SOME WITCHES OF TO-DAY
No study of witchcraft--however slight--could be considered complete
did it ignore its importance in the world of to-day. Dispossessed
though she may be, in a small intellectual district of the Western
World, the witch still queens it over the imagination of the vast
majority of mankind. What is more, as I have tried to show in an
earlier chapter, there are many indications that her reconquest of
her lost territories cannot be long delayed. With the close of the
nineteenth century--in which the cult of neo-materialism reached its
widest sway--the reaction against the great conspiracy may already
have begun. The Russo-Japanese war, with its defeat of an Occidental,
or semi-Occidental, Power at the hands of the Orient, may also be
held to typify the approaching victory of witchcraft over science.
It is true that the true Russian--the moujik, as apart from the
germanised, official class-has always preserved his faith in magic;
true also that the Japanese victories were won by a free adaptation of
European methods. But this can only obscure, without changing, the
great underlying phenomenon--that the lethargic East, the great home
of witchcraft and witch-lore, has at last aroused itself from its long
trance, and, by whatever methods chastised the fussy West that sought,
professedly for its own good, to change its lotus-dreams to nightmares.
It only remains for China to rise up and chastise the inconstant
Japanese for their treachery to a common ideal, to make the certainty
of the witch's victory more certain.
The position of the witch is, indeed, unassailable. Whatever the
result of the racial Armageddon of to-morrow, she can lose nothing.
If white civilisation stand the test of battle, she is in no worse
position than before; if it go down before the hosts of Asia, the
witch and her devotees will reap the fruits of victory. It may suit
the present Asiatic purpose to drape its limbs with tawdry European
vestments--but the patent-leather boots worn by the Babu cannot make an
Englishman of him. He may be a "failed B.A. of Allahabad University," a
persistent office-seeker, a bomb-throwing Revolutionist and a professed
Atheist, but he is none the less a believer in a million gods and ten
times as many witches. In his native village he has an hereditary
official magician, who controls the weather, wards off evil spells,
performs incantations and the like at fixed charges--and commands the
implicit confidence of educated and uneducated alike. What is more,
the Indian cult of witchcraft has flourished the more widely beneath
the contemptuous protection of the British Raj. In the old times there
were certain inconveniences attendant upon the witch or wizard-life
in India as elsewhere. Dreaded they were, as they are still, but
there were times when an outraged community turned under the pressure
of their malignant spells and meted out appropriate punishment full
measure. Witch-tests very similar to those employed by Matthew Hopkins
were everywhere in use. Among the Bhils, for example, and other allied
tribes, a form of "swimming" prevailed, in many ways an improvement
upon the fallible British methods. A stake being set up in a shallow
tank or lake, so that it protrudes above the surface, the suspected
witch must lay hold of it and descend to the bottom, there to remain
while an arrow is shot from a bow and brought back by a runner to the
firing-place. If the suspect can remain under water until then, she is
declared innocent; if she rises to breathe, she is a confessed witch.
This method offers so many opportunities of manipulation, either by the
suspect's friends or enemies, that it may well take precedence even of
the ordeal by fire, water, or ploughshare favoured among us in feudal
days, while the inventiveness of the English witch-finder is put to
open shame. Needless to say, Indian witchcraft had and has all the
material incidentals proper to a cult. There are substances susceptible
to spells, much as is the case with electricity; there are others, as,
for example, the boughs of the castor-oil plant, very effective in its
cure--so that to flog a witch with such rods is the best possible way
of rendering her harmless. There are proper ways of punishing her, too,
as, for example, to rub red pepper into her eyes. But unfortunately for
those susceptible to spells, the British Government has now stepped in
to protect, not the persecuted ryot, but the witch who persecutes him.
It is a crime to destroy, even to torture, a witch, however notorious;
and however strongly we may object to such iniquitous laws, it is
advisable to obey them, or to break them only very secretly indeed.
Owing to this unfortunate state of things, the witch riots unchecked
throughout Hindustan, and everywhere increases in importance. For, if
you are forbidden to suppress her, the only alternative is to seek
her favour, and if you have offended to appease her with gifts, or
pay some rival practitioner to weave yet more potent counter-spells.
Otherwise the odds are heavy that sooner or later, as you are returning
home through the jungle one day, she will lie in wait for you in the
disguise of a poisonous snake or man-eating tiger, or, failing that,
that you will die miserably of typhoid fever or plague.
The witch of Hindustan, though somewhat exalted in importance by the
protection extended to her by the British Government, differs but
little from her sisters in other parts of the Orient, in the Nearer
East, in Further India, China, even in enlightened Japan. Everywhere,
indeed, where any regularised form of religion exists, you may find her
actively protesting against its decrees, catering for its unsatisfied
devotees, or those who agree with that old woman who, discovered
offering up prayer to the Devil, explained that at her time of life
she thought it well to be in with both sides. Sometimes she takes
the place of the Devil; sometimes she provides a way of escape from
heavenly and infernal powers alike; sometimes she embodies the whole of
the supernatural. The creed of the African native, by him transported
to the Americas, may be described as devil-worship--but more properly
as witchcraft pure and simple. The African witch-doctor, as with the
majority of savage tribes, is himself a god, far more powerful than the
devilkins whose destinies he directs. More powerful than the European
magician of old times, he can command Heaven as well as Hell--and
whether by election, assumption, or descent, he is the sole arbiter of
fate, even though, perhaps out of deference to infiltrated European
ideas, he sometimes professes to act only as the mouthpiece of Destiny.
I have already referred to the persistence of the belief in witches in
our own and other European countries. Further examples might be quoted,
almost _ad infinitum_, all going to prove the same thing, that the
elementary school is powerless against the inherited tradition. Those
interested may find a striking example of belief in witchcraft and the
power of the evil eye in Somerset, including an incantation of some
merit, the whole too long for quotation, in "Somerset and Dorset Notes
and Queries" for December, 1894. Or again, in "La Mala Vita a Roma," by
Signori Niceforo and Sighele, a chapter is devoted to the present-day
witches of the Eternal City, showing conclusively that, among a host of
fortune-tellers and similar swindlers, the genuine "strege" flourish as
of yore, though they are perhaps less easily to be found by strangers
in search of them. Instead, however, of quoting further from the
experiences of others, I may adduce one or two instances of witches
with whom I have personally come in contact. I must admit that, as
providing any test of the _bona fides_ of the modern witch, they are
singularly unconvincing. They may, however, serve as some proof, not
only that the witch can still find many to do her reverence in modern
Christian Europe, but that, as a profession for women, that of the
witch is not without its potentialities in these overcrowded days.
If you cross over the Ponte Vecchio at Florence and, leaving the Via
dei Bardi on your left, continue along the Via Porta Romana for about
two hundred yards before turning sharply to the right, you will be
following a course which has been often trodden by those in search of
respite from witch-harrying. If you wish actually to consult the witch
you must persevere yet further, through a maze of rather mouldering
streets, until you come to a very tall house, painted a pale maroon
colour and pock-marked with brown stains where rain has eaten into
the plaster. You may recognise the house by the fact that it has two
sham windows frescoed on its side wall--it stands at a corner of two
malodorous lanes--and that one of them purports to be occupied by a
lady who is smiling at you invitingly. Smiled, I should say, for even
at the time of my last visit, two years ago, she was fading into the
plaster background, and by now she may have disappeared altogether
or have been replaced by a scowling gentleman, for all I know to the
contrary. I would not swear, for that matter, that even the house still
stands where it did, so quick is the march of modern improvement in
New Italy. But granted that you find the lane and the house and the
painted lady, granted further that Emilia has not changed her address,
you may be sure of speaking with a witch whose fame has permeated a
considerable portion of Tuscany. You will have to climb a wearisome
distance up some incredibly dirty and unpleasantly-smelling stairs to
reach her first, though, and it is possible that even then you may have
to wait until she has settled the destiny or cured the ills of some
client from a distant village. But having overcome all difficulties,
you may count upon a not unamiable reception from a stout, elderly
woman with a good-humoured eye and a plentiful crop of glossy black
hair turning slightly to grey. She will not be at all puffed up by
her powers or position, and she will be quite ready to accept any
little token of appreciative regard you may be inclined to press upon
her; but, to be quite candid, I doubt if you will leave her apartment
knowing much more of witchcraft after the modern Italian convention
than when you entered it. This partly from a certain diffidence on
her part to give away trade secrets, but still more because Emilia's
Italian is several shades worse than your own, so that unless you are
an amateur in Tuscan also, you will find her altogether unintelligible.
Only, if you should prove able to interchange ideas, you must by all
means ask her about the Old Religion, how far it still prevails among
the Apennines, what are its gods, and what their powers. If, further,
you ask her opinion as to the magical powers of certain Christian
saints, and especially of Saint Anthony, you will be amply repaid,
supposing you to be interested in such matters, for all the trouble you
and your nose have been put to in discovering Emilia's abiding-place.
My acquaintance with Emilia commenced in a certain hill-top village
within easy walking distance of Florence. I was there honoured by some
slight intimacy with a worthy contadine who had one fair daughter,
by name Zita. Having a lustrous eye, a praiseworthy figure, and a
neat ankle, she had also a sufficiency of admirers, whose fervour was
not the less that she was generally regarded as likely to receive an
acceptable marriage-portion, as such things go thereabouts. Nor was
Zita at all averse to admiration, accepting all that was offered with
admirable resignation. Had Zita happened to be the only young woman in
the village desirous of admiration I might never have become acquainted
with Emilia. As things were, Zita was one day attacked by an illness
and took to her bed. There was no apparent cause, and dark whispers
began to go abroad of jealousies, witchcraft, and what not. Their
justice was proved within three days by the discovery, in Zita's bed,
of an ear of grass, two hen's feathers, and a twig tied together by a
strand of horsehair. The whole had been neatly tucked away beneath the
mattress, where it might have remained undiscovered in a less cleanly
household than was the Morettis'. Doubt was at an end--obviously Zita
was bewitched, and the worst must be feared unless the spell could be
expeditiously removed.
In my ignorance I supposed that the local priest would be the
proper person to apply to in such a difficulty. But I was very soon
convinced of my mistake. To marry you, usher you into or out of the
world, the reverend gentleman may have his uses. But to ward off
the ills of witchcraft his ministrations are worse than useless,
seeing that they only serve to irritate the demons and thus make the
patient's sufferings more intense. All this provided, of course,
that he be not himself a stregone, a state of things more common
than might be supposed. But just as the priest is the one genuine
authority on Heaven, Purgatory, and the simpler issues of Hell, so, to
grapple with witchcraft, no one is so capable as a witch. And of all
available witches none was so efficient or, be it added, so moderate
in her charges as Emilia. She was, in fact, the family-witch of the
Moretti family, frequently called in and as frequently being entirely
successful in her treatment. She was, for that matter, long since
become a valued family friend, and--in fact, Emilia must be called
in without delay. I accompanied Zita's elder brother Luigi when he
visited Florence for the purpose, and with him and Emilia returned,
travelling part of the way by electric tramcar, the conductor being, as
it chanced, an acquaintance of my companions, and, as such, chatting
pleasantly with Emilia concerning her profession, contrasting it
favourably with his own. Exactly what counter-charms she used in
Zita's treatment I was not privileged to know; at least, I can testify
that they were entirely successful, and that within a very short time
Zita was herself again, breaking her usual quantity of hearts round and
about the village well, and openly jeering at the rival beauty to whom
she attributed her indisposition, for the ill-success that had attended
her. If I cannot claim that through Zita's bewitching and its cure I
gained much knowledge of Italian witchcraft as presently understood,
I may at least instance it as an example of the matter-of-fact way
in which its existence is accepted by the modern Tuscan peasant. He
regards it indeed with as little, or less, perturbation as the coming
of the motor-car. Just as the motor has become a danger on every road,
so the evil spirit throngs every field. You may take precautions
against him and the ill-deeds done by him at the witch's bidding--just
as you look carefully round before crossing a road nowadays--you
may string bells or weave feathers on your horse's head-dress as
preventatives, or make the requisite sign whenever you have reason to
believe yourself within the radius of an evil eye; but accidents will
happen--and it is always well to know the address of such a dependable
practitioner as Emilia, in case. For that matter, you may sometimes
desire to have a spell cast on your own account--it is difficult to
go through life without a quarrel or two--and in that case also
Emilia----But I am becoming indiscreet.
Another witch with whom I have had personal dealings lives--or did
live, for she was reported to be more than one hundred years of age at
the time--in a small town, locally termed a city, in North Carolina. I
must frankly admit that I learned even less of magical knowledge from
her than from her Italian colleague. She was a negress, and having
heard of her existence from the coloured coachman of the friend in
whose house I was staying, I determined to leave no stone unturned to
make her acquaintance. I hoped to glean from her lips some particulars
of the extent to which Voodooism--elsewhere referred to in this
volume--is still practised by the American negro--a fact of which I was
repeatedly assured by Southern friends. I was signally disappointed;
the old lady would not, in fact, condescend so much as to open her
lips to me at all. She lived with her son, who held a position of
some trust in connection with the Coloured Baptist Church, in one of
the wooden shanties which make up the Coloured town. They stand at
some little distance from the august quarters inhabited by the white
gentry, and the approach is rendered almost impossible upon a wet day
by oceans of brick-red mud of incredible prehensibility. The old lady
I found crouching over a fire in approved witch-fashion, her attention
entirely devoted to the contents of a pot set upon the hob. However it
might suggest a magical brew, it consisted in actual fact of broiling
chickens, very savoury to the smell and speaking well for the worldly
prosperity of Coloured Baptist office-holders. So concentrated were
her few remaining senses thereon, to the exclusion of all else, that
although her son supplemented my own efforts and those of my guide
in endeavouring to attract her attention, she would not so much as
turn her be-handkerchiefed head in my direction. So concerned was the
deacon--if that were his actual rank--at his mother's neglect, that
I was driven to console him by accepting him as guide through the
beauties of the Coloured cemetery near by. It is true that the cemetery
was not without its human--its pathetically human--interest, the grave
of each child being watched over by the humble toys it had played with
in its lifetime, and those of adults by the medicine-bottles, even down
to the last, half-emptied, made use of in their illness--this tribute
being intended as mute testimony to the care expended upon them. But it
could not console me for the lost opportunity. Nevertheless I can vouch
for it that the old lady was a witch, and of no small eminence, for her
son told me so himself, instancing examples of her power, and he was a
very good Christian.
Less elusive, although in some respects scarcely more enlightening,
was an interview I once had with a middle-aged witch of unpleasing
exterior in the kitchen of the suburban house tenanted by a relative.
To the practice of witchcraft this example added the collecting of old
bottles and kitchen refuse as a means of livelihood, and she lived, as
the police afterwards informed us, in a caravan temporarily moored on
a piece of waste land in the neighbourhood of Hammersmith Broadway.
The mistress of the house, having occasion to enter the kitchen,
there found her seated at the table, unravelling the mysteries of
Fate to the cook and scullery-maid by the aid of a very greasy pack
of playing-cards. Whatever her pretensions to knowledge of the lower
world, she had obviously been drinking--so much so, indeed, that I was
called upon for aid in ejecting her from the premises. A large woman,
of determined aspect and an aggressive tongue, this might have proved
a task of some difficulty had I not luckily bethought me of adjuring
her in German, before which she slowly retreated, cursing volubly in
English the while, until she had reached the area-steps, when we were
able to lock the back door upon her and so be rid of her. It appeared
on subsequent inquiry that she had obtained sums amounting in all to
some 17s. 6d. from among the domestics, the greater part being the
price of informing the aforesaid scullery-maid that her young man, then
serving his country in India, still remained faithful to her memory.
This information proved in due course to be well founded, the gallant
warrior returning six months later filled with amatory ardour. It is
true that the witch forgot to mention that by that time he would be
ousted from Griselda's heart by--if I remember aright--a dashing young
milkman, and that he would incur a fine of _circa_ 40s. for assaulting
and battering him thereafter. Nevertheless public feeling below-stairs
remained strongly in favour of the ejected sorceress, and no minor
domestic mishap could happen for weeks thereafter but it was set down
as directly resulting from the witch's departing curses.
One other incursion into the World of Magic lingers in my memory as
having taken place in a seaside town that shall be nameless. While
there passing a holiday with some friends, I frequently observed large
yellow handbills, and even posters, setting forth that a lady, who
from her name appeared to be of Oriental antecedents, was prepared
to cast horoscopes, read palms, and arrange all kinds of personally
conducted tours into the future at fees which could only be described
as ridiculous. It so happened that among the members of the party
was a young lady who was then in the throes of her last love-affair.
Naturally anxious to learn its future course, she, it appears,
consulted the seeress, whom I will call, though it was not her name,
Madame Fatimah. So remarkable did the results appear that the convert
felt it her duty to acquaint the rest of us therewith. The fame of
Madame Fatimah was not long in penetrating to my ears, and the day came
when I found myself waiting upon the witch's doorstep. She was lodged
in a back street some little distance from the centre of the town, in
one of those lodging-houses which make a point of advertising that
they possess a fine sea view, as indeed they may if you ascend to the
roof or extend your body out of window at an acute angle. Certainly no
less promising hunting-ground for the witch-finder could be imagined.
Madame occupied the first floor, and delivered her prognostications
amid an Early-Victorian atmosphere of horsehair and antimacassars that
was not altogether unimpressive, though speaking of the past rather
than of the future. She was middle-aged, of comfortable rotundity, and
dressed in a black silk dress, over which was thrown a Japanese kimono
embroidered with wild geese. Doubtless from the long residence in the
Orient, to which she took an early opportunity of referring, and where
she had studied her art at the fountain-head from the lips of a native
gentleman very well known in magic circles, and very likely to the Evil
One himself, judging from Madame Fatimah's account of his prowess, but
whose name I can only vaguely remember as sounding something like Yogi
Chandra Dass--doubtless owing, I say, to her long absence from England,
for I understood that she was originally of British birth, though
married early in life to a Turkish or Indian magician of some note, she
had acquired a habit of either leaving out her aspirates altogether or
putting them in the wrong place. She was as businesslike as she was
affable, and detailed the various methods by which I could be made
acquainted with my past and future, at charges ranging from 2s. 6d. to
10s., with a crisp incisiveness. Having chosen what Madame described
as "the crystal" at 5s., she at once seized both my hands in hers
and gazed narrowly into my face, giving me the opportunity of myself
reading her past nearly enough to know that onions had been included in
the ingredients of her lunch. Satisfied, I trust, of my respectability,
she produced a round ball of glass or crystal and placed it on a black
ebony stand upon a table. Then, having darkened the room, made several
gestures, which I took for incantations, with her hands, and muttered
certain mystic formulas, she commanded me to gaze into the crystal and
tell her what I saw in its depths. I regret to say that my willingness
to oblige now led me into an indiscretion. Being in actual fact unable
to see anything at all, I was yet so anxious to appear worthy that I
imagined something I might expect to see. It took the form of a brown
baby, two crossed swords, and what might be either an elephant lying
on his back with his legs in the air, or the church of Saint John,
Westminster, seen from the north-west, the details being too hazy for
me to speak with absolute certainty. Madame Fatimah seemed slightly
disconcerted at first, but I am bound to admit that she very soon
displayed abundance of _savoir faire_, to say nothing of a sense of
humour, for without any further waste of time she announced that I must
look forward to a life of misfortune, that whether in business, in
love, or in pleasure I could expect nothing but disaster, and that I
should inevitably suffer death by hanging in my sixty-seventh year. Let
me only add that I paid her modest fee with the greatest willingness,
and that I have ever since remained convinced that the modern witch is
no whit behind her mediæval predecessor in those qualities which led
her to so high a place in the public estimation.
I have instanced these few examples of my personal knowledge of witches
and witchcraft not as throwing any light either upon their claims
or their methods, but simply as some proof of what I have adduced
earlier in this volume, that belief in witchcraft, under one form or
another, is as widely prevalent in the modern civilised world as ever
it was, and that it is ever likely to remain so. Nor does the fact
that rogues and vagabonds not a few have availed themselves of its
time-honoured respectability as a cloak for their petty depredations
at all detract from its claims to respectful credence. That great
faith is yet to be whose fundamental truths cannot be turned to the
advantage of the charlatan, the swindler and the sham devotee--the
greater the faith, indeed, so much the greater is, and must be, the
number of its exploiters, battening upon the devotion of the faithful.
Nevertheless, it is not upon questions of credibility or faith alone
that the world-empire of the witch is founded. Demonstrably true or
proven false, the cult of witchcraft has existed from the beginning and
will continue until the end of history. Worshipped or reviled, praised,
persecuted or condemned, witchcraft and the witch have endured and
will endure while there remains one man or woman on the earth capable
of dreading the Unknown. Rejoice or grieve as you will the witch is
the expression of one of the greatest of human needs--that of escaping
from humanity and its limitable environment--of one of the greatest of
human world-movements, the revolt against the Inevitable. She does and
must exist, for the strongest of all reasons, that constituted as it is
humanity could not exist without her.
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