"Moon! O moon! O moon!
Thou who art always fair,
Yet holdest in thy ring
One of such evil name,
Because thou holdest Cain;
Cain who from jealousy
His own born brother slew.
"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 pass 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 glass, 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 glass was held up to the moon that its rays might
pass 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
pricked holes with a very fine needle in the eyes to blind him. The
negative of a photograph on glass would very naturally occur as a
substitute 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 hell, 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,
Bloody 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, passes 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-glass, 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
mass 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 classic 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 Glasse,
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: