is a ma.s.s of old German myths and legends, which I spare the reader, for I have endeavoured in this comment to avoid useless myth-mongering in order to clearly set forth the connection between Cain, his thorns, and the moon.

That the conjuring the moon with a mirror is very ancient indeed appears from the legend drawn from cla.s.sic sources, which is thus set forth in "A Pleasant Comedie called Summer's Last Will and Testament. Written by Thomas Nash. London, 1600":

"In laying thus the blame upon the Moone Thou imitat'st subtill Pythagoras, Who what he would the People should beleeve, The same he wrote with blood upon a Gla.s.se, And turned it opposite 'gainst the New Moone, Whose Beames, reflecting on it with full force, Shew'd all those lines to them that stood behinde, Most pleynly writ in circle of the Moone, And then he said: 'Not I, but the newe Moone Fair Cynthia persuades you this and that.'"

In the "Clouds" of Aristophanes the same idea is made into a jest, in which Strepsiades thus addresses Socrates:

"_Strepsiades_. If I were to buy a Thessalian witch, and then draw down the moon by night, and then shut her up in a round helmet-case _like a mirror_, and then keep watching her-

_Socrates_. What good would that do you, then?

_Strepsiades_. What! If the moon were not to rise any more anywhere, I should not pay the interest.

_Socrates_. Because what?

_Strepsiades_. Because the money is lent on interest." {262}

These instances could be multiplied. What I have given are enough to show the antiquity of the conjuration; and I also venture to declare that any Italian scholar who is familiar with these formulas of sorcery will admit that, making all due allowance for transmission among peasants, the language, or words, or turns of expression in this incantation denote great antiquity.

The next paper or tradition on the subject of Cain, which, as every phrase in it indicates, was taken down from an old dame who at first slowly recalled forgotten sentences, will be to many more interesting, and to all much more amusing than the first. It once happened that an old gypsy in England began to tell me the story of the ghostly baker of Stonehenge and the seven loaves, but, suddenly pausing, he said: "What's the use of telling that to _you_ who have _read_ it all in the Bible?"

There is, however, this trifling difference, that I am not sure that my Italian witch friends knew that Cain and Abel are in the Bible at all.

The Red Indian doctor, whose knowledge of the Old Testament was limited to its being good to cure neuralgia, was far beyond the _contadini_ as regards familiarity with "the efficacy of the Scripture."

This is the witch-tale as written word by word:

ABELE E CHAINO.

"They were two brothers. Abel greatly loved Cain, but Cain did not love so much the brother Abel.

"Cain had no great will to work.

"Abel, however, on the contrary, was greatly disposed (_si ingegnava_) to labour, because he had found it profitable. He was industrious in all, and at last became a grazier (_mercante di manzi_).

"And Cain also, being moved by jealousy (_per astia_), wished to become a grazier, but the wheel did not turn for him as it did for Abel.

"And Cain also was a good man, and set himself contentedly to work, believing that he could become as rich as his brother, but he did not succeed in this, for which reason he became so envious of Abel that it resulted in tremendous hate, and he swore to be revenged.

"Cain often visited his brother, and once said to him, 'Abel, thou art rich and I am poor; give me the half of thy wealth, since thou wishest me so well!'

"Then Abel replied: 'If I give thee a sum which thou thyself couldst gain by industry, thou shouldst still labour as I do, and I will give thee nothing, since, if thou wilt work as I do, thou wilt become as rich.'

"One day there were together Cain, Abel, and a merchant, whose name I forget. And one told that he had seen in a dream seven fat oxen and seven lean. And the merchant, who was an astrologer or wizard, explained that the seven fat oxen meant seven years of abundance, and the seven lean as many years of famine.

"And so it came to pa.s.s as he foretold-seven years of plenty and seven of famine.

"And Cain, hearing this, thought: 'During the seven years of plenty Abel will lay by a great store, and then I will slay him, and possess myself of all his goods, and thus I will take care of myself, and my brother will be dead.'