JUGGLING.
Feats of Jugglers formerly attributed to witchcraft--Anglo-Saxon
Gleemen--Norman Jugglers or Tregatours--Chaucer’s Description
of the Wonders performed by them--Means probably employed by
them--Recipe for making the Appearance of a Flood--Jugglers
fashionable in the Reign of Charles II.--Evelyn’s Account of a
Fire-eater--Katterfelto--Superiority of Asiatic and Eygptian
pretenders to magical Skill--Mandeville’s Account of Juggling
at the Court of the Great Khan--Extraordinary Feats witnessed
by the Emperor Jehanguire--Ibn Batuta’s Account of Hindustanee
Jugglers--Account of a Bramin who sat upon the Air--Egyptian
Jugglers--Mr. Lane’s Account of the Performance of one of
them--Another fails in satisfying Captain Scott.
The mountebanks who now exhibit on the travelling stage or cart, and
whose buffoonery pleases only the clown, were formerly thought to
practise witchcraft, or deal with some unlawful powers.
The joculators, jugglours, or tregatours, of the Normans, were men of
much higher pretensions than the gleemen. Some of the delusions which
they practised could not have been performed without considerable
scientific knowledge. We have the authority of Chaucer for the fact,
that they “cheated the eyes with blear illusion,” in a manner which
may excuse ignorant spectators for having attributed the effect to
supernatural means. “In a large hall they will,” says he, “produce
water with boats rowed up and down upon it. Sometimes they will
bring in the similitude of a grim lion, or make flowers spring up in
a meadow; sometimes they cause a vine to flourish, bearing white and
red grapes; or show a castle built with stone, and when they please
they cause the whole to disappear.” He tells us, too, of a “learned
clerk, who showed to a friend forests filled with wild deer, where he
saw an hundred of them slain, some with hounds and some with arrows;
the hunting being finished, a company of falconers appeared upon the
banks of a fair river, where the birds pursued the herons and slew
them. He then saw knights jousting upon a plain,” and, which was a more
attractive sight, “the resemblance of his beloved lady dancing, which
occasioned him to dance also.” But when “the maister that this magike
wrought thought fit, he clapped his hands together, and all was gone
in an instante.” Another feat, which he describes as having himself
witnessed, is still more striking:
“There saw I Coll Tregetour,
Upon a table of sycamour,
Play an uncouth thing to tell;
I saw him cary a wynde mell
Under a walnote shale.”
It is probable that the deceptive effect was produced by the magic
lantern, and the concave mirror. With respect to the method “to make
the appearance of a flode of water to come into a house,” the following
recipe has been gravely handed down to us from our ancestors:--steep a
thread in the liquor produced from snake’s eggs bruised, and hang it up
over a basin of water in the place where the trick is to be performed.
Recipes of this kind were perhaps meant to mislead those who wished to
penetrate the mystery.
In the reign of Charles the Second, jugglers appear to have been in
much repute with the great. In the “Diary” of Evelyn, under the date
of October 8th, 1672, we find the following notice: “I tooke my leave
of my Lady Sunderland; she made me stay dinner at Leicester House,
and afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. He melted
a beer-glass, and eat it quite up; then, taking a live coal on his
tongue, he put on it a raw oyster; the coal was blown on with bellows,
till it flamed and sparkled in his mouth, and so remained, till the
oyster gasped and was quite boiled; then he melted pitch and wax with
sulphur, which he drank down as it flamed; I saw it flaming in his
mouth a good while. He also took up a thick piece of iron, like an
ironing heater, and, when fiery-hot, held it between his teeth, then
in his hand, and threw it about like a stone; but this, I believe,
he cared not to hold very long.” Lady Sunderland seemed fond of such
exhibitions, as Mr. Evelyn recounts on another occasion, that “dining
with Lady Sunderland, I saw a fellow swallow a knife, and divers great
pebble stones, which could make a plain rattling one against another;
the knife was in sheath of horn.”
Katterfelto, described by Cowper, as
“With his hair on end, at his own wonders
Wondering for his bread,”
was a compound of conjuror and quack-doctor, and seems at one time to
have enjoyed a great repute in his way. He practised on the people
of London, during the influenza of the year 1782, and added to his
nostrums the fascination of hocus-pocus. Among other philosophical
apparatus, he employed the services of some extraordinary black cats,
with which he astonished the ignorant, and confounded the vulgar. He
was not so successful out of London; as he was committed, by the Mayor
of Shrewsbury, to the common house of correction, as a vagrant and
impostor.
But, though European jugglers have manifested great skill in the
various branches of their art, they appear to be far exceeded by
those of other parts of the world. Clavigero describes many of the
performances of Mexican professors; and adds that “the first Spaniards
who were witnesses of these and other exhibitions of the Mexicans
were so much astonished at their agility, that they suspected some
supernatural power assisted them.”
It is, however, in the Asiatic and African quarters of the globe that
the art of deluding the eye by false presentments is to be found in
its perfection. Sir John Mandeville gives an account of an exhibition,
which took place before the Great Khan; “And be it done by craft, or
by nicromancy,” says he, “I wot not.” That, in an unenlightened age,
he should doubt whether “nicromancy” had not something to do with such
wonders is not astonishing. “They make,” he tells us, “the appearance
of the sun and the moon in the air; and then they make the night so
dark, that nothing can be seen; and again they restore the daylight,
and the sun shining brightly. Then they bring in dances of the fairest
damsels of the world, and the richest arrayed. Afterwards they make
other damsels to come in, bringing cups of gold, full of the milk of
divers animals, and give drink to the lords and ladies; and then they
make knights joust in arms full lustily, who run together, and in the
encounter break their spears so rudely, that the splinters fly all
about the hall. They also bring in a hunting of the hart and of the
boar, with hounds running at them open-mouthed; and many other things
they do by the craft of their enchantments, that are marvellous to see.”
Mandeville has the reputation, not justly in every instance, of
being such “a measureless liar,” that his evidence in this case may,
perhaps, excite incredulity; but we must hesitate to disbelieve the
old traveller, when we find that similar, or even greater wonders
are attested by an unexceptionable witness, no less a personage than
Jehanguire, the Emperor of Hindustan. In his Autobiography, that
monarch enumerates no less than twenty-eight tricks, which were
played by Bengalee jugglers before him and his court, and at which he
expresses, as well he might, the utmost astonishment. One of them,
that of cutting a man in pieces, and then producing him alive and
perfect, resembles a trick which Ibn Batuta saw long before in China.
Another was the putting of seeds of curious trees into the earth, which
speedily grew to the height of two or three feet, and bore fruit. This
was repeated at Madras, not many years ago, on the lawn before the
Government-house. A mango stone was put into the ground, which, to all
appearance, rapidly sprung up into a fruit-bearing tree. Another of
the tricks exhibited before the emperor is equally marvellous: “They
produced a chain fifty cubits in length, and in my presence threw
one end of it towards the sky, where it remained, as if fastened to
something in the air. A dog was then brought forward, and, being placed
at the lower end of the chain, immediately ran up, and, reaching the
other end, immediately disappeared in the air. In the same manner,
a hog, a panther, a lion, and a tiger, were alternately sent up the
chain, and all equally disappeared at the upper end of the chain. At
last, they took down the chain and put it into a bag, no one ever
discerning in what way the different animals were made to vanish into
the air, in the mysterious manner above described. This, I may venture
to affirm, was beyond measure strange and surprising.”
Ibn Batuta (the celebrated traveller, who has been called the Mahometan
Marco Polo of the fourteenth century), to whom a reference has already
been made, narrates delusions of the same kind, of which he was an
eye-witness. He informs us that, when he was once in the presence of
the Emperor of Hindustan, two Yogees came in, whom the monarch desired
to show him what he had never yet seen. They said, “‘We will.’ One of
them then assumed the form of a cube, and arose from the earth, and,
in this cubic shape, he occupied a place in the air over our heads. I
was so much astonished and terrified at this, that I fainted and fell
to the earth. The emperor then ordered me some medicine which he had
with him, and, upon taking this, I recovered and sat up; this cubic
figure still remaining in the air just as it had been. His companion
then took a sandal, belonging to one of those who had come out with
him, and struck it upon the ground as if he had been angry. The sandal
then ascended until it became opposite in situation with the cube. It
then struck it upon the neck, and the cube gradually descended to the
earth, and at last rested in the place it had left. The emperor then
told me that the man who took the form of a cube was a disciple to the
owner of the sandal. ‘And,’ continued he, ‘had I not entertained fears
for the safety of thy intellect, I should have ordered him to show thee
greater things than these.’ From this, however, I took a palpitation of
the heart, until the emperor ordered me a medicine, which restored me.”
It is not more than seven years since a Bramin died at Madras, who was
accustomed to perform apparently the difficult feat of sitting on the
air. He did not exhibit for money, but merely as an act of courtesy.
Forty minutes is said to have been the longest time that he ever
remained in this extraordinary situation; the usual time seems to have
been about twelve minutes. An eye-witness thus describes the act and
the preparation for it: “The only apparatus seen is a piece of plank,
which, with four pegs, he forms into a kind of long stool; upon this,
in a little brass saucer or socket, he places, in a perpendicular
position, a hollow bamboo, over which he puts a kind of crutch, like
that of a walking-crutch, covering that with a piece of common hide;
these materials he carries with him in a little bag, which is shown to
those who come to see him exhibit. The servants of the house hold a
blanket before him, and, when it is withdrawn, he is discovered poised
in the air, about four feet from the ground, in a sitting attitude, the
outer edge of one hand merely touching the crutch; the fingers of that
hand deliberately counting beads; the other hand and arm held up in an
erect posture. The blanket was then held up before him, and they heard
a gurgling noise, like that occasioned by wind escaping from a bladder
or tube, and, when the screen was withdrawn, he was again standing on
_terra firma_. The same man has the power of staying under water for
several hours. He declines to explain how he does it, merely saying he
has been long accustomed to do so.”
The Bramin died without communicating his secret, and though attempts
were made to explain it, none of them were satisfactory. It was
asserted by a native that it is treated of in the Shasters, and depends
upon the art of fully suppressing the breath, and of cleansing the
tubular organs of the body, joined to a peculiar mode of drawing,
retaining, and ejecting the breath--an explanation which leaves the
mystery as dark as ever.
Egypt, which, more than thirty centuries ago, produced men so confident
of their magical skill as to venture to emulate the miracles of Moses,
still has pretenders to preternatural powers. The modern magicians
seem by no means to be a degenerate race. One of their modes of
delusion is “the magic mirror of ink,” and the address with which
they manage the trick is really wonderful, and, indeed, inexplicable.
It is performed by pouring ink into the hand of a boy not arrived at
puberty, an unmarried woman, or a woman who is “as ladies wish to be
who love their lords.” The boy is told to look into the ink, and to
say what he sees. Mr. Lane, in his recent valuable work on Egypt,
has described the operation, and he declares his utter inability to
account for the result. “After some preliminary ceremonies had been
gone through, the magician,” says he, “addressed himself to me, and
asked me if I wished the boy to see any person who was absent or dead.
I named Lord Nelson, of whom the boy had evidently never heard; for
it was with much difficulty he pronounced the name, after several
trials. The magician desired the boy to say to the Sooltan, ‘My master
salutes thee, and desires thee to bring Lord Nelson: bring him before
my eyes, that I may see him, speedily.’ The boy then said so; and
almost immediately added, ‘A messenger is gone, and has returned, and
has brought a man, dressed in a black[15] suit of European clothes;
the man has lost his left arm.’ He then paused for a moment or two,
and, looking more intently and more closely into the ink, he said, ‘No,
he has not lost his left arm, but it is placed to his breast.’ This
correction made his description more striking than it had been without
it; since Lord Nelson generally had his empty sleeve attached to his
coat: but it was the _right_ arm that he had lost. Without saying that
I suspected the boy had made a mistake, I asked the magician whether
the objects appeared in the ink as if actually before the eyes, or as
if in a glass, which makes the right appear left. He answered, that
they appeared as in a mirror. This rendered the boy’s description
faultless.” Mr. Lane adds, “A short time since, after performing in
the usual manner, by means of a boy, he prepared the magic mirror
in the hand of a young English lady, who, on looking into it for a
little while, said that she saw a broom sweeping the ground without
any body holding it, and was so much frightened that she would look
no longer.” To make this appearance understood, it must be mentioned,
that the first thing seen in the mirror is the sweeping of the ground
by a broom. In the case of Lord Nelson, however, the broom was in the
hands of a man. The boy is said not to have been a confederate of the
magician.
The same experiment was tried, at another time, in the presence of
Captain Scott; but, in this instance, the conjuror seems to have been
less a proficient in his trade than the one who was employed by Mr.
Lane, and the result was unsatisfactory to the captain.