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GYPSY SORCERY
AND
FORTUNE TELLING
ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS INCANTATIONS,
SPECIMENS OF MEDICAL MAGIC,
ANECDOTES AND TALES
BY
CHARLES GODFREY LELAND
PRESIDENT OF THE GIPSY-LORE SOCIETY, &c., &c.
COPIOUSLY ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
MDCCCXCI
DEDICATION.
THIS WORK
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO MY COLLEAGUES OF THE
CONGRÈS DES TRADITIONS POPULAIRES,
HELD AT PARIS, JULY, 1889;
AND ESPECIALLY
TO THE FRENCH MEMBERS OF THAT BODY,
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF THEIR GENEROUS HOSPITALITY,
AND UNFAILING KINDNESS AND COURTESY, BY
CHARLES G. LELAND.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE ORIGIN OF WITCHCRAFT, SHAMANISM, AND SORCERY.--
VINDICTIVE AND MISCHIEVOUS MAGIC 1
II. CHARMS AND CONJURATIONS TO CURE THE DISORDERS OF GROWN
PEOPLE.--HUNGARIAN GYPSY MAGIC 12
III. GYPSY CONJURATIONS AND EXORCISMS--THE CURE OF CHILDREN--
HUNGARIAN GYPSY SPELLS--A CURIOUS OLD ITALIAN "SECRET"--
THE MAGIC VIRTUE OF GARLIC--A FLORENTINE INCANTATION
LEARNED FROM A WITCH--LILITH, THE CHILD-STEALER, AND
QUEEN OF THE WITCHES 41
IV. SOUTH SLAVONIAN AND OTHER GYPSY WITCH-LORE.--THE WORDS
FOR A WITCH--VILAS AND THE SPIRITS OF EARTH AND AIR--
WITCHES, EGG-SHELLS, AND EGG-LORE--EGG PROVERBS--OVA
DE CRUCIBUS 65
V. CHARMS OR CONJURATIONS TO CURE OR PROTECT ANIMALS 79
VI. OF PREGNANCY AND CHARMS, OR FOLK-LORE CONNECTED WITH
IT--BOARS' TEETH AND CHARMS FOR PREVENTING THE FLOW
OF BLOOD 100
VII. THE RECOVERY OF STOLEN PROPERTY--LOVE-CHARMS--SHOES AND
LOVE-POTIONS, OR PHILTRES 108
VIII. ROUMANIAN AND TRANSYLVANIAN SORCERIES AND SUPERSTITIONS,
CONNECTED WITH THOSE OF THE GYPSIES 122
IX. THE RENDEZVOUS OR MEETINGS OF WITCHES, SORCERERS, AND
VILAS.--A CONTINUATION OF SOUTH SLAVONIAN GYPSY-LORE 142
X. OF THE HAUNTS, HOMES, AND HABITS OF WITCHES IN THE
SOUTH SLAVIC LANDS.--BOGEYS AND HUMBUGS 152
XI. GYPSY WITCHCRAFT.--THE MAGICAL POWER WHICH IS INNATE
IN ALL MEN AND WOMEN--HOW IT MAY BE CULTIVATED AND
DEVELOPED--THE PRINCIPLES OF FORTUNE-TELLING 162
XII. FORTUNE-TELLING (continued).--ROMANCE BASED ON CHANCE,
OR HOPE, AS REGARDS THE FUTURE--FOLK- AND SORCERY-LORE
--AUTHENTIC INSTANCES OF GYPSY PREDICTION 186
XIII. PROVERBS REFERRING TO WITCHES, GYPSIES, AND FAIRIES 194
XIV. A GYPSY MAGIC SPELL.--HOKKANI BARO--LELLIN DUDIKABIN,
OR THE GREAT SECRET--CHILDREN'S RHYMES AND INCANTATIONS
--TEN LITTLE INDIAN BOYS AND TEN LITTLE ACORN GIRLS OF
MARCELLUS BURDIGALENSIS 209
XV. GYPSY AMULETS 230
XVI. GYPSIES, TOADS, AND TOAD-LORE 255
PREFACE.
This work contains a collection of the customs, usages, and ceremonies
current among gypsies, as regards fortune-telling, witch-doctoring,
love-philtering, and other sorcery, illustrated by many anecdotes and
instances, taken either from works as yet very little known to the
English reader or from personal experiences. Within a very few years,
since Ethnology and Archæology have received a great inspiration, and
much enlarged their scope through Folk-lore, everything relating to
such subjects is studied with far greater interest and to much greater
profit than was the case when they were cultivated in a languid,
half-believing, half-sceptical spirit which was in reality rather one
of mere romance than reason. Now that we seek with resolution to find
the whole truth, be it based on materialism, spiritualism, or their
identity, we are amazed to find that the realm of marvel and mystery,
of wonder and poetry, connected with what we vaguely call "magic,"
far from being explained away or exploded, enlarges before us as
we proceed, and that not into a mere cloudland, gorgeous land, but
into a country of reality in which men of science who would once have
disdained the mere thought thereof are beginning to stray. Hypnotism
has really revealed far greater wonders than were ever established by
the fascinatores of old or by mesmerists of more modern times. Memory,
the basis of thought according to Plato, which was once held to be
a determined quantity, has been proved, (the word is not too bold),
by recent physiology, to be practically infinite, and its perfect
development to be identical with that of intellect, so that we
now see plainly before us the power to perform much which was once
regarded as miraculous. Not less evident is it that men of science
or practical inventors, such as Darwin, Wallace, Huxley, Tyndale,
Galton, Joule, Lockyer, and Edison, have been or are all working in
common with theosophists, spiritualists, Folk-lorists, and many more,
not diversely but all towards a grand solution of the Unknown.
Therefore there is nothing whatever in the past relating to the
influences which have swayed man, however strange, eccentric,
superstitious, or even repulsive they may seem, which is not of great
and constantly increasing value. And if we of the present time begin
already to see this, how much more important will these facts be to the
men of the future, who, by virtue of more widely extended knowledge and
comparison, will be better able than we are to draw wise conclusions
undreamed of now. But the chief conclusion for us is to collect as
much as we can, while it is yet extant, of all the strange lore of the
olden time, instead of wasting time in forming idle theories about it.
In a paper read before the Congrès des Traditions populaires in Paris,
1889, on the relations of gypsies to Folk-lore, I set forth my belief
that these people have always been the humble priests of what is really
the practical religion of all peasants and poor people; that is their
magical ceremonies and medicine. Very few have any conception of the
degree to which gypsies have been the colporteurs of what in Italy
is called "the old faith," or witchcraft.
As regards the illustrative matter given, I am much indebted to
Dr. Wlislocki, who has probably had far more intimate personal
experience of gypsies than any other learned man who ever lived,
through our mutual friend, Dr. Anthon Herrmann, editor of the
Ethnologische Mitteilungen, Budapest, who is also himself an
accomplished Romany scholar and collector, and who has kindly taken
a warm interest in this book, and greatly aided it. To these I may
add Dr. Friedrich S. Krauss, of Vienna, whose various works on the
superstitions and Folk-lore of the South Slavonians--kindly presented
by him to me--contain a vast mine of material, nearly all that of which
he treats being common property between peasants and the Romany, as
other sources abundantly indicate. With this there is also much which
I collected personally among gypsies and fortune-tellers, and similar
characters, it being true as regards this work and its main object,
that there is much cognate or allied information which is quite as
valuable as gypsy-lore itself, as all such subjects mutually explain
one of the others.
Gypsies, as I have said, have done more than any race or class on
the face of the earth to disseminate among the multitude a belief
in fortune-telling, magical or sympathetic cures, amulets and such
small sorceries as now find a place in Folk-lore. Their women have
all pretended to possess occult power since prehistoric times. By
the exercise of their wits they have actually acquired a certain
art of reading character or even thought, which, however it be
allied to deceit, is in a way true in itself, and well worth careful
examination. Matthew Arnold has dwelt on it with rare skill in his
poem of "The Gypsy Scholar." Even deceit and imposture never held
its own as a system for ages without some ground-work of truth, and
that which upheld the structure of gypsy sorcery, has never been very
carefully examined. I trust that I have done this in a rational and
philosophic spirit, and have also illustrated my remarks in a manner
which will prove attractive to the general reader.
There are many good reasons for believing that the greatest portion of
gypsy magic was brought by the Romany from the East or India. This is
specially true as regards those now dwelling in Eastern Europe. And
it is certainly interesting to observe that among these people there
is still extant, on a very extended scale indeed, a Shamanism which
seems to have come from the same Tartar-Altaic source which was
found of yore among the Accadian-Babylonians, Etruscan races, and
Indian hill-tribes. This, the religion of the drum and the demon as a
disease--or devil doctoring--will be found fully illustrated in many
curious ways in these pages. I believe that in describing it I have
also shown how many fragments of this primitive religion, or cult,
still exist, under very different names, in the most enlightened
centres of civilization. And I respectfully submit to my reader,
or critic, that I have in no instance, either in this or any other
case, wandered from my real subject, and that the entire work forms
a carefully considered and consistent whole. To perfect my title,
I should perhaps have added a line or two to the effect that I have
illustrated many of the gypsy sorceries by instances of Folk-lore drawn
from other sources; but I believe that it is nowhere inappropriate,
considering the subject as a whole. For those who would lay stress
on omissions in my book, I would say that I have never intended or
pretended to exhaust gypsy superstitions. I have not even given all
that may be found in the works of Wlislocki alone. I have, according
to the limits of the book, cited so much as to fully illustrate the
main subject already described, and this will be of more interest to
the student of history than the details of gypsy chiromancy or more
spells and charms than are necessary to explain the leading ideas.
What is wanted in the present state of Folk-lore, I here repeat, is
collection from original sources, and material, that is from people
and not merely from books. The critics we have--like the poor--always
with us, and a century hence we shall doubtless have far better ones
than those in whom we now rejoice--or sorrow. But material abides
no time, and an immense quantity of it which is world-old perishes
every day. For with general culture and intelligence we are killing
all kinds of old faiths, with wonderful celerity. The time is near at
hand when it will all be incredibly valuable, and then men will wish
sorrowfully enough that there had been more collectors to accumulate
and fewer critics to detract from their labours and to discourage
them. For the collector must form his theory, or system great or
small, good or bad, such as it is, in order to gather his facts;
and then the theory is shattered by the critic and the collection
made to appear ridiculous. And so collection ends.
There is another very curious reflection which has been ever present
to my mind while writing this work, and which the reader will do well
carefully to think out for himself. It is that the very first efforts
of the human mind towards the supernatural were gloomy, strange, and
wild; they were of witchcraft and sorcery, dead bodies, defilement,
deviltry, and dirt. Men soon came to believe in the virtue of the
repetition of certain rhymes or spells in connection with dead men's
bones, hands, and other horrors or "relics." To this day this old
religion exists exactly as it did of yore, wherever men are ignorant,
stupid, criminal, or corresponding to their prehistoric ancestors. I
myself have seen a dead man's hand for sale in Venice. According
to Dr. Block, says a writer in The St. James's Gazette, January 16,
1889, the corpse-candle superstition is still firmly enshrined among
the tenets of thieves all over Europe. In reality, according to The
Standard, we know little about the strange thoughts which agitate the
minds of the criminal classes. Their creeds are legends. Most of them
are the children and grandchildren of thieves who have been brought
up from their youth in the densest ignorance, and who, constantly
at war with society, seek the aid of those powers of darkness in the
dread efficacy of which they have an unshaken confidence.
"Fetishism of the rudest type, or what the mythologists have
learned to call 'animism' is part and parcel of the robber's
creed. A 'habit and repute' thief has always in his pocket, or
somewhere about his person, a bit of coal, or chalk, or a 'lucky
stone,' or an amulet of some sort on which he relies for safety
in his hour of peril. Omens he firmly trusts in. Divination is
regularly practised by him, as the occasional quarrels over the
Bible and key, and the sieve and shears, testify. The supposed
power of witches and wizards make many of them live in terror,
and pay blackmail, and although they will lie almost without
a motive, the ingenuity with which the most depraved criminal
will try to evade 'kissing the book,' performing this rite with
his thumb instead, is a curious instance of what may be termed
perverted religious instincts. As for the fear of the evil eye, it
is affirmed that most of the foreign thieves of London dread more
being brought before a particular magistrate who has the reputation
of being endowed with that fatal gift than of being summarily
sentenced by any other whose judicial glare is less severe."
This is all true, but it tells only a small part of the truth. Not
only is Fetish or Shamanism the real religion of criminals, but of
vast numbers who are not suspected of it. There is not a town in
England or in Europe in which witchcraft (its beginning) is not
extensively practised, although this is done with a secrecy the
success of which is of itself almost a miracle. We may erect churches
and print books, but wherever the prehistoric man exists--and he is
still to be found everywhere by millions--he will cling to the old
witchcraft of his remote ancestors. Until you change his very nature,
the only form in which he can realize supernaturalism will be by means
of superstition, and the grossest superstition at that. Research and
reflection have taught me that this sorcery is far more widely and
deeply extended than any cultivated person dreams--instead of yielding
to the progress of culture it seems to actually advance with it. Count
Angelo de Gubernatis once remarked to one of the most distinguished
English statesmen that there was in the country in Tuscany ten times
as much heathenism as Christianity. The same remark was made to me
by a fortune-teller in Florence. She explained what she meant. It
was the vecchia religione--"the old religion"--not Christianity,
but the dark and strange sorceries of the stregha, or witch, the
compounding of magical medicine over which spells are muttered, the
making love-philters, the cursing enemies, the removing the influence
of other witches, and the manufacture of amulets in a manner prohibited
by the Church.
It would seem as if, by some strange process, while advanced
scientists are occupied in eliminating magic from religion, the
coarser mind is actually busy in reducing it to religion alone. It
has been educated sufficiently to perceive an analogy between dead
man's hands and "relics" as working miracles, and as sorcery is more
entertaining than religion, and has, moreover, the charm of secrecy,
the prehistoric man, who is still with us, prefers the former. Because
certain forms of this sorcery are no longer found among the educated
classes we think that superstition no longer exists; but though we
no longer burn witches or believe in fairies, it is a fact that of
a kind and fashion proportionate to our advanced culture, it is,
with a very few exceptions, as prevalent as ever. Very few persons
indeed have ever given this subject the attention which it merits,
for it is simply idle to speculate on the possibility of cultivating
or sympathizing with the lowest orders without really understanding
it in all its higher forms. And I venture to say that, as regards a
literal and truthful knowledge of its forms and practices, this work
will prove to be a contribution to the subject not without value.
I have, in fact, done my best to set forth in it a very singular truth
which is of great importance to every one who takes any real interest
in social science, or the advance of intelligence. It is that while
almost everybody who contributes to general literature, be it books
of travel or articles in journals, has ever and anon something clever
to say about superstition among the lower orders at home or abroad,
be it in remote country places or in the mountains of Italy, with the
usual cry of "Would it be believed--in the nineteenth century?" &c.;
it still remains true that the amount of belief in magic--call it by
what name we will--in the world is just as great as ever it was. And
here I would quote with approbation a passage from "The Conditions for
the Survival of Archaic Customs," by G. L. Gomme, in The Archæological
Review of January, 1890:--
"If Folk-lore has done nothing else up to this date it has
demonstrated that civilization, under many of its phases, while
elevating the governing class of a nation, and thereby no doubt
elevating the nation, does not always reach the lowest or even the
lower strata of the population. As Sir Arthur Mitchell puts it,
'There is always a going up of some and a going down of others,'
and it is more than probable that just as the going up of the
few is in one certain direction, along certain well-ascertained
lines of improvement or development, so the going down of the
many is in an equally well-ascertained line of degradation
or backwardness. The upward march is always towards political
improvement, carrying with it social development; the downward
march is always towards social degradation, carrying with it
political backwardness. It seems difficult indeed to believe that
monarchs like Ælfred, Eadward, William, and Edward, could have had
within their Christianized kingdom groups of people whose status
was still that of savagery; it seems difficult to believe that
Raleigh and Spenser actually beheld specimens of the Irish savage;
it seems impossible to read Kemble and Green and Freeman and yet
to understand that they are speaking only of the advanced guard of
the English nation, not of the backward races within the boundary
of its island home. The student of archaic custom has, however,
to meet these difficulties, and it seems necessary, therefore,
to try and arrive at some idea as to what the period of savagery
in these islands really means."
Which is a question that very few can answer. There is to be found
in almost every cheap book, or "penny dreadful" and newspaper shop
in Great Britain and America, for sale at a very low price a Book
of Fate--or something equivalent to it, for the name of these works
is legion--and one publisher advertises that he has nearly thirty of
them, or at least such books with different titles. In my copy there
are twenty-five pages of incantations, charms, and spells, every one
of them every whit as "superstitious" as any of the gypsy ceremonies
set forth in this volume. I am convinced, from much inquiry, that next
to the Bible and the Almanac there is no one book which is so much
disseminated among the million as the fortune-teller, in some form
or other. [1] That is to say, there are, numerically, many millions
more of believers in such small sorcery now in Great Britain than
there were centuries ago, for, be it remembered, the superstitions
of the masses were always petty ones, like those of the fate-books;
it was only the aristocracy who consulted Cornelius Agrippa, and
could afford la haute magie. We may call it by other names, but fry,
boil, roast, powder or perfume it as we will, the old faith in the
supernatural and in "occult" means of getting at it still exists in one
form or another--the parable or moral of most frequent occurrence in
it being that of the Mote and the Beam, of the real and full meaning
of which I can only reply in the ever-recurring refrain of the Edda:
"Understand ye this--or what?"
CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGIN OF WITCHCRAFT, SHAMANISM, AND SORCERY.--VINDICTIVE AND
MISCHIEVOUS MAGIC.
As their peculiar perfume is the chief association with spices,
so sorcery is allied in every memory to gypsies. And as it has not
escaped many poets that there is something more strangely sweet
and mysterious in the scent of cloves than in that of flowers, so
the attribute of inherited magic power adds to the romance of these
picturesque wanderers. Both the spices and the Romany come from the
far East--the fatherland of divination and enchantment. The latter
have been traced with tolerable accuracy, if we admit their affinity
with the Indian Dom and Domar, back to the threshold of history, or
well-nigh into prehistoric times, and in all ages they, or their women,
have been engaged, as if by elvish instinct, in selling enchantments,
peddling prophecies and palmistry, and dealing with the devil generally
in a small retail way. As it was of old so it is to-day--
Ki shan i Romani
Adoi san' i chov'hani.
Wherever gypsies go,
There the witches are, we know.
It is no great problem in ethnology or anthropology as to how gypsies
became fortune-tellers. We may find a very curious illustration of
it in the wren. This is apparently as humble, modest, prosaic little
fowl as exists, and as far from mystery and wickedness as an old
hen. But the ornithologists of the olden time, and the myth-makers,
and the gypsies who lurked and lived in the forest, knew better. They
saw how this bright-eyed, strange little creature in her elvish way
slipped in and out of hollow trees and wood shade into sunlight,
and anon was gone, no man knew whither, and so they knew that it was
an uncanny creature, and told wonderful tales of its deeds in human
form, and to-day it is called by gypsies in Germany, as in England,
the witch-bird, or more briefly, chorihani, "the witch." Just so the
gypsies themselves, with their glittering Indian eyes, slipping like
the wren in and out of the shadow of the Unknown, and anon away and
invisible, won for themselves the name which now they wear. Wherever
Shamanism, or the sorcery which is based on exorcising or commanding
spirits, exists, its professors from leading strange lives, or from
solitude or wandering, become strange and wild-looking. When men have
this appearance people associate with it mysterious power. This is
the case in Tartary, Africa, among the Eskimo, Lapps, or Red Indians,
with all of whom the sorcerer, voodoo or medaolin, has the eye of
the "fascinator," glittering and cold as that of a serpent. So the
gypsies, from the mere fact of being wanderers and out-of-doors
livers in wild places, became wild-looking, and when asked if they
did not associate with the devils who dwell in the desert places,
admitted the soft impeachment, and being further questioned as to
whether their friends the devils, fairies, elves, and goblins had not
taught them how to tell the future, they pleaded guilty, and finding
that it paid well, went to work in their small way to improve their
"science," and particularly their pecuniary resources. It was an easy
calling; it required no property or properties, neither capital nor
capitol, shiners nor shrines, wherein to work the oracle. And as I
believe that a company of children left entirely to themselves would
form and grow up with a language which in a very few years would
be spoken fluently, [2] so I am certain that the shades of night,
and fear, pain, and lightning and mystery would produce in the same
time conceptions of dreaded beings, resulting first in demonology and
then in the fancied art of driving devils away. For out of my own
childish experiences and memories I retain with absolute accuracy
material enough to declare that without any aid from other people
the youthful mind forms for itself strange and seemingly supernatural
phenomena. A tree or bush waving in the night breeze by moonlight is
perhaps mistaken for a great man, the mere repetition of the sight
or of its memory make it a personal reality. Once when I was a child
powerful doses of quinine caused a peculiar throb in my ear which I
for some time believed was the sound of somebody continually walking
upstairs. Very young children sometimes imagine invisible playmates or
companions talk with them, and actually believe that the unseen talk
to them in return. I myself knew a small boy who had, as he sincerely
believed, such a companion, whom he called Bill, and when he could
not understand his lessons he consulted the mysterious William, who
explained them to him. There are children who, by the voluntary or
involuntary exercise of visual perception or volitional eye-memory,
[3] reproduce or create images which they imagine to be real, and this
faculty is much commoner than is supposed. In fact I believe that where
it exists in most remarkable degrees the adults to whom the children
describe their visions dismiss them as "fancies" or falsehoods. Even
in the very extraordinary cases recorded by Professor Hale, in which
little children formed for themselves spontaneously a language in
which they conversed fluently, neither their parents nor anybody else
appears to have taken the least interest in the matter. However, the
fact being that babes can form for themselves supernatural conceptions
and embryo mythologies, and as they always do attribute to strange
or terrible-looking persons power which the latter do not possess,
it is easy, without going further, to understand why a wild Indian
gypsy, with eyes like a demon when excited, and unearthly-looking at
his calmest, should have been supposed to be a sorcerer by credulous
child-like villagers. All of this I believe might have taken place,
or really did take place, in the very dawn of man's existence as
a rational creature--that as soon as "the frontal convolution of
the brain which monkeys do not possess," had begun with the "genial
tubercule," essential to language, to develop itself, then also certain
other convolutions and tubercules, not as yet discovered, but which
ad interim I will call "the ghost-making," began to act. "Genial,"
they certainly were not--little joy and much sorrow has man got out of
his spectro-facient apparatus--perhaps if it and talk are correlative
he might as well, many a time, have been better off if he were dumb.
So out of the earliest time, in the very two o'clock of a misty
morning in history, man came forth believing in non-existent terrors
and evils as soon as he could talk, and talking about them as fast
as he formed them. Long before the conception of anything good or
beneficent, or of a Heavenly Father or benevolent angels came to him,
he was scared with nightmares and spirits of death and darkness,
hell, hunger, torture, and terror. We all know how difficult it
is for many people when some one dies out of a house-hold to get
over the involuntary feeling that we shall unexpectedly meet the
departed in the usual haunts. In almost every family there is a
record how some one has "heard a voice they cannot hear," or the
dead speaking in the familiar tones. Hence the belief in ghosts,
as soon as men began to care for death at all, or to miss those who
had gone. So first of all came terrors and spectres, or revenants,
and from setting out food for the latter, which was the most obvious
and childlike manner to please them, grew sacrifices to evil spirits,
and finally the whole system of sacrifice in all its elaboration.
It may therefore be concluded that as soon as man began to think
and speak and fear the mysterious, he also began to appease ghosts
and bugbears by sacrifices. Then there sprung up at once--quite as
early--the magus, or the cleverer man, who had the wit to do the
sacrificing and eat the meats sacrificed, and explain that he had
arranged it all privately with the dead and the devils. He knew all
about them, and he could drive them away. This was the Shaman. He
seems to have had a Tartar-Mongol-mongrel-Turanian origin, somewhere
in Central Asia, and to have spread with his magic drum, and songs,
and stinking smoke, exorcising his fiends all over the face of the
earth, even as his descendant, General Booth, with his "devil-drivers"
is doing at the present day. But the earliest authentic records
of Shamanism are to be found in the Accadian, proto-Chaldæan and
Babylon records. According to it all diseases whatever, as well as all
disasters, were directly the work of evil spirits, which were to be
driven away by songs of exorcism, burning of perfumes or evil-smelling
drugs, and performing ceremonies, many of which, with scraps of the
exorcisms are found in familiar use here and there at the present
day. Most important of all in it was the extraordinary influence of
the Shaman himself on his patient, for he made the one acted on sleep
or wake, freed him from many apparently dire disorders in a minute,
among others of epilepsies which were believed to be caused by devils
dwelling in man--the nearest and latest explanation of which magic
power is given in that very remarkable book, "Psycho-Therapeutics, or
Treatment by Sleep and Suggestion," by C. Lloyd Tuckey, M.D. (London:
Bailliere and Co., 1889), which I commend to all persons interested
in ethnology as casting light on some of the most interesting and
perplexing problems of humanity, and especially of "magic."
It would seem, at least among the Laplanders, Finns, Eskimo, and
Red Indians, that the first stage of Shamanism was a very horrible
witchcraft, practised chiefly by women, in which attempts were made to
conciliate the evil spirits; the means employed embracing everything
which could revolt and startle barbarous men. Thus fragments of
dead bodies and poison, and unheard-of terrors and crimes formed its
basis. I think it very probable that this was the primitive religion
among savages everywhere. An immense amount of it in its vilest
conceivable forms still exists among negroes as Voodoo.
After a time this primitive witchcraft or voodooism had its
reformers--probably brave and shrewd men, who conjectured that the
powers of evil might be "exploited" to advantage. There is great
confusion and little knowledge as yet as regards primitive man, but
till we know better we may roughly assume that witch-voodooism was
the religion of the people of the paleolithic period, if they could
talk at all, since language is denied to the men of the Neanderthal,
Canstadt, Egnisheim, and Podhava type. All that we can declare with
some certainty is that we find the advanced Shamanism the religion of
the early Turanian races, among whose descendants, and other people
allied to them, it exists to this day. The grandest incident in the
history of humanity is the appearance of the Man of Cromagnon. He it
was who founded what M. de Quatrefages calls "a magnificent race,"
probably one which speedily developed a high civilization, and a
refined religion. But the old Shamanism with its amulets, exorcisms,
and smoke, its noises, more or less musical, of drums and enchanted
bells, and its main belief that all the ills of life came from the
action of evil spirits, was deeply based among the inferior races and
the inferior scions of the Cromagnon stock clung to it in forms more
or less modified. Just as the earlier witchcraft, or the worship and
conciliation of evil, overlapped in many places the newer Shamanism, so
the latter overlapped the beautiful Nature-worship of the early Aryans,
the stately monotheism of the Shemites, and the other more advanced
or ingenious developments of the idea of a creative cause. There are,
in fact, even among us now, minds to whom Shamanism or even witchcraft
is deeply, or innately adapted by nature, and there are hundred of
millions who, while professing a higher and purer doctrine, cling
to its forms or essentials, believing that because the apparatus
is called by a different name it is in no respect whatever the same
thing. Finally there are men who, with no logical belief whatever in
any kind of supernaturalism, study it, and love it, and are moved by
it, owing to its endless associations with poetry, art, and all the
legends of infancy or youth. Heine was not in his reasoning moments
anything more or less than a strict Deist or Monotheist, but all the
dreams and spectres, fairies and goblins, whether of the Middle Ages or
the Talmud, were inexpressibly dear to him, and they move like myriad
motes through the sunshine of his poetry and prose, often causing
long rays when there were bars at the window--like that on which
the saint hung his cloak. It is probable or certain that Shamanism
(or that into which it has very naturally developed) will influence
all mankind, until science, by absorbing man's love of the marvellous
in stupendous discoveries shall so put to shame the old thaumaturgy,
or wonder-working, that the latter will seem poor and childish. In
all the "Arabian Nights" there is nothing more marvellous than the
new idea that voices and sounds may be laid aside like real books,
and made to speak and sing again years afterwards. And in all of that
vast repertory of occult lore, "Isis Unveiled," there is nothing so
wonderful as the simple truth that every child may be educated to
possess an infinitely developed memory of words, sights, sounds, and
ideas, allied to incredible quickness of perception and practice of
the constructive faculties. These, with the vast fields of adjusting
improved social relations and reforms--all of which in a certain way
opens dazzling vistas of a certain kind of enchantment or brilliant
hope--will go fast and far to change the old romance to a radically
different state of feeling and association.
It is coming--let it come! Doubtless there was an awful romance
of darkness about the old witchcraft which caused its worshippers
to declare that the new lights of Shamanism could never dissipate
it. Just so many millions of educated people at present cannot be
brought to understand that all things to which they are used are not
based on immutable laws of nature, and must needs be eternal. They will
find it hard to comprehend that there can ever be any kind of poetry,
art, or sentiment, utterly different from that to which they and their
ancestors have been accustomed. Yet it is clear and plain before them,
this New Era, looking them directly in the face, about to usher in a
reformation compared to which all the reformations and revolutions,
and new religions which the world has ever seen were as nothing;
and the children are born who will see more than the beginning of it.
In the next chapter I will examine the Shamanic spells and charms
still used among certain gypsies. For, be it observed, all the gypsy
magic and sorcery here described is purely Shamanic--that is to say,
of the most primitive Tartar type--and it is the more interesting
as having preserved from prehistoric times many of the most marked
characteristics of the world's first magic or religion. It treats
every disease, disorder, trouble, or affliction as the work of an
evil spirit; it attempts to banish these influences by the aid of
ceremonies, many of which, by the disgusting and singular nature
of the ingredients employed, show the lingering influences of the
black witchcraft which preceded Shamanism; and it invokes favourable
supernatural agencies, such as the spirits of the air and Mashmurdalo',
the giant of the forests. In addition to this there will be found to
be clearly and unmistakably associated with all their usages, symbols
and things nearly connected with much which is to be found in Greek,
Roman, and Indian mythology or symbolism. Now whether this was drawn
from "classic" sources, or whether all came from some ancient and
obscure origin, cannot now be accurately determined. But it certainly
cannot be denied that Folk-lore of this kind casts a great deal of
light on the early history of mankind, and the gradual unfolding or
evolution of religion and of mind, and that, if intelligently studied,
this of the gypsies is as important as any chapter in the grand work.
The gypsies came, historically speaking, very recently from India. It
has not been so carefully observed as it might that all Indians are
not of the religion of Brahma, much less of Buddha or of Mahommed,
and that among the lower castes, the primæval Altaic Shamanism, with
even earlier witchcraft, still holds its own. Witchcraft, or Voodoo,
or Obi, relies greatly on poisoning for its magic, and the first
gypsies were said to poison unscrupulously. Even to this day there
is but one word with them as with many Hindoos for both medicine and
poison--id est drab. How exactly this form of witchcraft and Shamanism
exists to-day in India appears from the following extract from The
St. James's Gazette, September 8, 1888:--
THE HINDOO PRIEST.
In India, the jadoo-wallah, or exorcist, thrives apace; and
no wonder, for is not the lower-caste Hindoo community bhut,
or demon-ridden? Every village, graveyard, burning-ghat, has
its special bhut or bhuts; and the jadoo-wallah is the earthly
mediator between their bhutships and the common folk. The exorcist
is usually the spiritual adviser to the population of a low-caste
village, and is known as a gooroo, or priest: that is to say, he
professes to hold commune with the spirits of defunct Hindoos which
have qualified for their unique position in the other world--by
their iniquity in this one, perhaps. Every Hindoo has a guardian
bhut that requires propitiating, and the gooroo is the medium.
Amongst the Jaiswars and other low-caste Hindoos, caste is
regulated by carnal pice, and a man is distinguished amongst
them by a regulated monetary scale. One person may be a 14-anna
caste man while another may only be a 12-anna caste man. Does the
12-anna caste man wish to supersede the 14-anna caste man, then
he consults the gooroo, who will, in consideration of a certain
contribution, promote him to a higher-caste grade. A moneyed man
having qualms about his future state should join the Jaiswars,
where at least he would have an opportunity of utilizing his spare
cash for the good of his soul. The average gooroo will be only too
glad to procure him everlasting glory for a matter of a few rupees.
The gooroo, then, serves as regulator of the lower-caste Hindoo
system. But it is our intention to exhibit him in his peculiar
position of exorcist-general to the people. This will perhaps
be best explained by an account of the case of one Kaloo. Kaloo
was a grass-cutter, and had been offended by Kasi, a brother
grass-cutter. Kasi, it appears, had stolen Kaloo's quilt one night
during his temporary absence at a neighbouring liquor-shop. Kaloo,
on his return, finding his quilt gone, raised the hue-and-cry;
and Mooloo, the village policeman, traced the robbery to Kasi's
hut. Yet, in spite of this damning proof, the village panchayet,
or bench of magistrates, decided that, as Kaloo could not swear
to the exact colour of his lost quilt--Kaloo was colour-blind--it
could not possibly be his. Anyhow, Kaloo kept Kasi in view and
hit upon a plan to do him a grievous bodily injury. Scraping
together a few rupees, he went to the village gooroo and promised
that worthy a reward if he would only exorcise the bhuts and get
them to "make Kasi's liver bad." The gooroo, in consideration
of five rupees cash, promised compliance. So that night we find
the gooroo busy with sandal-wood and pig's blood propitiating the
neighbouring bhuts. Needless to say that Kasi had in a very short
space of time all the symptoms of liver complaint. Whether the
bhuts gave Kasi a bad liver or the gooroo gave him a few doses
of poison is a question. Anyhow, Kasi soon died. Another case
in point is that of Akuti. Akuti was a retired courtesan who had
long plied a profitable trade in the city. We find her, however,
at her native village of Ramghur, the wife of one Balu. Balu
soon got tired of his Akuti, and longed for the contents of her
strong box wherein she kept her rupees, bracelets, nose-rings,
and other valuables. This was a rather awkward matter for Balu,
for Akuti was still in the prime of life. Balu accordingly visits
the gooroo and wants Akuti's liver made bad. "Nothing easier,"
says the gooroo: "five rupees." Balu has reckoned without his
host, however: for the gooroo, as general spiritual adviser to
the Ramghur community, visits Akuti and tells her of Balu's little
scheme. Naturally Balu's liver is soon in a decline, for Akuti's
ten rupees were put in the opposite side of the gooroo's scales.
Knaves of the gooroo genus flourish in India, and when their
disposition is vicious the damage they can do is appalling. That
these priests exist and do such things as I have illustrated is
beyond question. Ask any native of India his views on the bhut
question, and he will tell you that there are such things, and,
further, that the gooroo is the only one able to lay them, so to
speak. According to the low-caste Hindoo, the bhut is a spiteful
creature which requires constant supplies of liquor and pork;
otherwise it will wreak its vengeance on the forgetful votary who
neglects the supply. A strange idea, too, is this of pork being
pleasing to the bhuts; but when it is remembered that the Jaiswars,
Chamars, and other low-caste Hindoos are inordinately fond of
that meat themselves, they are right in supposing pig to be the
favourite dish of the bhuts, who, after all, are but the departed
spirits of their own people. Naturally bhai (brother) Kaloo, or
bahin (sister, English gypsy pen) Akuti, the quondam grass-cutter
and courtesan of Ramghur village, who in this life liked nothing
better than a piece of bacon and a dram of spirits, will, in their
state of bhuthood hanker after those things still. Acting on these
notions of the people, the gooroo lives and thrives exceedingly.
Yet of all this there is nothing "Hindoo," nothing of the Vedas. It is
all pre-Aryan, devil-worshipping, poisoning, and Turanian; and it is
exactly like voodooing in Philadelphia or any other city in America. It
is the old faith which came before all, which existed through and
under Brahminism, Buddhism, and Mahommedanism, and which, as is well
known, has cropped out again and flourishes vigorously under British
toleration. And this is the faith which forms the basis of European
gypsy sorcery, as it did of yore that of the Chaldæan and Etrurian,
which still survive in the witchcraft of the Tuscan Romagna. Every
gypsy who came to Europe a few centuries ago set up as a gooroo,
and did his sorceries after the same antique fashion. Even to-day it
is much the same, but with far less crime. But the bhut or malignant
spirit is, under other names, still believed in, still doctored by
gypsies with herbs and smoke, and "be-rhymed like an Irish rat,"
and conjured into holes bored in trees, and wafted away into running
streams, and naïvely implored to "go where he is wanted," to where
he was nursed, and to no longer bother honest folk who are tired
of him. And for all this the confiding villager must pay the gypsy
wise-woman "so much monies"--as it was in the beginning and is now in
good faith among millions in Europe who are in a much better class
of society. And from this point of view I venture to say that there
is not a charm or spell set down in this work or extant which will
not be deeply interesting to every sincere student of the history of
culture. Let me, however, say in this beginning once for all that
I have only given specimens sufficient to illustrate my views, for
my prescribed limits quite forbid the introduction of all the gypsy
cures, spells, &c., which I have collected.