The Humbugs of the World Part 24

"Well, you are a poor creature!" responded the antiquated virgin, as she stepped aside and pa.s.sed by the strange animal, probably not for a moment doubting it was his Satanic Majesty, but certainly not dreaming of being afraid of him.

It is said that a Yankee tin peddler, who had frequently cheated most of the people in the vicinity of a New England village through which he was pa.s.sing, was induced by some of the acute ones to join them in a drinking bout. He finally became stone drunk; and in that condition these wags carried him to a dark rocky cave near the village, then, dressing themselves in raw-head-and-b.l.o.o.d.y-bones' style, awaited his return to consciousness.

As he began rousing himself, they lighted some huge torches, and also set fire to some bundles of straw, and three or four rolls of brimstone, which they had placed in different parts of the cavern. The peddler rubbed his eyes, and seeing and smelling all these evidences of pandemonium, concluded he had died, and was now partaking of his final doom. But he took it very philosophically, for he complacently remarked to himself.

"In h.e.l.l--just as I expected!"

A story is told of a cool old sea captain, with a virago of a wife, who met one of these artificial devils in a lonely place. As the ghost obstructed his path, the old fellow remarked:

"If you are not the devil, get out! If you are, come along with me and get supper. I married your sister!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

MAGICAL HUMBUGS.--VIRGIL.--A PICKLED SORCERER.--CORNELIUS AGRIPPA.--HIS STUDENTS AND HIS BLACK DOG.--DOCTOR FAUSTUS.--HUMBUGGING HORSE-JOCKEYS.--ZIITO AND HIS LARGE SWALLOW.--SALAMANCA.--DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST.

Magic, sorcery, witchcraft, enchantment, necromancy, conjuring, incantation, soothsaying, divining, the black art, are all one and the same humbug. They show how p.r.o.ne men are to believe in _some_ supernatural power, in _some_ beings wiser and stronger than themselves, but at the same time how they stop short, and find satisfaction in some debasing humbug, instead of looking above and beyond it all to G.o.d, the only being that it is really worth while for man to look up to or beseech.

Magic and witchcraft are believed in by the vast majority of mankind, and by immense numbers even in Christian countries. They have always been believed in, so far as I know. In following up the thread of history, we always find conjuring or witch work of some kind, just as long as the narrative has s.p.a.ce enough to include it. Already, in the early dawn of time, the business was a recognized and long established one. And its history is as unbroken from that day down to this, as the history of the race.

In the narrow s.p.a.ce at my command at present, I shall only gather as many of the more interesting stories about these humbugs, as I can make room for. Reasoning about the subject, or full details of it, are at present out of the question. A whole library of books exists about it.

It is a curious fact that throughout the middle ages, the Roman poet Virgil was commonly believed to have been a great magician. Traditions were recorded by monastic chroniclers about him, that he made a bra.s.s fly and mounted it over one of the gates of Naples, having instilled into this metallic insect such potent magical qualities that as long as it kept guard over the gate, no musquitos, or flies, or c.o.c.kroach, or other troublesome insects could exist in the city. What would have become of the celebrated Bug Powder man in those days? The story is told about Virgil as well as about Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and other magicians, that he made a brazen head which could prophesy. He also made some statues of the G.o.ds of the various nations subject to Rome, so enchanted that if one of those nations was preparing to rebel, the statue of its G.o.d rung a bell and pointed a finger toward the nation. The same set of stories tells how poor Virgil came to an untimely end in consequence of trying to live forever. He had become an old man, it appears, and wishing to be young again, he used some appropriate incantations, and prepared a secret cavern. In this he caused a confidential disciple to cut him up like a hog and pack him away in a barrel of pickle, out of which he was to emerge in his new magic youth after a certain time. But by that special bad luck which seems to attend such cases, some malapropos traveller somehow made his way into the cavern, where he found the magic pork-barrel standing silently all alone in the middle of the place, and an ever-burning lamp illuminating the room, and slowly distilling a magic oil upon the salted sorcerer who was cooking below. The traveller rudely jarred the barrel, the light went out, as the torches flared upon it; and suddenly there appeared to the eyes of the astounded man, close at one side of the barrel, a little naked child, which ran thrice around the barrel, uttering deep curses upon him who had thus destroyed the charm, and vanished. The frightened traveller made off as fast as he could, and poor old Virgil, for what I know, is in pickle yet.

Cornelius Agrippa was one of the most celebrated magicians of the middle ages. He lived from the year 1486 (six years before the discovery of America) until 1534, and was a native of Cologne, Agrippa is said to have had a magic gla.s.s in which he showed to his customers such dead or absent persons as they might wish to see. Thus he would call up the beautiful Helen of Troy, or Cicero in the midst of an oration; or to a pining lover, the figure of his absent lady, as she was employed at the moment--a dangerous exhibition! For who knows, whether the consolation sought by the fair one, will always be such as her lover will approve?

Agrippa, they say, had an attendant devil in the form of a huge black dog, whom on his death-bed the magician dismissed with curses. The dog ran away, plunged into the river Saone and was seen no more. We are of course to suppose that his Satanic Majesty got possession of the conjuror's soul however, as per agreement. There is a story about Agrippa, which shows conclusively how "a little learning" may be "a dangerous thing." When Agrippa was absent on a short journey, his student in magic slipped into the study and began to read spells out of a great book. After a little there was a knock at the door, but the young man paid no attention to it. In another moment there was another louder one, which startled him, but still he read on. In a moment the door opened, and in came a fine large devil who angrily asked, "What do you call me for?" The frightened youth answered very much like those naughty boys who say "I didn't do nothing!" But it will not do to fool with devils. The angry demon caught him by the throat and strangled him.

Shortly, when Agrippa returned, lo and behold, a strong squad of evil spirits were kicking up their heels and playing tag all over the house, and crowding his study particularly full. Like a schoolmaster among mischievous boys, the great enchanter sent all the little fellows home, catechised the big one, and finding the situation unpleasant, made him reanimate the corpse of the student and walk it about town all the afternoon. The malignant demon however, was free at sunset, and let the corpse drop dead in the middle of the market place. The people recognized it, found the claw-marks and traces of strangling, suspected the fact, and Agrippa had to abscond very suddenly.

Another student of Agrippa's came very near an equally bad end. The magician was in the habit of enchanting a broomstick into a servant to do his housework, and when it was done, turning it back to a broomstick again and putting it behind the door. This young student had overheard the charm which made the servant, and one day in his master's absence, wanting a pail of water he said over the incantation and told the servant "Bring some water." The evil spirit promptly obeyed; flew to the river, brought a pailful and emptied it, instantly brought a second, instantly a third; and the student, startled, cried out, "that's enough!" But this was not the "return charm," and the ill tempered demon, rejoicing in doing mischief within the letter of his obligation, now flew backward and forward like lightning, so that he even began to flood the room about the rash student's feet. Desperate, he seized an axe and hewed this diabolical serving-man in two. _Two_ serving-men jumped up, with two water-pails, grinning in devilish glee, and both went to work harder than ever. The poor student gave himself up for lost, when luckily the master came home, dismissed the over-officious water carrier with a word, and saved the student's life.

How thoroughly false all these absurd fictions are, and yet how ingeniously based on some fact, appears by the case of Agrippa's black dog. Wierus, a writer of good authority, and a personal friend of Agrippa's, reports that he knew very well all about the dog; that it was not a superhuman dog at all, but (if the term be admissible) a mere human dog--an animal which he, Wierus, had often led about by a string, and only a domestic pet of Agrippa.

Another eminent magician of those days was Doctor Faustus, about whom Goethe wrote "Faust," Bailey wrote "Festus," and whose story, mingled of human love and of the devilish tricks of Mephistopheles, is known so very widely. The truth about Faust seems to be, that he was simply a successful juggler of the sixteenth century. Yet the wonderful stories about him were very implicitly and extensively believed. It was the time of the Protestant Reformation, and even Melanchthon and Luther seem to have entirely believed that Faustus could make the forms of the dead appear, could carry people invisibly through the air, and play all the legendary tricks of the enchanters. So strong a hold does humbug often obtain even upon the n.o.blest and clearest and wisest minds!

Faustus, according to the traditions, had a pretty keen eye for a joke.

He once sold a splendid horse to a horse-jockey at a fair. The fellow shortly rode his fine horse to water. When he got into the water, lo and behold, the horse vanished, and the humbugged jockey found himself sitting up to his neck in the river on a straw saddle. There is something quite satisfactory in the idea of playing such a trick on one of that sharp generation, and Faust felt so comfortable over it that he entered his hotel and went quietly to sleep--or pretended to. Shortly in came the angry jockey; he shouted and bawled, but could not awaken the doctor, and in his anger he seized his foot and gave it a good pull.

Foot and leg came off in his hand. Faustus screamed out as if in horrible agony, and the terrified jockey ran away as fast as he could, and never troubled his very loose-jointed customer for the money.

A magician named Ziito, resident at the court of Wenceslaus of Bohemia (A. D. 1368 to 1419,) appears to great advantage in the annals of these humbugs. He was a homely, crooked creature, with an immense mouth. He had a collision once in public on a question of skill with a brother conjuror, and becoming a little excited, opened his big mouth and swallowed the other magician, all to his shoes, which as he observed were dirty. Then he stepped into a closet, got his rival out of him somehow, and calmly led him back to the company. A story is told about Ziito and some hogs, just like that about Faust and the horse.

In all these stories about magicians, their power is derived from the devil. It was long believed that the ancient university of Salamanca in Spain, founded A. D. 1240, was the chief school of magic, and had regular professors and cla.s.ses in it. The devil was supposed to be the special patron of this department, and he had a curious fee for his trouble, which he collected every commencement day. The last exercise of the graduating cla.s.s on that day was, to run across a certain cavern under the University. The devil was always on hand at this time, and had the privilege of grabbing at the last man of the crowd. If he caught him, as he commonly did, the soul of the unhappy student became the property of his captor. Hence arose the phrase "Devil take the hindmost." Sometime it happened that some very brisk fellow was left last by some accident. If he were brisk enough to dodge the devil's grab, that personage only caught his shadow. In this case it was well understood that this particular enchanter never had any shadow afterwards, and he always became very eminent in his art.

CHAPTER. x.x.xVII.

WITCHCRAFT.--NEW YORK WITCHES.--THE WITCH MANIA.--HOW FAST THEY BURNED THEM.--THE MODE OF TRIAL.--WITCHES TO DAY IN EUROPE.

Witchcraft is one of the most baseless, absurd, disgusting and silly of all the humbugs. And it is not a dead humbug either; it is alive, busily exercised by knaves and believed by fools all over the world. Witches and wizards operate and prosper among the Hottentots and negroes and barbarous Indians, among the Siberians and Kirgishes and Lapps, of course. Everybody knows _that_--they are poor ignorant creatures! Yes: but are the French and Germans and English and Americans poor ignorant creatures too? They are, if the belief and practice of witchcraft among them is any test; for in all those countries there are witches. I take up one of the New York City dailies of this very morning, and find in it the advertis.e.m.e.nts of seven Witches. In 1858, there were in full blast in New York and Brooklyn sixteen witches and two wizards. One of these wizards was a black man; a very proper style of person to deal with the black art.

Witch means, a woman who practices sorcery under an agreement with the devil, who helps her. Before the Christian era, the Jewish witch was a mere diviner or at most a raiser of the dead, and the Gentile witch was a poisoner, a maker of philtres or love potions, and a vulgar sort of magician. The devil part of the business did not begin until a good while after Christ. During the last century or so, again, while witchcraft has been extensively believed in, the witch has degenerated into a very vulgar and poverty stricken sort of conjuring woman. Take our New York city witches, for instance. They live in cheap and dirty streets that smell bad; their houses are in the same style, infected with a strong odor of cabbage, onions, washing-day, old dinners, and other merely sublunary smells. Their rooms are very ill furnished, and often beset with wash-tubs, swill-pails, mops and soiled clothes; their personal appearance is commonly unclean, homely, vulgar, coa.r.s.e, and ignorant, and often rummy. Their fee is a quarter or half of a dollar.

Sometimes a dollar. Their divination is worked by cutting and dealing cards or studying the palm of your hand. And the things which they tell you are the most silly and shallow babble in the world; a mess of phrases worn out over and over again. Here is a specimen, as gabbled to the customer over a pack of cards laid out on the table; anybody can do the like: "You face a misfortune. I think it will come upon you within three weeks, but it may not. A dark complexioned man faces your life-card. He is plotting against you, and you must beware of him. Your marriage-card faces two young women, one fair and the other dark. One you will have, and the other you will not. I think you will have the fair one. She favors the dark complexioned man, which means trouble. You face money, but you must earn it. There is a good deal, but you may not get much of it" etc., etc. These words are exactly the sort of stuff that is sold by the witches of to-day. But the greatest witch humbug of all the witchcraft of history, is that of Christendom for about three hundred years, beginning about the time of the discovery of America. To that period belonged the Salem witchcraft of New England, the witch-finding of Matthew Hopkins in Old England, the Scotch witch trials, and the Swedish and German and French witch mania.

The peculiar traits of the witchcraft of this period are among the most mysterious of all humbugs. The most usual points in a case of witchcraft were, that the witch had sold herself to the devil for all eternity, in order to get the power during a few years of earthly life, to inflict a few pains on the persons of those she disliked, or to cause them to lose part of their property. This was almost always the whole story, except the mere details of the witch baptism and witch sabbath, parodies on the ceremonies of the Christian religion. And the mystery is, how anybody could believe that to accomplish such very small results, seldom equal even to the death of an enemy, one would agree to accept eternal d.a.m.nation in the next world, almost certain poverty, misery, persecution and torment in this, besides having for an amus.e.m.e.nt performances more dirty, obscene and vulgar than I can even hint at.

But such a belief was universal, and hundreds of the witches themselves confessed as much as I have described, and more, with numerous details, and they were burnt alive for their trouble. The extent of wholesale murdering perpetrated under forms of law, on charges of witchcraft, is astonishing. A magistrate named Remigius, published a book in which he told how much he thought of himself for having condemned and burned nine hundred witches in sixteen years, in Lorraine. And the one thing that he blamed himself for was this: that out of regard for the wishes of a colleague, he had only caused certain children to be whipped naked three times round the market place where their parents had been burned, instead of burning them. At Bamberg, six hundred persons were burned in five years, at Wurzburg nine hundred in two years. Sprenger, a German inquisitor-general, and author of a celebrated book on detecting and punishing witchcraft, called _Malleus Maleficarum_, or "The Mallet of Malefactors," burned more than five hundred in one year. In Geneva, five hundred persons were burned during 1515 and 1516. In the district of Como in Italy, a thousand persons were burned as witches in the single year 1524, besides over a hundred a year for several years afterwards.

_Seventeen thousand_ persons were executed for witchcraft in Scotland during thirty-nine years, ending with 1603. _Forty thousand_ were executed in England from 1600 to 1680. Bodinus, another of the witch killing judges, gravely announced that there were undoubtedly not less than three hundred thousand witches in France.

The way in which the witch murderers reasoned, and their modes of conducting trials and procuring confessions, were truly infernal. The chief rule was that witchcraft being an "exceptional crime," no regard need be had to the ordinary forms of justice. All manner of tortures were freely applied to force confessions. In Scotland "the boot" was used, being an iron case in which the legs are locked up to the knees, and an iron wedge then driven in until sometimes the bones were crushed and the marrow spouted out. Pin sticking, drowning, starving, the rack, were too common to need details. Sometimes the prisoner was hung up by the thumbs, and whipped by one person, while another held lighted candles to the feet and other parts of the body. At Arras, while the prisoners were being torn on the rack, the executioner stood by, sword in hand, promising to cut off at once the heads of those who did not confess. At Offenburg, when the prisoners had been tortured until beyond the power of speaking aloud, they silently a.s.sented to abominable confessions read to them out of a book. Many were cheated into confession by the promise of pardon and release, and then burned. A poor woman in Germany was tricked by the hangman, who dressed himself up as a devil and went into her cell. Overpowered by pain, fear and superst.i.tion, she begged him to help her out; her beseeching was taken for confession, she was burned, and a ballad which treated the trick as a jolly and comical device, was long popular in the country. Several of the judges in witch cases tell us how victims, utterly weary of their tormented lives, confessed whatever was required, merely as the shortest way to death, and an escape out of their misery. All who dared to argue against the current of popular and judicial delusion were instantly refuted very effectively by being attacked for witchcraft themselves; and once accused, there was little hope of escape. The Jesuit Delrio, in a book published in 1599, states the witch killers' side of the discussion very neatly indeed; for in one and the same chapter he defies any opponents to disprove the existence of witchcraft, and then shows that a denial of witchcraft is the worst of all heresies, and must be punished with death. Quite a number of excellent and sensible people were actually burnt on just this principle.

I do not undertake to give details of any witch trials; this sketch of the way in which they operated is all I can make room for, and sufficiently delineates this cruel and b.l.o.o.d.y humbug.

I have already referred to the fact that we have right here among us in this city a very fair supply of a vulgar, dowdy kind of witchcraft.

Other countries are favored in like manner. I have not just now the most recent information, but in the year 1857 and 1858, for instance, mobbing and prosecutions growing out of a popular belief in witchcraft were quite plentiful enough in various parts of Europe. No less than eight cases of the kind in England alone were reported during those two years.

Among them was the actual murder of a woman as a witch by a mob in Shropshire; and an attack by another mob in Ess.e.x, upon a perfectly inoffensive person, on suspicion of having "bewitched" a scolding ill-conditioned girl, from which attack the mob was diverted with much difficulty, and thinking itself very unjustly treated. Some others of those cases show a singular quant.i.ty of credulity among people of respectability.

While therefore some of us may perhaps be justly thankful for safety from such horrible follies as these, still we can not properly feel very proud of the progress of humanity, since after not less than six thousand years of existence and eighteen hundred of revelation, so many believers in witchcraft still exist among the most civilized nations.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

CHARMS AND INCANTATIONS.--HOW CATO CURED SPRAINS.--THE SECRET NAME OF G.o.d.--SECRET NAMES OF CITIES.--ABRACADABRA.--CURES FOR CRAMP.--MR.

WRIGHT'S SIGIL.--WHISKERIFUSTICUS.--WITCHES' HORSES.--THEIR CURSES.--HOW TO RAISE THE DEVIL.

It is worth while to print in plain English for my readers a good selection of the very words which have been believed, or are still believed, to possess magic power. Then any who choose, may operate by themselves or may put some bold friend up in a corner, and blaze away at him or her until they are wholly satisfied about the power of magic.

The Roman Cato, so famous for his grumness and virtue, believed that if he were ill, it would much help him, and that it would cure sprains in others, to say over these words: "Daries, dardaries, astaris, ista, pista, sista," or, as another account has it, "motas, daries, dardaries, astaries;" or, as still another account says, "Huat, huat, huat; ista, pista, sista; domiabo, d.a.m.naustra." And sure enough, nothing is truer, as any physician will tell you, that if the old censor only believed hard enough, it would almost certainly help him; not by the force of the words, but by the force of his own ancient Roman imagination. Here are some Greek words of no less virtue: "_Aski, Kataski, Tetrax._" When the Greek priests let out of their doors those who had been completely initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, they said to them last of all the awful and powerful words, "_Konx, ompax_." If you want to know what the usual result was, just say them to somebody, and you will see, instantly. The ancient Hebrews believed that there was a secret name of G.o.d, usually thought to be inexpressible, and only to be represented by a mystic figure kept in the Temple, and that if any one could learn it, and repeat it, he could rule the intelligent and unintelligent creation at his will. It is supposed by some, that Jehovah is the word which stands for this secret name; and some Hebraists think that the word "Yahveh" is much more nearly the right one. The Mohammedans, who have received many notions from the Jews, believe the same story about the secret name of G.o.d, and they think it was engraved on Solomon's signet, as all readers of the Arabian Nights will very well remember. The Jews believed that if you p.r.o.nounced the word "Satan" any evil spirit that happened to be by could in consequence instantly pop into you if he wished, and possess you, as the devils in the New Testament possessed people.

Some ancient cities had a secret name, and it was believed that if their enemies could find this out, they could conjure with it so as to destroy such cities. Thus, the secret name of Rome was Valentia, and the word was very carefully kept, with the intention that none should know it except one or two of the chief pontiffs. Mr. Borrow, in one of his books, tells about a charm which a gipsy woman knew, and which she used to repeat to herself as a means of obtaining supernatural aid when she happened to want it. This was, "Saboca enrecar maria ereria." He induced her after much effort to repeat the words to him, but she always wished she had not, with an evident conviction that some harm would result. He explained to her that they consisted of a very simple phrase, but it made no difference.

An ancient physician named Serenus Sammonicus, used to be quite sure of curing fevers, by means of what he called Abracadabra, which was a sort of inscription to be written on something and worn on the patient's person. It was as follows:

ABRACADABRA BRACADABR RACADAB ACADA CAD A.

Another gentleman of the same school used to cure sore eyes by hanging round the patient's neck an inscription made up of only two letters, A and Z; but how he mixed them we unfortunately do not know.

By the way, many of the German peasantry in the more ignorant districts still believe that to write Abracadabra on a slip of paper and keep it with you, will protect you from wounds, and that if your house is on fire, to throw this strip into it will put the fire out.

Many charms or incantations call on G.o.d, Christ or some saints, just as the heathen ones call on a spirit. Here is one for epilepsy that seems to appeal to both religions, as if with a queer proviso against any possible mistake about either. Taking the epileptic by the hand, you whisper in his ear "I adjure thee by the sun and the moon and the gospel of to-day, that thou arise and no more fall to the ground; in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost."