Curiosities of Olden Times
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Title: Curiosities of Olden Times
Author: S. Baring-Gould
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CURIOSITIES OF OLDEN TIMES
by
S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.
Author of ‘Iceland, Its Scenes and Its Sagas,’ ‘Mehalah,’ etc.
Revised and Enlarged Edition
Edinburgh
John Grant
31 George IV. Bridge
1896
PREFACE
An antiquary lights on many a curiosity whilst overhauling the dusty tomes
of ancient writers. This little book is a small museum in which I have
preserved some of the quaintest relics which have attracted my notice
during my labours. The majority of the articles were published in 1869. I
have now added some others.
LEW TRENCHARD,
_September 1895_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE MEANING OF MOURNING 1
CURIOSITIES OF CYPHER 17
STRANGE WILLS 39
QUEER CULPRITS 57
GHOSTS IN COURT 74
STRANGE PAINS AND PENALTIES 89
WHAT ARE WOMEN MADE OF? 102
“FLAGELLUM SALUTIS” 119
“HERMIPPUS REDIVIVUS” 135
THE BARONESS DE BEAUSOLEIL 153
SOME CRAZY SAINTS 167
THE JACKASS OF VANVRES 207
A MYSTERIOUS VALE 217
KING ROBERT OF SICILY 237
SORTES SACRÆ 256
CHIAPA CHOCOLATE 268
THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE 280
CURIOSITIES OF OLDEN TIMES
THE MEANING OF MOURNING
A strip of black cloth an inch and a half in width stitched round the
sleeve--that is the final, or perhaps penultimate expression (for it may
dwindle further to a black thread) of the usage of wearing mourning on the
decease of a relative.
The usage is one that commends itself to us as an outward and visible sign
of the inward sentiment of bereavement, and not one in ten thousand who
adopt mourning has any idea that it ever possessed a signification of
another sort. And yet the correlations of general custom--of mourning
fashions, lead us to the inexorable conclusion that in its inception the
practice had quite a different signification from that now attributed to
it, nay more, that it is solely because its primitive meaning has been
absolutely forgotten, and an entirely novel significance given to it, that
mourning is still employed after a death.
Look back through the telescope of anthropology at our primitive ancestors
in their naked savagery, and we see them daub themselves with soot mingled
with tallow. When the savage assumed clothes and became a civilised man,
he replaced the fat and lampblack with black cloth, and this black cloth
has descended to us in the nineteenth century as the customary and
intelligible trappings of woe.
The Chinaman when in a condition of bereavement assumes white garments,
and we may be pretty certain that his barbarous ancestor, like the Andaman
Islander of the present day, pipeclayed his naked body after the decease
and funeral of a relative. In Egypt yellow was the symbol of sorrow for a
death, and that points back to the ancestral nude Egyptian having smeared
himself with yellow ochre.
Black was not the universal hue of mourning in Europe. In Castile white
obtained on the death of its princes. Herrera states that the last time
white was thus employed was in 1498, on the death of Prince John. This use
of white in Castile indicates chalk or pipeclay as the daub affected by
the ancestors of the house of Castile in primeval time as a badge of
bereavement.
Various explanations have been offered to account for the variance of
colour. White has been supposed to denote purity; and to this day white
gloves and hat-bands and scarves are employed at the funeral of a young
girl, as in the old ballad of “The Bride’s Burial”:--
A garland fresh and fair
Of lilies there was made,
In signs of her virginity,
And on her coffin laid.
Six pretty maidens, _all in white_,
Did bear her to the ground,
The bells did ring in solemn swing
And made a doleful sound.
Yellow has been supposed to symbolise that death is the end of human
hopes, because falling leaves are sere; black is taken as the privation of
light; and purple or violet also affected as a blending of joy with
sorrow. Christian moralists have declaimed against black as heathen, as
denoting an aspect of death devoid of hope, and gradually purple is taking
its place in the trappings of the hearse, if not of the mourners, and the
pall is now very generally violet.
But these explanations are afterthoughts, and an attempt to give reason
for the divergence of usage which might satisfy, but these are really no
explanations at all. The usage goes back to a period when there were no
such refinements of thought. If violet or purple has been traditional, it
is so merely because the ancestral Briton stained himself with woad on the
death of a relative.
The pipeclay, lampblack, yellow ochre, and woad of the primeval mourners
must be brought into range with a whole series of other mourning usages,
and then the result is something of an “eye-opener.” It reveals a
condition of mind and an aspect of death that causes not a little
surprise and amusement. It is one of the most astonishing, and, perhaps,
shocking traits of barbarous life, that death revolutionises completely
the feelings of the survivors towards their deceased husbands, wives,
parents, and other relatives.
A married couple may have been sincerely attached to each other so long as
the vital spark was twinkling, but the moment it is extinguished the dead
partner becomes, not a sadly sweet reminiscence, but an object of the
liveliest terror to the survivor. He or she does everything that ingenuity
can suggest to get him or herself out of all association in body and
spirit with the late lamented. Death is held to be thoroughly demoralising
to the deceased. However exemplary a person he or she may have been in
life, after death the ghost is little less than a plaguing, spiteful
spirit.
There is in the savage no tender clinging to the remembrance of the loved
one, he is translated into a terrible bugbear, who must be evaded and
avoided by every contrivance conceivable. This is due, doubtless, mainly
to the inability of the uncultivated mind to discriminate between what is
seen waking from what presents itself in phantasy to the dreaming head.
After a funeral, it is natural enough for the mourners to dream of the
dead, and they at once conclude that they have been visited by his
_revenant_. After a funeral feast, a great gorging of pork or beef, it is
very natural that the sense of oppression and pain felt should be
associated with the dear departed, and should translate itself into the
idea that he has come from his grave to sit on the chests of those who
have bewailed him.
Moreover, the savage associates the idea of desolation, death, discomfort,
with the condition of the soul after death, and believes that the ghosts
do all they can to return to their former haunts and associates for the
sake of the warmth and food, the shelter of the huts, and the
entertainment of the society of their fellows. But the living men and
women are not at all eager to receive the ghosts into the family circle,
and they accordingly adopt all kinds of “dodges,” expedients to prevent
the departed from making these irksome and undesired visits.
The Venerable Bede tells us that Laurence, Archbishop of Canterbury,
resolved on flying from England because he was hopeless of effecting any
good under the successor of Ethelbert, king of Kent. The night before he
fled he slept on the floor of the church, and dreamed that St. Peter
cudgelled him soundly for resolving to abandon his sacred charge. In the
morning he awoke stiff and full of aches and pains. Turned into modern
language, we should say that Archbishop Laurence was attacked with
rheumatism on account of his having slept on the cold stones of the
church. His mind had been troubled before he went to sleep with doubts
whether he were doing right in abandoning his duty, and very naturally
this trouble of conscience coloured his dream, and gave to his rheumatic
twinges the complexion it assumed.
Now Archbishop Laurence regarded the Prince of the Apostles in precisely
the light in which a savage views his deceased relatives and ancestors. He
associates his maladies, his pains, with theirs, if he should happen to
dream of them. If, however, when in pain, he dreams of a living person,
then he holds that this living person has cast a magical spell over him.
Among nature’s men, before they have gone through the mill of
civilisation, plenty to eat and to drink, and some one to talk to, are the
essentials of happiness. They see that the dead have none of these
requisites, they consider that they are miserable without them. The writer
remembers how, when he was a boy, and attended a funeral of a relative in
November, he could not sleep all night--a bitter, frosty night--with the
thought how cold it must be to the dead in the vault, without blankets,
hot bottle, or fire. It was in vain for him to reason against the feeling;
the feeling was so strong on him that he was conscious of an uncomfortable
expectation of the dead coming to claim a share of the blanket, fire, or
hot bottle. Now the savage never reasons against such a feeling, and he
assumes that the dead will return, as a matter of course, for what he
cannot have in the grave.
The ghost is very anxious to assert its former rights. A widow has to get
rid of the ghost of her first husband before she can marry again. In
Parma a widow about to be remarried is pelted with sticks and stones, not
in the least because the Parmans object to remarriage, but in order to
scare away the ghost of No. 1, who is hanging about his wife, and who will
resent his displacement in her affections by No. 2.
To the present day, in some of the villages of the ancient Duchy of Teck,
in Würtemberg, it is customary when a corpse is being conveyed to the
cemetery, for relatives and friends to surround the dead, and in turn talk
to it--assure it what a blessed rest it is going to, how anxious the
kinsfolk are that it may be comfortable, how handsome will be the cross
set over the grave, how much all desire that it may sleep soundly and not
by any means leave the grave and come haunting old scenes and friends, how
unreasonable such conduct as the latter hinted at would be, how it would
alter the regard entertained for the deceased, how disrespectful to the
Almighty who gives rest to the good, and how it would be regarded as an
admission of an uneasy conscience. Lively comparisons are drawn between
the joys of Paradise and the vale of tears that has been quitted, so as to
take away from the deceased all desire to return.
This is a survival of primitive usage and mode of thought, and has its
analogies in many places and among diverse races.
The Dacotah Indians address the ghost of the dead in the same “soft
solder,” to induce it to take the road to the world of spirits and not to
come sauntering back to its wigwam. In Siam and in China it is much the
same; persuasion, flattery, threats are employed.
Unhappily all ghosts are not open to persuasion, and see through the
designs of the mourners, and with them severer measures have to be
resorted to. Among the Sclavs of the Danube and the Czechs, the bereaved,
after the funeral, on going home turn themselves about after every few
steps and throw sticks, stones, mud, even hot coals in the direction of
the churchyard, so as to frighten the spirit back to the grave so
considerately provided for it. A Finnish tribe has not even the decency to
wait till the corpse is covered with soil; they fire pistols and guns
after it as it goes to its grave, and lies in it.
In _Hamlet_, at the funeral of Ophelia, the priest says--
For charitable prayers,
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.
Unquestionably it must have been customary in England thus to pelt a ghost
that was suspected of the intention to wander. The stake driven through
the suicide’s body was a summary and complete way of ensuring that the
ghost would not be troublesome.
Those Finns who fired guns after a dead man had another expedient for
holding him fast, and that was to nail him down in his coffin. The Arabs
tie his legs together. The Wallacks drive a long nail through the skull;
and this usage explains the many skulls that have been exhumed in Germany
thus perforated. The Icelanders, when a ghost proved troublesome, opened
the grave, cut off the dead man’s head, and made the body sit on it. That,
they concluded, would effectually puzzle it how to get about. The
Californian Indians were wont to break the spine of the corpse so as to
paralyse his lower limbs, and make “walking” impossible. Spirit and body
to the unreasoning mind are intimately associated. A hurt done to the body
wounds the soul. Mrs. Crowe, in her _Night Side of Nature_, tells a story
reversing this. A gentleman in Germany was dying--he expressed great
desire to see his son, who was a ne’er-do-well, and was squandering his
money in Paris. At that same time the young man was sitting on a bench in
the Bois de Boulogne, with a switch in his hand. Suddenly he saw his old
father before him. Convinced that he saw a phantom, he raised his switch,
and cut the apparition once, twice, and thrice across the face; and it
vanished. At that moment the dying father uttered a scream, and held his
hands to his face--“My boy! my boy! He is striking me again--again!” and
he died. The Algonquin Indians beat the walls of the death-chamber to
drive out the ghost; in Sumatra, a priest is employed with a broom to
sweep the ghost out. In Scotland, and in North Germany, the chairs on
which a coffin has rested are reversed, lest the dead man should take the
fancy to sit on them instead of going to his grave. In ancient Mexico,
certain professional ghost ejectors were employed, who, after a funeral,
were invited to visit and thoroughly explore the house whence the dead had
been removed, and if they found the ghost lurking about, in corners, in
cupboards, under beds--anywhere, to kick it out. In Siberia, after forty
days’ “law” given to the ghost, if it be still found loafing about, the
Schaman is sent for, who drums it out. He extorts brandy, which he
professes to require, as he has to conduct the deceased personally to the
land of spirits, where he will make it and the other guests so fuddled
that they will forget the way back to earth.
In North Germany a troublesome ghost is bagged, and the bag emptied in
some lone spot, or in the garden of a neighbour against whom a grudge is
entertained.
Another mode of getting rid of the spirit of the dear departed is to
confuse it as to its way home. This is done in various ways. Sometimes the
road by which it has been carried to its resting-place is swept to efface
the footprints, and a false track is made into a wood or on to a moor, so
that the ghost may take the wrong road. Sometimes ashes are strewn on the
road to hide the footprints. Sometimes the dead is carried rapidly three
or four times round the house so as to make him giddy, and not know in
which direction he is carried. The universal practice of closing the eyes
of the dead may be thought to have originated in the desire that he might
be prevented from seeing his way.
In many places it was, and is, customary for the dead body to be taken out
of the house, not through the door, but by a hole knocked in the wall for
the purpose, and backwards. In Iceland in the historic period this custom
was reserved for such as died in their seats and not in their beds. One or
two instances occur in the Sagas. In Corea, blinders made of black silk
are put on the dead man’s eyes, to prevent him from finding his way home.
Many savage nations entirely abandon a hut or a camp in which a death has
occurred for precisely the same reason--of throwing out the dead man’s
spirit.
It was a common practice in England till quite recently for the room in
which a death had occurred to be closed for some time, and this is merely
a survival of the custom of abandoning the place where a spirit has left
the body. The Esquimaux take out their dying relatives to huts constructed
of blocks of ice or snow, and leave them there to expire, for ghosts are
as stupid as they are troublesome, they have no more wits than a peacock,
they can only find their way to the place where they died.
Other usages are to divert a stream and bring the corpse in the river-bed,
or lay it beyond running water, which according to ghost-lore it cannot
pass. Or again, fires are lighted across its path, and it shrinks from
passing through flames. As for water, ghosts loathe it. Among the Matamba
negroes a widow is flung into the water and dipped repeatedly so as to
wash off the ghost of the dead husband, which is supposed to be clinging
to her. In New Zealand, among the Maoris, all who have followed the corpse
dive into water so as to throw off the ghost which is sneaking home after
them. In Tahiti, all who have assisted at a burial run as hard as they can
to the sea and take headers into it for the same object. It is the same in
New Guinea. We see the same idea reduced to a mere form in ancient Rome,
where in place of the dive through water, a vessel of water was carried
twice round those who had followed the corpse, and they were sprinkled.
The custom of washing and purification after a funeral practised by the
Jews is a reminiscence of the usage, with a novel explanation given to it.
In the South Pacific, in the Hervey Islands, after a death men turn out to
pummel and fight the returning spirit, and give it a good drubbing in the
air.
Now, perhaps, the reader may have been brought to understand what the
sundry mourning costumes originally meant. They were disguises whereby to
deceive the ghosts, so that they might not recognise and pester with
their undesired attentions the relatives who live. Indians who are wont to
paint themselves habitually, go after a funeral totally unbedecked with
colour. On the other hand, other savages daub themselves fantastically
with various colours, making themselves as unlike what they were
previously as is possible. The Coreans when in mourning assume hats with
low rims that conceal their features.
The Papuans conceal themselves under extinguishers made of banana leaves.
Elsewhere in New Guinea they envelop themselves in a wickerwork frame in
which they can hardly walk. Among the Mpongues of Western Africa, those
who on ordinary occasions wear garments walk in complete nudity when
suffering bereavement. Valerius Maximus tells us that among the Lycians it
was customary in mourning for the men to disguise themselves in women’s
garments.
The custom of cutting the hair short, and of scratching and disfiguring
the face, and of rending the garments, all originated from the same
thought--to make the survivors irrecognisable by the ghost of the
deceased. Plutarch asserts that the Sacæ, after a death, went down into
pits and hid themselves for days from the light of the sun. Australian
widows near the north-west bend of the Murray shave their heads and
plaster them with pipeclay, which, when dry, forms a close-fitting
skull-cap. The spirit of the late lamented on returning to his better
half either does not recognise his spouse, or is so disgusted with her
appearance that he leaves her for ever.
There is almost no end to the expedients adopted for getting rid of the
dead. Piles of stones are heaped over them, they are buried deep in the
earth, they are walled up in natural caves, they are enclosed in
megalithic structures, they are burned, they are sunk in the sea. They are
threatened, they are cajoled, they are hoodwinked. Every sort of trickery
is had recourse to, to throw them off the scent of home and of their
living relations.
The wives, horses, dogs slain and buried with them, the copious supplies
of food and drink laid on their graves, are bribes to induce them to be
content with their situation. Nay, further--in very many places no food
may be eaten in the house of mourning for many days after an interment.
The object of course is to disappoint the returning spirit, which comes
seeking a meal, finds none, comes again next day, finds none again, and
after a while desists from returning out of sheer disgust.
A vast amount of misdirected ingenuity is expended in bamboozling and
bullying the unhappy ghosts; but the feature most striking in these
proceedings is the unanimous agreement in considering these ghosts as such
imbeciles. When they put off their outward husk, they divest themselves of
all that cunning which is the form that intelligence takes in the savage.
Not only so, but although they remember and crave after home comforts,
they absolutely forget the tricks they had themselves played on the souls
of the dead in their own lifetime; they walk and blunder into the traps
which they had themselves laid for other ghosts in the days of their
flesh.
Perhaps the lowest abyss of dunder-headedness they have been supposed to
reach is when made to mistake their own identity. Recently near Mentone a
series of prehistoric interments in caves have been exposed. They reveal
the dead men as having had their heads daubed over with red oxide of iron.
Still extant races of savages paint, plaster, and disfigure their dead.
The prehistoric Greeks masked them. The Aztecs masked their deceased
kings, and the Siamese do so still. We cannot say with absolute certainty
what the object is--but we are probably not far out when we conjecture the
purpose to be to make the dead forget who they are when they look at their
reflection in the water. There was a favourite song sung some sixty years
ago relative to a little old woman who got “muzzy.” Whilst in this
condition some naughty boys cut her skirts at her knees. When she woke up
and saw her condition, “Lawk!” said the little old woman, “this never is
me!” And certain ancient peoples treated their dead in something the same
way; they disguised and disfigured them so that each ghost waking up
might exclaim, “Lawk! this never is me!” And so having lost its identity,
did not consider it had a right to revisit its old home and molest its old
acquaintances.
CURIOSITIES OF CYPHER
In 1680, when M. de Louvois was French Minister of War, he summoned before
him one day a gentleman named Chamilly, and gave him the following
instructions:
“Start this evening for Basle, in Switzerland; you will reach it in three
days; on the fourth, punctually at two o’clock, station yourself on the
bridge over the Rhine, with a portfolio, ink, and a pen. Watch all that
takes place, and make a memorandum of every particular. Continue doing so
for two hours; have a carriage and post-horses awaiting you;, and at four
precisely mount, and travel night and day till you reach Paris. On the
instant of your arrival, hasten to me with your notes.”
De Chamilly obeyed; he reached Basle, and on the day and at the hour
appointed, stationed himself, pen in hand, on the bridge. Presently a
market-cart drives by; then an old woman with a basket of fruit passes;
anon, a little urchin trundles his hoop by; next an old gentleman in blue
top-coat jogs past on his gray mare. Three o’clock chimes from the
cathedral tower. Just at the last stroke, a tall fellow in yellow
waistcoat and breeches saunters up, goes to the middle of the bridge,
lounges over, and looks at the water; then he takes a step back and
strikes three hearty blows on the footway with his staff. Down goes every
detail in De Chamilly’s book. At last the hour of release sounds, and he
jumps into his carriage. Shortly before midnight, after two days of
ceaseless travelling, De Chamilly presented himself before the minister,
feeling rather ashamed at having such trifles to record. M. de Louvois
took the portfolio with eagerness, and glanced over the notes. As his eye
caught the mention of the yellow-breeched man, a gleam of joy flashed
across his countenance. He rushed to the king, roused him from sleep,
spoke in private with him for a few moments, and then four couriers who
had been held in readiness since five on the preceding evening were
despatched with haste. Eight days after, the town of Strasbourg was
entirely surrounded by French troops, and summoned to surrender: it
capitulated and threw open its gates on the 30th of September 1681.
Evidently the three strokes of the stick given by the fellow in yellow
costume, at an appointed hour, were the signal of the success of an
intrigue concerted between M. de Louvois and the magistrates of
Strasbourg, and the man who executed this mission was as ignorant of the
motive as was M. de Chamilly of the motive of his.
Now this is a specimen of the safest of all secret communications, but it
can only be resorted to on certain rare occasions. When a lengthy despatch
is required to be forwarded, and when such means as those given above are
out of the question, some other method must be employed. Herodotus gives
us a story to the point: it is found also, with variations, in Aulus
Gellius.
“Histiæus, when he was anxious to give Aristagoras orders to revolt, could
find but one safe way, as the roads were guarded, of making his wishes
known: which was by taking the trustiest of his slaves, shaving all the
hair from off his head, and then pricking letters upon the skin, and
waiting till the hair grew again. This accordingly he did; and as soon as
ever the hair was grown, he despatched the man to Miletus, giving him no
other message than this: ‘When thou art come to Miletus, bid Aristagoras
shave thy head, and look thereon.’ Now the marks on the head were a
command to revolt.”--Bk. v. 35.
In this case no cypher was employed; we shall come, now, to the use of
cyphers.
When a despatch or communication runs great risk of falling into the hands
of an enemy, it is necessary that its contents should be so veiled, that
the possession of the document may afford him no information whatever.
Julius Cæsar and Augustus used cyphers, but they were of the utmost
simplicity, as they consisted merely in placing D in the place of A; E in
that of B, and so on; or else in writing B for A, C for B, etc.
Secret characters were used at the Council of Nicæa; and Rabanus Maurus,
Abbot of Fulda and Archbishop of Mayence in the ninth century, has left us
an example of two cyphers, the key to which was discovered by the
Benedictines. It is only a wonder that any one could have failed to
unravel them at the first glance. This is a specimen of the first:
.Nc.p.t v:rs:·:s B::n.f:c.. :rch. gl::r.::s.q:.:: m:rt.r.s
The secret of this is that the vowels have been suppressed and their
places filled by dots,--one for i, two for a, three for e, four for o, and
five for u. In the second example, the same sentence would run--Knckpkt
vfrsxs Bpnkfbckk, etc., the vowel-places being filled by the
consonants--b, f, k, p, x. By changing every letter in the alphabet, we
make a vast improvement on this last; thus, for instance, supplying the
place of a with z, b with x, c with v, and so on. This is the system
employed by an advertiser in a provincial paper which I took up the other
day in the waiting-room of a station, where it had been left by a farmer.
As I had some minutes to spare, before the train was due, I spent them in
deciphering the following:
Jp Sjddjzb rza rzdd ci sijmr, Bziw rzdd xr ndzt:
and in ten minutes I read: “If William can call or write, Mary will be
glad.”
A correspondence was carried on in the _Times_ during May 1862 in cypher.
I give it along with the explanation.
Wws.--Zy Efpdolj T dpye l wpeepc ez mjcyp qzc jzf--xlj T daply qfwwj
zy lww xleepcd le esp tyepcgtph? Te xlj oz rzzo. Ecfde ez xj wzgp--T
lx xtdpclmwp. Hspy xlj T rz ez Nlyepcmfcj tq zywj ez wzzv le jzf.--May
8.
This means--“On Tuesday I sent a letter to Byrne for you. May I speak
fully on all matters at the interview? It may do good. Trust to my love. I
am miserable. When may I go to Canterbury if only to look at you?”
A couple of days later Byrne advertises, slightly varying the cypher:
Wws.--Sxhrdktg hdbtewxcv “Tmwxqxixdc axzt” udg pcdewtg psktgexhtbtce
... QNGCT. “Discover something _Exhibition-like_ for another
advertisement. Byrne.”
This gentleman is rather mysterious: I must leave my readers to conjecture
what he means by “Exhibition-like.” On Wednesday came two advertisements,
one from the lady--one from the lover. WWS. herself seems rather
sensible--
Tydeplo zq rztyr ez nlyepcmfcj, T estyv jzf slo xfns mpeepc delj le
szxp lyo xtyo jzfc mfdtypdd.--WWS., May 10.
“Instead of going to Canterbury, I think you had much better stay at home
and mind your business.”
Excellent advice; but how far likely to be taken by the eager wooer, who
advertises thus?--
Wws.--Fyetw jzfc qlespc lydhpcd T hzye ldv jzf ez aczgp jzf wzgp xp.
Efpdol ytrse le zyp znwznv slgp I dectyr qczx esp htyozh qzc wpeepcd.
Tq jzt lcp yze lmwp le zyp T htww hlte. Rzo nzxqzce jzf xj olcwtyr
htqp.
“Until your father answers I won’t ask you to prove you love me. Tuesday
night at one o’clock have a string from the window for letters. If you are
not able at one I will wait. God comfort you, my darling wife.”
Only a very simple Romeo and Juliet could expect to secure secrecy by so
slight a displacement of the alphabet.
When the Chevalier de Rohan was in the Bastille, his friends wanted to
convey to him the intelligence that his accomplice was dead without having
confessed. They did so by passing the following words into his dungeon,
written on a shirt: “Mg dulhxcclgu ghj yxuj; lm ct ulgc alj.” In vain did
he puzzle over the cypher, to which he had not the clue. It was too short:
for the shorter a cypher letter, the more difficult it is to make out. The
light faded, and he tossed on his hard bed, sleeplessly revolving the
mystic letters in his brain, but he could make nothing out of them. Day
dawned, and, with its first gleam, he was poring over them: still in vain.
He pleaded guilty, for he could not decipher “Le prisonnier est mort; il
_n’a rien dit_.”
Another method of veiling a communication is that of employing numbers or
arbitrary signs in the place of letters, and this admits of many
refinements. Here is an example to test the reader’s sagacity:
§ †431 45 2+9 +§51 4= 8732+ 287 45 2+9 †¶=+
I just give the hint that it is a proverb.
The following is much more ingenious, and difficult of detection.
+-----------------------------------+
| | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H |
|---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---|
| A |_a_|_d_|_g_|_k_|_n_|_q_|_t_|_x_|
| | | | | | | | | |
| B |_b_|_e_|_h_|_l_|_o_|_r_|_u_|_y_|
| | | | | | | | | |
| C |_c_|_f_|_i_|_m_|_p_|_s_|_w_|_z_|
+-----------------------------------+
Now suppose that I want to write _England_; I look among the small letters
in the foregoing table for _e_, and find that it is in a horizontal line
with B, and vertical line with B, so I write down _B_B; _n_ is in line
with A and E, so I put AE; continue this, and England will be represented
by _Bbaeacbdaaaeab_. Two letters to represent one is not over-tedious: but
the scheme devised by Lord Bacon is clumsy enough. He represented every
letter by permutations of _a_ and _b_; for instance,
A was written _aaaaa_, B was written _aaaab_
C " " _aaaba_, D " " _aabaa_
and so through the alphabet. Paris would thus be transformed into _abbba,
aaaaa, baaaa, abaaa, baaab_. Conceive the labour of composing a whole
despatch like this, and the great likelihood of making blunders in writing
it!
A much simpler method is the following. The sender and receiver of the
communication must be agreed upon a certain book of a specified edition.
The despatch begins with a number; this indicates the page to which the
reader is to turn. He must then count the letters from the top of the
page, and give them their value numerically according to the order in
which they come; omitting those which are repeated. By these numbers he
reads his despatch. As an example, let us take the beginning of this
article: then, _I_ = 1, _n_ = 2, _w_ = 3, _h_ = 4, _e_ = 5, _m_ = 6, _d_ =
7, _l_ = 8, _o_ = 9, _u_ = 10, _v_ = 11, omitting to count the letters
which are repeated. In the middle of the communication the page may be
varied, and consequently the numerical significance of each letter
altered. Even this could be read with a little trouble; and the word
“impossible” can hardly be said to apply to the deciphering of
cryptographs.
A curious instance of this occurred at the close of the sixteenth century,
when the Spaniards were endeavouring to establish relations between the
scattered branches of their vast monarchy, which at that period embraced a
large portion of Italy, the Low Countries, the Philippines, and enormous
districts in the New World. They accordingly invented a cypher, which
they varied from time to time, in order to disconcert those who might
attempt to pry into the mysteries of their correspondence. The cypher,
composed of fifty signs, was of great value to them through all the
troubles of the “Ligue,” and the wars then desolating Europe. Some of
their despatches having been intercepted, Henry IV. handed them over to a
clever mathematician, Viete, with the request that he would find the clue.
He did so, and was able also to follow it as it varied, and France
profited for two years by his discovery. The court of Spain, disconcerted
at this, accused Viete before the Roman court as a sorcerer and in league
with the devil. This proceeding only gave rise to laughter and ridicule.
A still more remarkable instance is that of a German professor, Hermann,
who boasted, in 1752, that he had discovered a cryptograph absolutely
incapable of being deciphered, without the clue being given by him; and he
defied all the savants and learned societies of Europe to discover the
key. However, a French refugee, named Beguelin, managed after eight days’
study to read it. This cypher--though we have the rules upon which it is
formed before us--is to us perfectly unintelligible. It is grounded on
some changes of numbers and symbols; numbers vary, being at one time
multiplied, at another added, and become so complicated that the letter
_e_, which occurs nine times in the paragraph, is represented in eight
different ways; _n_ is used eight times, and has seven various signs.
Indeed the same letter is scarcely ever represented by the same figure;
but this is not all: the character which appears in the place of _i_ takes
that of _n_ shortly after; another symbol for _n_ stands also for _t_. How
any man could have solved the mystery of this cypher is astonishing.
Now let me recommend a far simpler system, and one which is very difficult
of detection. It consists of a combination of numbers and letters. Both
parties must be agreed on an arrangement such as that in the second line
below, for on it all depends.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4 7 2 9 1 10 5 3 6 8
Now in turning a sentence such as “The army must retire” into cypher, you
count the letters which make the sentence, and find that T is the first, H
the second, E the third, A the fourth, R the fifth, and so on. Then look
at the table. T is the first letter; 4 answers to 1; therefore write the
fourth letter in the place of T; that is A instead of T. For _h_ the
second, put the seventh, which is _y_; for E, take the second, _h_. The
sentence will stand “Ayh utsr emma yhutsr.” It is all but impossible to
discover this cypher.
All these cryptographs consist in the exchange of numbers or characters
for the real letters; but there are other methods quite as intricate,
which dispense with them.
The mysterious cards of the Count de Vergennes are an instance. De
Vergennes was Minister of Foreign Affairs under Louis XVI., and he made
use of cards of a peculiar nature in his relations with the diplomatic
agents of France. These cards were used in letters of recommendation or
passports which were given to strangers about to enter France; they were
intended to furnish information without the knowledge of the bearers. This
was the system. The card given to a man contained only a few words, such
as:
ALPHONSE D’ANGEHA.
Recommandé à Monsieur
le Comte de Vergennes, par le Marquis de Puysegur,
Ambassadeur de France à la Cour de Lisbonne.
The card told more tales than the words written on it. Its colour
indicated the nation of the stranger. Yellow showed him to be English;
red, Spanish; white, Portuguese; green, Dutch; red and white, Italian; red
and green, Swiss; green and white, Russian; etc. The person’s age was
expressed by the shape of the card. If it were circular, he was under 25;
oval, between 25 and 30; octagonal, between 30 and 45; hexagonal, between
45 and 50; square, between 50 and 60; and oblong showed that he was over
60. Two lines placed below the name of the bearer indicated his build. If
he were tall and lean, the lines were waving and parallel; tall and stout,
they converged; and so on. The expression of his face was shown by a
flower in the border. A rose designated an open and amiable countenance,
whilst a tulip marked a pensive and aristocratic appearance. A fillet
round the border, according to its length, told whether the man was
bachelor, married, or widower. Dots gave information as to his position
and fortune. A full stop after his name showed that he was a Catholic; a
semicolon, that he was a Lutheran; a comma, that he was a Calvinist; a
dash, that he was a Jew; no stop indicated him as an Atheist. So also his
morals and character were pointed out by a pattern in the angles of the
card, such as one of these:
[Illustration]
Consequently, at one glance the minister could tell all about his man,
whether he were a gamester or a duellist; what was his purpose in visiting
France; whether in search of a wife or to claim a legacy; what was his
profession--that of physician, lawyer, or man of letters; whether he were
to be put under surveillance or allowed to go his way unmolested.
We come now to a class of cypher which requires a certain amount of
literary dexterity to conceal the clue.
During the Great Rebellion, Sir John Trevanion, a distinguished Cavalier,
was made prisoner, and locked up in Colchester Castle. Sir Charles Lucas
and Sir George Lisle had just been made examples of, as a warning to
“malignants”: and Trevanion has every reason for expecting a similar
bloody end. As he awaits his doom, indulging in a hearty curse in round
Cavalier terms at the canting, crop-eared scoundrels who hold him in
durance vile, and muttering a wish that he had fallen, sword in hand,
facing the foe, he is startled by the entrance of the gaoler who hands him
a letter:
“May’t do thee good,” growls the fellow; “it has been well looked to
before it was permitted to come to thee.”
Sir John takes the letter, and the gaoler leaves him his lamp by which to
read it:
WORTHIE SIR JOHN--Hope, that is ye beste comfort of ye afflictyd,
cannot much, I fear me, help you now. That I wolde saye to you, is
this only: if ever I may be able to requite that I do owe you, stand
not upon asking of me. ’Tis not much I can do: but what I can do, bee
you verie sure I wille. I knowe that, if dethe comes, if ordinary men
fear it, it frights not you, accounting it for a high honour, to have
such a rewarde of your loyalty. Pray yet that you may be spared this
soe bitter, cup. I fear not that you will grudge any sufferings: only
if bie submission you can turn them away, ’tis the part of a wise man.
Tell me, an if you can, to do for you any thinge that you wolde have
done. The general goes back on Wednesday. Restinge your servant to
command.
R. T.
Now this letter was written according to a preconcerted cypher. Every
third letter after a stop was to tell. In this way Sir John made
out--“Panel at east end of chapel slides.” On the following even, the
prisoner begged to be allowed to pass an hour of private devotion in the
chapel. By means of a bribe, this was accomplished. Before the hour had
expired, the chapel was empty--the bird had flown.
An excellent plan of indicating the _telling_ letter or word is through
the heading of the letter. “Sir,” would signify that every third letter
was to be taken; “Dear sir,” that every seventh; “My dear sir,” that every
ninth was to be selected. A system, very early adopted, was that of having
pierced cards, through the holes of which the communication was written.
The card was then removed, and the blank spaces filled up. As for example:
MY DEAR X.--[The] lines I now send you are forwarded by the kindness
of the [Bearer], who is a friend. [Is not] the message delivered yet
[to] my Brother? [Be] quick about it, for I have all along [trusted]
that you would act with discretion and despatch.--Yours ever,
Z.
Put your card over the note, and through the piercings you will read: “The
Bearer is not to be trusted.”
The following letter will give two totally distinct meanings, according as
it is read, straight through, or only by alternate lines:--
MADEMOISELLE,--
Je m’empresse de vous écrire pour vous déclarer que vous vous trompez
beaucoup si vous croyez que vous êtes celle pour qui je soupire. Il
est bien vrai que pour vous éprouver, Je vous ai fait mille aveux.
Après quoi vous êtes devenue l’objet de ma raillerie. Ainsi ne doutez
plus de ce que vous dit ici celui qui n’a eu que de l’aversion pour
vous, et qui aimerait mieux mourir que de se voir obligé de vous
épouser, et de changer le dessein qu’il a formé de vous haïr toute sa
vie, bien loin de vous aimer, comme il vous l’a déclaré. Soyez done
désabusée, croyez-moi; et si vous êtes encore constante et persuadée
que vous êtes aimée vous serez encore plus exposée à la risée de tout
le monde, et particulièrement de celui qui n’a jamais été et ne sera
jamais
Votre ser’teur M. N.
We must not omit to mention Chronograms. These are verses which contain
within them the date of the composition. In 1885 I built a boathouse by a
lake in my grounds. A friend wrote the following chronogram for it, which
I had painted, and affixed to the house:
Thy breaD upon the Waters Cast
In CertaIn trust to fInd.
sInCe Well thou know’st God’s eye doth Mark,
Where fIshes’ eyes are bLind.
This gives the date.
D = 500 + W= 510 + C = 610 + I = 611
+ C = 711 + I = 712 + I = 713 + I = 714
+ C = 814 + W = 824 + M = 1824
+ W = 1834 + I = 1835 + L = 1885.
The W represents two V’s, _i.e._ 10.
A very curious one was written by Charles de Bovelle: we adapt and explain
it:--
The heads of a mouse and five cats M.CCCCC
Add also the tail of a bull L
Item, the four legs of a rat IIII
-------------
And you have my date in full M.CCCCCL.IIII
(1554.)
It is now high time that we show the reader how to find the clue to a
cypher. And as illustration is always better than precept, we shall
exemplify from our own experience. With permission, too, we shall drop the
plural for the singular.
Well! My friend Matthew Fletcher came into a property some years ago,
bequeathed to him by a great-uncle. The old gentleman had been notorious
for his parsimonious habits, and he was known through the county by the
nickname of Miser Tom. Of course every one believed that he was vastly
rich, and that Mat Fletcher would come in for a mint of money. But,
somehow, my friend did not find the stores of coin on which he had
calculated, hidden in worsted stockings or cracked pots; and the savings
of the old man which he did light upon consisted of but trifling sums.
Fletcher became firmly persuaded that the money was hidden _somewhere_;
where he could not tell, and he often came to consult me on the best
expedient for discovering it. It is all through my intervention that he
did not pull down the whole house about his ears, tear up every floor, and
root up every flower or tree throughout the garden, in his search after
the precious hoard. One day he burst into my room with radiant face.
“My dear fellow!” he gasped forth, “I have found it!”
“Found what?--the treasure?”
“No--but I want your help now,” and he flung a discoloured slip of paper
on my table.
I took it up, and saw that it was covered with writing in cypher.
“I routed it out of a secret drawer in Uncle Tom’s bureau!” he exclaimed.
“I have no doubt of its purport. It indicates the spot where all his
savings are secreted.”
“You have not deciphered it yet, have you?”
“No. I want your help; I can make neither heads nor tails of the scrawl,
though I sat up all night studying it.”
“Come along,” said I, “I wish you joy of your treasure. I’ll read the
cypher if you give me time.” So we sat down together at my desk, with the
slip of paper before us. Here is the inscription:--
[Illustration]
“Now,” said I, “the order of precedence among the letters, according to
the frequency of their recurrence, is this, e a o i t d h n r s u y c f g
l m w b k p q x z. This, however, is their order, according to the number
of words begun by each respectively, s c p a d i f b l b t, etc. The most
frequent compounds are th, ng, ee, ll, mm, tt, dd, nn. Pray, Matthew, do
you see any one sign repeated oftener than the others in this
cryptograph?”
“Yes, 8; it is repeated twenty-three times,” said Fletcher, after a pause.
“Then you may be perfectly satisfied that it stands for e, which is used
far oftener than any other letter in English. Next, look along the lines
and see what letters most frequently accompany it.”
“2 § undoubtedly; it follows 8 in several places, and precedes it in
others. In the third line we have 2 § 8--82 §--§ 8--8 § 8 and then 2 § 8
again.”
“Then we may fairly assume that 2 § 8 stands for _the_.”
“_The_, to be sure,” burst forth Fletcher. “Now the next word will be
money. No! it can’t be, the e will not suit; perhaps it is treasure, gold,
hoard, store.”
“Wait a little bit,” I interposed. “Now look what letters are doubled.”
“88 and 22,” said my friend Mat.
“And please observe,” I continued, “that where I draw a line and write A
you have e, then double t, then e again. Probably this is the middle of a
word, and as we have already supposed 2 to stand for t, we have--ette--, a
very likely combination. We may be sure of the t now. Near the end of the
third line, there is a remarkable passage, in which the three letters we
know recur continually. Let us write it out, leaving blanks for the
letters we do not know, and placing the ascertained letters instead of
their symbols. Then it stands--eχtheχeth--heχeheχ ethe--. Now here I have
a χ repeated four times, and from its position it must be a consonant. I
will put in its place one consonant after another. You see r is the only
one which turns the letters into words.--_erthereth--here_ . _here
the--_surely some of these should stand out distinctly separated--_er
there th-- here_ . _here the_. Look! I can see at once what letters are
wanting; _th--_ between _there_ and _here_ must be _than_, and then
✠ _here_ is, must be, _where_. So now I have found these letters,
8 = e, r = t, § = h, χ = r, -- = a, + = n, ✠ = w,
and I can confirm the χ as _r_ by taking the portion marked A_--etter_.
Here we get an end of an adjective in the comparative degree; I think it
must be _better_.”
“Let us next take a group of cyphers higher up; I will pencil over it D. I
take this group because it contains some of the letters which we have
settled _--eathn_. Eath must be the end of a word, for none begins with
athn, thn, or hn. Now what letter will suit eath? Possibly _h_, probably
_d_.”
“Yes,” exclaimed Fletcher, “_Death_, to be sure. I can guess it all:
‘Death is approaching, and I feel that a solemn duty devolves upon me,
namely, that of acquainting Matthew Fletcher, my heir, with the spot where
I have hidden my savings.’ Go on, go on.”
“All in good time, friend,” I laughed. “You observe we can confirm our
guess as to the sign ) being used for _d_, by comparing the
passage--29§--)*8228χ, which we now read, _t. had better_. But _t. had
better_ is awkward; you cannot make 9 into _o_; ‘to had,’ would be no
sense.”
“Of course not,” burst forth Fletcher. “Don’t you see it all? _I had
better_ let my excellent nephew know where I have deposited----”
“Wait a bit,” interrupted I; “you are right, I believe. _I_
is the signification of 9. Let us begin the whole cryptograph
now:--_N.tethi.i.t.re.ind.e._”
“_Remind me!_” cried Fletcher.
“You have it again,” said I. “Now we obtain an additional letter besides
_m_, for _t. remind me_ is certainly _to remind me_. We must begin
again:--_Note thi.i. to remind me_.”
“_This is_,” called out my excited friend, whose eyes were sparkling with
delight and expectation. “Go on; you are a trump!”
“These, then, are our additional letters:--) = d, 7 = m, β = s, 9 = i, λ
= o. _To remind me i.i. ee. m. death ni.h_; for _m. death_, I read _my
death_, and _i.i. ee._, I guess to be, _if I feel_. So it stands
thus:--‘Note.--This is to remind me, if I feel my death nigh, that I had
better----’”
I worked on now in silence; Fletcher, leaning his chin on his hands, sat
opposite, staring into my face with breathless anxiety. Presently I
exclaimed:
“Halves, Mat! I think you said halves!”
“I--I--I--I--my very dear fellow, I----”
“A very excellent man was your uncle; a most exemplary----”
“All right, I know that,” said Fletcher, cutting me short. “Do read the
paper; I have a spade and pick on my library table, all ready for work the
moment I know where to begin.”
“But, really, he was a man in a thousand, a man of such discretion, such
foresight, so much----”
Down came Fletcher’s hand on the desk.
“Do go on!” he cried; and I could see that he was swearing internally; he
would have sworn _ore rotundo_, only that it would have been uncivil, and
decidedly improper.
“Very well; you are prepared to hear all?”
“All! by Jove! by Jingo! prepared for everything.”
“Then this is what I read,” said I, taking up my own transcript:--
“_Note.--This is to remind me, if I feel my death nigh, that I had better
move to Birmingham, as burials are done cheaper there than here, where the
terms of the Necropolis Company are exorbitant._”
Fletcher bounded from his seat. “The old skinflint! miser! screw!”
“A very estimable and thrifty man, your great-uncle.”
“Confounded old stingy--,” and he slammed the door upon himself and the
substantive which designated his uncle.
And now, the very best advice I can give to my readers, is to set to work
at once on the simple cypher given near the commencement of this paper,
and to find it out.
STRANGE WILLS
Of course we ought to begin with Adam’s will, the father of all wills; and
if we could produce that patriarchal document, we should undoubtedly find
in it the germs of all the merits, faults, and eccentricities of wills to
come. But, unfortunately, though a testament of Adam does exist, it is a
forgery; and nothing will convince us to the contrary,--not even the
Mussulman tradition, which asserts that on the occasion of our great
forefather beginning to make his bequests, seventy legions of angels
brought him sheets of paper and quill pens, nicely nibbed, all the way
from Paradise; and that the Archangel Gabriel set-to his seal as witness.
What! four hundred and twenty thousand sheets of paper!--surely a needless
consumption of material, when there was nothing to be bequeathed but a
view over the hedge of an impracticable garden.
If we pass to Noah’s testament, we are again among the apocrypha. In it,
Noah portions his landed property, the globe, into three shares, one for
each son: America is not included in the division for obvious reasons. It
was left for “manners” sake, and manners has never got it.
The testament of the twelve Patriarchs must be glanced at, which is
received as semi-canonical by the Armenian Church, though it is
unquestionably apocryphal. Reuben speaks of sleep as having been in
Paradise, only a sweet ecstasy; whereas, after the Fall, it has become a
continually recurring image of death. Simeon bewails his former hostility
to Joseph; and relates, that his brother’s bones were preserved in the
Royal treasury of Egypt. Levi is oracular; Judah rejoices in the sceptre
left to his race; Issachar unfolds the future of the Jews; Zebulun relates
that the brethren supplied themselves with shoes from the money which they
got by the sale of Joseph. There seems to be some allusion to this
tradition in the Prophet Amos (ii. 6; viii. 6). Dan recommends his
posterity to practise humility; Naphtali sees visions; Gad is contrite;
Asher prophesies the coming of the Messiah; Joseph, the incarnation;
Benjamin, the destruction of the Temple.
There exists a very curious and ancient testament of Job, which was
discovered and published by Cardinal Maï, in 1839; it relates many details
which we may look for in vain in the Canonical Book. In it Job’s faithful
wife, when reduced to the utmost poverty, sells the hair of her head to
procure bread for her husband.
What a remarkable document a will is! It is the voice of a man now dead,
coming back in the hush of a darkened house--from the vault, low and
hoarse as an echo. It speaks, and people hearken; it commands, and people
obey; law supports and enforces its wishes; no power on earth can alter
it. We expect to hear the voice calm, earnest, and speaking true judgment;
terrible indeed if it breaks out with a snarl of hate--more terrible still
if it gibbers and laughs a hollow, ghost-like laugh. For, surely, the most
solemn moment of a life is that when the will is written: that will, which
is to speak for man when the voice is passed as a dream; when the heart
which devises it has ceased to throb; the head which frames it has done
with thinking--under the fresh mould; the hand which pens it has been
pressed, thin and white, against a cold shroud, to moulder with it; surely
he who, at such a moment, can write words of hate must have a black heart,
but he who ventures then to gibe and jest must have no heart at all.
There is some truth in the old ghost-creed; man _can_ return after death;
he does so in his will. He comes to some, as Jupiter came to Danaë, in a
shower of gold; to others, as a blighting spectre, whose promised
treasures turn to dust. What excitement the reading of a will causes in a
family! and what interest does the world at large take in the bequests of
a person of position! The last words of great men seem always to have
possessed a peculiar value in the eyes of the people.
“Live, Brutus, live!” shouts the Roman mob in _Julius Cæsar_; but on
hearing what Cæsar’s will promises, how
To every Roman citizen he gives,--
To every several man,--seventy-five drachmas.
His private arbours, and new-planted orchards,
On this side Tiber: he hath left them you,
And to your heirs for ever;----
then the mob changes note, and with one voice shouts, “To Brutus, to
Cassius;--burn all!”
Testamenta hominum speculum esse morum vulgo creditur.--Plin. jun., 8
Ess. 18.
So they are! They are the last touch of the brush in the great picture of
civilisation, manners, and customs, lightening it up.
Would that space permitted me to enter into the history of wills: a few
curious particulars alone can we admit.
To die without having made a will was formerly regarded with horror. A
very common custom in the Middle Ages was that of leaving considerable
benefactions to the Church. This was well enough, but the clergy were not
satisfied until it was made compulsory.
Ducange says that neglect of leaving to the Church indicated a profanity
which deserved punishment by a refusal of the rites of the last sacraments
and burial. The clergy of Brittany, in the fourteenth century, claimed a
third of the household goods; the death-bed became ecclesiastical property
in the diocese of Auxerre; and Clement V. settled the claims of the
Church by deciding that the parish priest might take as his perquisite a
ninth of all the movables in the house of the dead man, after the debts of
the deceased had been paid off.
A sufficiency of historical notes. I will proceed at once--perhaps
somewhat strangely--to give the reader a specimen of a will coming
decidedly under the heading of this article. It is that of a _Pig_. The
will is ancient enough. S. Jerome, in his “Proœmium on Isaiah,” speaks of
it, saying, that in his time (fourth century) children were wont to sing
it at school, amidst shouts of laughter. Alexander Brassicanus, who died
in 1539, was the first to publish it; he found it in a MS. at Mayence.
Later, G. Fabricius gave a corrected edition of it from another MS. found
at Memel, and, since then, it has been in the hands of the learned. The
original is in Latin; I translate, modifying slightly one expression and
omitting one bequest:
I, M. Grunnius Corocotta Porcellus, have made my testament, which, as
I can’t write myself, I have dictated.
Says Magirus, the cook: “Come along, thou who turnest the house
topsy-turvy, spoiler of the pavement, O fugitive Porcellus! I am
resolved to slaughter thee to-day.”
Says Corocotta Porcellus: “If ever I have done thee any wrong, if I
have sinned in any way, if I have smashed any wee pots with my feet; O
Master Cook, grant pardon to thy suppliant!”
Says the cook Magirus: “Halloo, boy! go, bring me a carving-knife out
of the kitchen, that I may make a bloody Porcellus of him.”
Porcellus is caught by the servants, and brought out to execution on
the xvi. before the Lucernine Kalends, just when young colewortsprouts
are in plenty, Clybaratus and Piperatus being Consuls.
Now when he saw that he was about to die, he begged hard of the cook
an hour’s grace, just to write his will. He called together his
relations, that he might leave to them some of his victuals; and he
said:
I will and bequeath to my papa, Verrinus Lardinus, 30 bush. of
acorns.
I will and bequeath to my mamma, Veturina Scrofa, 40 bush. of
Laconian corn.
I will and bequeath to my sister, Quirona, at whose nuptials I may
not be present, 30 bush. of barley.
Of my mortal remains, I will and bequeath my bristles to the cobblers,
my teeth to squabblers, my ears to the deaf, my tongue to lawyers and
chatterboxes, my entrails to tripemen, my hams to gluttons, my stomach
to little boys, my tail to little girls, my muscles to effeminate
parties, my heels to runners and hunters, my claws to thieves; and, to
a certain cook, whom I won’t mention by name, I bequeath the cord and
stick which I brought with me from my oak-grove to the sty, in hopes
that he may take the cord and hang himself with it.
I will that a monument be erected to me, inscribed with this, in
golden letters:
M. GRUNNIUS COROCOTTA PORCELLUS, who lived 999 years,--six months
more, and he would have been 1000 years old.
Friends dear to me whilst I lived, I pray you to have a kindness
towards my body, and embalm it well with good condiments, such as
almonds, pepper, and honey, that my name may be named through ages to
come.
O my masters and my comrades, who have assisted at the drawing up of
this testament, order it to be signed.
(Signed) Lucanicus. Celsanus.
Pergillus. Lardio.
Mystialicus. Offellicus.
Cymatus.
Whilst on this subject we might say a word about the epitaph on the mule
of P. Crassus; or about that written by Rapin on the ass, which, poor
fellow, was eaten whilst in the flower of his age, during the siege of
Paris, in 1590; or about Joachim du Bellay, who composed an epitaph on his
cat; or about Justus Lipsius, who erected mausoleums for his three
cats--Mopsus, Saphisus, and Mopsulus; but we are not writing on epitaphs
or gravestones.
We proceed to give a few instances of animals which have received
legacies.
If it is a keen trial for a husband to leave his wife, for a young man to
be taken from his pleasures, or a commercial man from his business, can we
wonder at old ladies feeling the wrench sharp which tears them from the
society of their dear cats--the companions of their spinsterhood or
widowhood; or at old bachelors being distressed at having to part with
their faithful dogs?--to part with them for ever, too, unless we believe
in the suggestion of Bishop Butler and Theodore Parker, that there is a
future for beasts, and enjoy the confidence of Mr. Sewell of Exeter
College, who dedicated one of his published poems “To my Pony in Heaven.”
The Count de la Mirandole, who died in 1825, left a legacy to his
favourite carp, which he had nourished for twenty years in an antique
fountain standing in his hall. In low life we find the same love for an
animal displayed by a peasant of Toulouse, in 1781, who doted on his old
chestnut horse, and left the following will:
I declare that I institute my chestnut horse sole legatee, and I wish
him to belong to my nephew N.
This testament was attacked, but, curiously enough, it received legal
confirmation.
The following clause from a will was in the English papers for March 1828:
I leave to my monkey, my dear, amusing Jackoo, the sum of 10_l._
sterling, to be enjoyed by him during his life; it is to be expended
solely in his keep. I leave to my faithful dog, Shock, and to my
beloved cat, Tib, 5_l._ sterling a-piece, as yearly pension. In the
event of the death of one of the aforesaid legatees, the sum due to
him shall pass to the two survivors, and on the death of one of these
two, to the last, be he who he may. After the decease of all parties,
the sum left them shall belong to my daughter G----, to whom I show
this preference, above all my children, because she has a large family
and finds a difficulty in filling their mouths and educating them.
But a more curious case still is that of Mr. Berkley of Knightsbridge, who
died 5th May 1805. He left a pension of £25 per annum to his four dogs.
This singular individual had spent the latter part of his life wrapped in
the society of his curs, on whom he lavished every mark of affection.
When any one ventured to remonstrate with him for expending so much money
on their maintenance, or suggested that the poor were more deserving of
sympathy than those mongrel pups, he would reply: “Men assailed my life:
dogs preserved it.” This was a fact, for Mr. B. had been attacked by
brigands in Italy, and had been rescued by his dog, whose descendants the
four pets were. When he felt his end approaching, he had his four dogs
placed on couches by the sides of his bed. He received their last
caresses, extended to them his faltering hand, and breathed his last
between their paws. According to his desire, the busts of these favoured
brutes were sculptured at the corners of his tomb.
In 1677, died Madame Dupuis, who, under her maiden name of Mademoiselle
Jeanne Felix, had been known as a great musician. Her will was so
extraordinary and malicious that it was nullified. To it was attached a
memorandum, which is still more extraordinary. We shall not quote the
passages wherein she vilifies her son-in-law, imputing to him every vice
she can think of, but translate the final clause:
I pray Mademoiselle Bluteau, my sister, and Madame Calogne, my niece,
to take care of my cats. Whilst these two live, they shall have thirty
sous a month, that they may be well fed. They must have, twice a day,
meat soup of the quality usually served on table; but they must be
given it separately, each having his own saucer. The bread must not be
crumbled in the soup, but cut up into pieces about the size of
hazel-nuts, or they cannot eat it. When boiled beef is put into the
pot with the soaked bread, some thin slices of raw meat must be put
in as well, and the whole stewed till it is fit for eating. When only
one cat lives, half the money will suffice. Nicole Pigeon shall take
care of the cats, and cherish them. Madame Calogne may go and see
them.
Certainly people show their love in different ways. Councillor Winslow of
Copenhagen (d. 24th June 1811) ordered by will that his carriage horses
should be shot, to prevent their falling into the hands of cruel masters.
We need only mention the “cat and dog” money, which is yearly given to six
poor weavers’ widows of the names of Fabry or Ovington, at Christ Church,
Spitalfields, and which, according to tradition, was left in the first
instance for the support of cats and dogs; and remind our readers of the
cow and bull benefactions in several English parishes, where money has
been left to the parish to provide cattle whose milk may go to the poor.
The poor have been often remembered by testators, as our numerous
almshouses, benefactions, and doles prove.
It were difficult to choose a better sample of a charitable bequest, which
could properly come under our title, than the following simple and
touching will of a French priest, Jean Certain, curé of a little parish in
the Côte d’Or, who died in 1740, worth some £1200:
I brought with me nothing into my parish but my cassock and
breviary,--these I leave to my heirs: the rest I bequeath to the poor
of my parish.
Wives, poor bodies! do not come off well, for a crabbed husband will
sometimes control and torment his good woman after he is dead and buried,
or even play a bitter jest, as did one man, who left his wife 500 guineas,
but with the stipulation that she was not to enjoy it till after her
death, when the sum was to be expended on her funeral. Or, as the author
of the following:
Since I have had the misfortune of having had to wife Elizabeth M----,
who, since our marriage, has tormented me in a thousand ways; and
since, not content with showing her contempt for my advice, she has
done everything that lay in her power to render my life a burden to
me; so that Heaven seems only to have sent her into the world for the
purpose of getting me out of it the sooner; and since the strength of
Samson, the genius of Homer, the prudence of Augustus, the skill of
Pyrrhus, the patience of Job, the subtlety of Hannibal, the vigilance
of Hermogenes, would not suffice to tame the perversity of her
character; and since nothing can change her, though we have lived
separated for eight years, without my having gained anything by it but
the loss of my son, whom she has spoiled, and whom she has persuaded
to abandon me altogether; weighing carefully and attentively all these
considerations, I have bequeathed, and do bequeath, to the aforesaid
Elizabeth M----, my wife, _one shilling_.
The clause in Shakespeare’s will must not be forgotten:
I gyve unto my wief, my second-best bed, with the furniture, and
nothing else.
We hope that this was not intended as a spiteful jest; but men are
irritable, and women are so trying! The best bed would not have been a bad
gift, as the grand four-poster was an expensive article in Elizabethan
days; but the second-best seems _rather_ a paltry legacy. However, as we
are perfectly sure to have the noble army of Shakespearean commentators
down upon us if we venture to impute other than the highest and purest of
motives to their idol, for the sake of peace we are perfectly willing to
believe the bed to have been the most valuable gift that could have been
made,--that sovereigns, roses, and angels were stitched into the coverlets
and stuffed into the pillows; just as the miser Tolam bequeathed:
To my sister-in-law, four old stockings which are under my bed, on the
right.
_Item_: To my nephew, Tarles, two more old stockings.
_Item_: To Lieut. John Stone, a blue stocking, and my red cloak.
_Item_: To my cousin, an old boot, and a red flannel pocket.
_Item_: To Hammick, my jug without a handle.
Imagine the disgust of the legatees, till Hammick kicking the jug, smashed
it, and out rolled a quantity of sovereigns. The stockings, boot, and
flannel pocket were soon seized now, and found to be as auriferous as the
old pot. Now why should not the second-best bed left to Mrs. Shakespeare
have been as valuable a bequest?
Whilst talking about beds, let us not forget a very odd story. In the
earlier part of this century, there lived in the neighbourhood of Caen, in
Normandy, a Juge de Paix, M. Halloin, a great lover of tranquillity and
ease; so much so indeed, that, as bed is the article of furniture most
adapted to repose, he rarely quitted it, but made his bed-chamber a hall
of audience, in which he exercised his functions of Justice of Peace,
pronouncing sentence, with his head resting on a pillow, and his body
languidly extended on the softest of feather-beds. However, his services
were dispensed with, and he devoted himself for the remaining six years of
his life to still greater ease. Feeling his end approach, M. Halloin
determined on remaining constant to his principle, and showing to the
world to what an extent he carried his passion for bed. Consequently, his
last will contained a clause expressing his desire to be buried at night,
in his bed, comfortably tucked in, with pillows and coverlets as he had
died. As no opposition was raised against the execution of this clause, a
huge pit was sunk, and the defunct was lowered into his last
resting-place, without any alteration having been made in the position in
which death had overtaken him.
Boards were laid over the bed, that the falling earth might not disturb
this imperturbable quietist.
Many testators leave directions for the treatment of their bodies: some
are over-solicitous for their preservation, whilst others choose to show
their contempt for that body, which, after all, will rise again. Dr.
Ellerby, the Quaker, for instance, bequeathed his lungs to one friend and
his brains to another, with a threat that he would haunt them if they
refused to accept the legacy. Others, from motives of humility, act
somewhat similarly. The Emperor Maximilian I. willed that his hair should
be shorn, and his teeth brayed in a mortar and then burned publicly in his
chapel; also that his body should be buried in a sack with quicklime,
beneath the foot-pace of the altar of S. George at Neustadt, so that his
heart might be beneath the celebrant’s feet. His intentions were carried
out at the time; but afterwards his remains were translated to Inspruck,
and they now lie under that goodly monument raised by Ferdinand I., his
deeds graven tenderly in white marble about him, and eight-and-twenty
mighty bronze paladins and princes standing guard about the choir wherein
he sleeps.
If some folk leave injunctions about their bodies, others are as
particular about their names. Henry _Green_, for instance, by will dated
22nd December 1679, gave to his sister, Catharine Green, during her life,
all his lands in Melbourne, Derby, and after her decease to others in
trust, upon condition that the said Catharine Green should give four green
waistcoats to four poor women in a green old age, every year, such green
waistcoats to be lined with green galloon lace, and to be delivered to the
said poor women on or before 21st December, yearly, that they might be
worn on Christmas Day.
That the good men do may live after them, at least on their tombstones,
has induced some to leave money as bribes to the writers of their
epitaphs. The Abbé de la Rivière, son of an appraiser of wood, who became
Bishop-duke of Langres, devised 100 écus for that purpose. But La Monnoye
wrote the following:
Here lies a notable personage,
Of family proud, of ancient lineage;
His virtues unnumbered, his knowledge profound,
Remarkably humble, remarkably wise;--
Come, come! for twenty-five pound,
I’ve told enough lies!
Another clause in the Abbé’s will deserves to be recorded, from its
pithiness:
To my steward, I leave _nothing_; because he has been in my service
for eighteen years.
This reminds one of an anecdote told of the Cardinal Dubois, whose
servants came to him every New Year’s Day to present their
congratulations, and to receive a New Year’s box. When the steward came in
his turn, the Cardinal said to him:
Monsieur, I present you with all that you have stolen from me.
The pleasure of receiving a legacy must be generally mingled with pain,
more or less intense, according to the nearness of relationship of the
deceased, or the affection we have had for him: but, when a plump legacy
drops into our laps from a totally unexpected quarter, and left by one for
whom we did not care, or possibly whom we did not know,--the amount of
pain must be very minute. Such a case was that of a lady who came in for
a large fortune from an eccentric individual to whom she had never spoken,
though she had seen him at the opera, or in the park. The wording of the
will was:
I supplicate Miss B---- to accept my whole fortune, too feeble an
acknowledgment of the inexpressible sensations which the contemplation
of her adorable nose has produced on me.
The following is as curious. A good citizen of Paris, who died about 1779,
inserted this clause in his will:
_Item_: I leave to M. l’Abbé Thirty-thousand-men, 1200 livres a year:
I do not know him by any other name, but he is an excellent citizen,
who certified me in the Luxembourg, that the English, that ferocious
people which dethrones its monarchs, will soon be destroyed.
On opening the testament, the executors were sorely puzzled to know who
this Abbé Thirty-thousand-men could possibly be. At last, several people
deposed that this citizen, a sworn enemy of the English and a great
politician, had been wont every day to march up and down the Allé des
Larmes in the Luxembourg; there he used to meet with an Abbé who had as
great an abhorrence of the English as himself, and who was perpetually
urging:--“Those English rascals aren’t worth a straw. 30,000 men only are
wanted,--30,000 men raised,--30,000 embarked,--30,000 landed,--and London
would be in the hands of 30,000 men. A mere trifle!”
This was verified, and the legacy was delivered over to the intrepid Abbé,
who had little dreamed of the spoil his 30,000 men were to bring him.
There is a question which we have been asking ourselves repeatedly, and
which we now put before the reader. Is it possible to classify these
wills? We have tried to do so, and have failed in every attempt. First, we
have distributed them according to the bequests contained in
them;--legacies of money, goods, animals, persons. There is no reason
which can justify such an arbitrary system. Then again, when we arrange
them according to the motives of the testator, as, wills indited by a
perverted moral sense, or those composed under the influence of an
aberration of the intellect, then we are obliged to exclude that of
Corocotta Porcellus, of Jean Certain, beside many others, which can hardly
be forced into position under either of these heads. And it is because the
mind of man is too intricate, his motives too involved, his feelings too
transient, his principles too obscure, for us to divide and subdivide the
actions springing from them, as we can settle the classes of molluscs, or
determine the genera of butterflies,--that in this paper we have attempted
nothing of the kind. For wills are, as has been shown, as diverse as the
hearts of men, of which they are the transcripts. An anatomist may dissect
the heart, may name and register every muscle and fibre,--but he can tell
us nothing of the motives which impelled that heart to throb faster, or
chilled it to a sudden stillness. The bitterness of hate has left no
poison in its cavities, in it the fleeting passion has set no seal,
emotion left no trace, pity relaxed no nerve. The impulses which brought
forth so full a leafage of action are lost, as the sap from the bare tree.
So surely as the berry indicates the soundness of the root, the flower of
the bulb, so does man’s last will tell of the goodness or foulness of the
heart which conceived it. The cankered root sends up only a sickly germ,
which brings forth no fruit in due season; whilst the wine that maketh
glad the heart of man, the oil which maketh him a cheerful countenance,
and the bread that strengthens his heart, have burst from roots which
mildew has never marred, nor worm fretted.
QUEER CULPRITS
According to Jewish law, “If an ox gore a man or a woman that they die,
then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten: but
the owner of the ox shall be quit.” After giving this command, Moses
proceeds to enforce the doctrine of the responsibility of the beast’s
owner, and to ensure his punishment, should he wittingly let a dangerous
animal run loose; also to make provision for his security under some
extenuating circumstances. These commands were carried into the laws of
mediæval Europe; the jurists, at the same time, introducing refinements of
their own, and enforcing them in numerous cases, which afford matter for
curious inquiry, and are full of technicalities and peculiarities, at once
amusing and instructive, as throwing light on the customs and habits of
thought in those times.
Now take the case of a child injured by a sow, or a man killed by a bull:
the trial was conducted in precisely the same manner as though sow and
bull were morally criminal. They were apprehended, placed before the
ordinary tribunal, and given over to execution.
Again: an inroad of locusts or snails takes place. Common law is helpless,
it may pronounce judgment, but who is to execute its decrees? Temporal
power being palpably unavailing, the spiritual tribunal steps in; the
decision of the magistrates being useless, perhaps excommunication may
suffice. This, then, was an established maxim. If the criminal could be
reached, he was handed over to the ordinary courts of justice; if,
however, the matter was beyond their control, he fell within the
jurisdiction of Ecclesiastical Courts. Poor culprit, not a loophole left
by which to escape!
Let us consider the manner of proceeding under the former circumstance. A
bull has caused the death of a man. The brute is seized and incarcerated;
a lawyer is appointed to plead for the delinquent; another is counsel for
the prosecution. Witnesses are bound over, the case is heard, and sentence
is given by the judge, declaring the bull guilty of deliberate and wilful
murder; and, accordingly, that it must suffer the penalty of hanging or
burning.
The following cases are taken from among numerous others, and will afford
examples:
A.D. 1266. A pig burned at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, for having
devoured a child.
1386. A judge at Falaise condemned a sow to be mutilated in its leg
and head, and then to be hanged, for having lacerated and killed a
child. It was executed in the square, dressed in man’s clothes. The
execution cost six sous, six deniers, and a new pair of gloves for the
executioner, that he might come out of the job with clean hands.
1389. A horse tried at Dijon, on information given by the magistrates
of Montbar, and condemned to death, for having killed a man.
1499. A bull was condemned to death at Cauroy, near Beauvais, for
having in a fury “occis” a little boy of fourteen or fifteen years
old.
A farmer of Moisy let a mad bull escape. The brute met and gored a man so
severely that he only survived a few hours. Charles, Count de Valois,
having heard of the accident whilst at his château of Crépy, ordered the
bull to be seized and committed for trial. This was accordingly done. The
officers of the Count de Valois gathered all requisite information,
received the affidavits of witnesses, established the guilt of the bull,
condemned it to be hanged, and executed it on the gibbet of
Moisy-le-Temple. The death of the beast thus expiated that of the man. But
matters did not stop here. An appeal against the sentence of the Count’s
officers was lodged before the Candlemas parliament of 1314--drawn up in
the name of the Procureur de l’Hôpital at Moisy, declaring the officers to
have been incompetent judges, having no jurisdiction within the confines
of Moisy, and as having attempted to establish a precedent. The parliament
received and investigated the appeal, and decided that the condemnation of
the bull was perfectly just, but found that the Count de Valois had no
judicial rights within the territory of Moisy, and that his officers had
acted illegally in taking part in the affair.
Here is a list of the expenses incurred on the occasion of a sow’s
execution for having eaten a child:--
To the expenditure made for her whilst in jail 6 sols
_Item._ To the executioner, who came from Paris to
Meulan to put the criminal to death, by orders of
the bailiff and the Procureur du Roi 54 sols
_Item._ To a conveyance for conducting her to
execution 6 sols
_Item._ To cords to tie and bind her 2 sols 8 deniers
_Item._ To gloves 2 deniers
The charter of Eleanora, drawn up in 1395, and entitled “Carta de logu,”
containing the complete civil and criminal code for Sardinia, enjoins that
oxen and cows, whether wild or domesticated, may be legally killed when
they are taken marauding. Asses convicted of similar delinquencies--common
enough, by the way--are treated more humanely. They are considered in the
same light as thieves of a higher order in society. The first time that an
ass is found in a cultivated field not belonging to its master, one of its
ears is cropped. If it commits the same offence again, it loses the second
ear; should the culprit be hardened in crime, and inveterate enough to
trespass a third time, it is not hanged, does not even lose its tail, but
is confiscated to the Crown and goes to swell the royal herd.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the guilty animals suffered
death on the gallows, and our sires considered that such a punishment must
strike terror into the minds of all cattle-owners and jobbers, so as
effectually to prevent them from suffering their beasts to stray at large
over the country. Later on, however, these capital condemnations were done
away with, the proprietor of the animal was condemned to pay damages, and
the criminal was killed without trial.
One more specimen, and we shall pass to cases coming under Ecclesiastical
Courts.
Country folk believe still that cocks lay eggs. This is an old
superstition, people holding, formerly, that from these accursed eggs
sprang basilisks, or horrible winged serpents.
Gross relates, in his _Petite Chronique de Bâle_, that in the month of
August 1474, an abandoned and profligate cock of that town was accused of
the crime of having laid one of these eggs, and was brought before the
magistrates, tried, convicted, and condemned to death.
The court delivered over the culprit to the executioner, who burned it
publicly, along with its egg, in a place called Kohlenberger, amidst a
great concourse of citizens and peasants assembled to witness such a
ludicrous execution.
The poor cock no doubt suffered on account of the belief prevalent at the
period that it was in league with the devil. A cock was the offering made
by witches at their sabbaths, and as these eggs were reputed to contain
snakes--reptiles particularly grateful to devils--it was taken as a proof
of the cock having been engaged in the practice of sorcery.
The annals of Ireland relate that in 1383 a cock was convicted of a
similar offence in that island, and that it suffered at the stake; the
heat of the flames burst the egg, and there issued forth a serpent-like
creature, which, however, perished in the fire.
We shall pass now to the second part of our subject--namely, proceedings
against snails, flies, mice, moles, ants, caterpillars, etc.
It has frequently happened, in all parts of the world, that an unusual
number of vermin have made their appearance and destroyed the garden
produce, or that flies have been so abundant as to drive the cattle mad
from their bites. In such cases the sufferers had recourse to the Church,
which hearkened to their complaints and fulminated her anathema against
the culprits. The method of proceeding much resembled that already stated
as being in vogue in the ordinary tribunals. The plaintiff appointed
counsel, the court accorded a counsel to the defendants, and the
ecclesiastical judge summed up and gave sentence.
All requisite forms of law were gone through with precision and
minuteness. As a specimen we shall extract some details from a
consultation on the subject, made by Bartholomew de Chasseneux, a noted
lawyer of the sixteenth century.
After having spoken, in the opening, of the custom among the inhabitants
of Beaume of asking the authorities of Autun to excommunicate certain
insects larger than flies, vulgarly termed _hureburs_, a favour which was
invariably accorded them, Chasseneux enters on the question whether such a
proceeding be right. The subject is divided into five parts, in each of
which he exhibits vast erudition.
The lawyer then consoles the inhabitants of Beaunois with the reflection
that the scourge which vexes them devastates other countries. In India the
_hureburs_ are three feet long, their legs are armed with teeth, which the
natives employ as saws. The remedy found most effectual is to make a
female in the most _dégagé_ costume conceivable perambulate the canton
with bare feet. This method, however, is open to grave objections on the
score of decency and public morality.
The advocate then discusses the legality of citing insects before a court
of justice. He decides that such a summons is perfectly justifiable. He
proceeds to inquire whether they should be expected to attend in person,
and, in default of their so doing, whether the prosecution can lawfully be
carried on. Chasseneux satisfies himself and us that this is in strict
accordance with law.
The sort of tribunal before which the criminals should be cited forms the
next subject of inquiry. He decides in favour of the Ecclesiastical
Courts. The advocate proceeds to convince his readers, by twelve
conclusive arguments, that excommunication of animals is justifiable;
having done so, he brings forward a series of examples and precedents. He
asserts that a priest once excommunicated an orchard, whither children
resorted to eat apples, when--naughty chicks!--they ought to have been at
church. The result was all that could have been desired, for the trees
produced no fruit till, at the request of the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy,
the inhibition was removed.
He mentions, as well, an excommunication fulminated by a bishop against
sparrows, which, flying in and out of the church of S. Vincent, left their
traces on the seats and desks, and in other ways disturbed the faithful.
Saint Bernard, be it remembered, whilst preaching in the parish church of
Foligny, was troubled by the incessant humming of the flies. The saint
broke off his sermon to exclaim, “O flies! I denounce you!” The pavement
was instantaneously littered with their dead bodies.
Saint Patrick, as every one knows, drove the serpents out of Ireland by
his ban.
This is the form of excommunication as given by Chasseneux:--“O snails,
caterpillars, and other obscene creatures, which destroy the food of our
neighbours, depart hence! Leave these cantons which you are devastating,
and take refuge in those localities where you can injure no one. I. N.
P.,” etc.
Chasseneux obtained such credit from this opinion that, in 1510, he was
appointed by the authorities of Autun to be advocate for the rats, and to
plead their cause in a trial which was to ensue on account of the
devastation they committed in eating the harvest over a large portion of
Burgundy.
In his defence, Chasseneux showed that the rats had not received formal
notice; and, before proceeding with the case, he obtained a decision that
all the priests of the afflicted parishes should announce an adjournment,
and summon the defendants to appear on a fixed day.
At the adjourned trial, he complained that the delay accorded his clients
had been too short to allow of their appearing, in consequence of the
roads being infested with cats. Chasseneux made an able defence, and
finally obtained a second adjournment. We believe that no verdict was
given.
In a formulary of exorcisms, believed to have been drawn up by S. Gratus,
Bishop of Aosta, in the ninth century, we find unclean beasts
excommunicated as agents of Satan.
From such a superstition as this sprang the numerous legends of the Evil
One having been exorcised into the form of a beast; as, for instance, by
S. Taurinus of Evreux, and by S. Walther of Scotland, who died in 1214,
and who charmed the devil into the shapes of a black dog, pig, wolf, rat,
etc. The devil Rush, in the popular mediæval tale of _Fryer Rush_, was
conjured into a horse, and made to carry enough lead on his back to roof a
church.
Felix Malleolus relates that William, Bishop of Lausanne, pronounced
sentence against the leeches which infested the Lake of Geneva and killed
the fish, and that the said leeches retreated to a locality assigned them
by the prelate. The same author relates at large the proceedings
instituted against some mosquitoes in the thirteenth century in the
Electorate of Mayence, when the judge before whom they were cited granted
them, on account of the minuteness of their bodies and their extreme
youth, a curator and counsel, who pleaded their cause and obtained for
them a piece of land to which they were banished.
On the 17th of August 1487, snails were sentenced at Mâcon. In 1585,
caterpillars suffered excommunication in Valence. In the sixteenth
century, a Spanish bishop, from the summit of a rock, bade all rats and
mice leave his diocese, and betake themselves to an island which he
surrendered to them. The vermin obeyed, swimming in vast numbers across
the strait to their domain.
In 1694, during the witch persecutions at Salem, in New England, under the
Quakers Increase and Cotton Mather, a dog was strangely afflicted, and was
found guilty of having been ridden by a warlock. The dog was hanged.
Another dog was accused of afflicting others, who fell into fits the
moment it looked upon them; it was also put to death. A Canadian bishop in
the same century excommunicated the wood-pigeons; the same expedient was
had recourse to against caterpillars by a grand vicar of Pont-du-Château,
in Auvergne, as late as the eighteenth century.
The absurdity of these trials called forth several treatises during the
middle ages. Philip de Beaumanoir in the thirteenth century, in his
_Customs of Beauvoisis_, complained of their folly; and in 1606, Cardinal
Duperron forbade any exorcism of animals, or the use, without license, of
prayers in church for their extermination.
A book published in 1459, _De Fascino_, by a Spanish Benedictine monk,
Leonard Vair, holds up the practice to ridicule. Eveillon, in his _Traité
des Excommunications_, published in 1651, does the same.
One curious story more, and we shall give a detailed account of one of
these trials.
We have taken this from Benoit’s _Histoire de l’Edit de Nantes_ (tom. v.
p. 754), and give a translation of the writer’s own words. “The Protestant
chapel at La Rochelle was condemned to be demolished in 1685. The _bell_
had a fate sufficiently droll: it was _whipped_, as a punishment for
having assisted heretics; it was then buried, and disinterred, in order to
represent its new birth in passing into the hands of Catholics.... It was
catechised, and had to reply; it was compelled to recant, and promise
never again to relapse into sin; it then made ample and honourable
recompense. Lastly, it was reconciled, baptized, and given to the parish
which bears the name of Saint Bartholomew. But the point of the story is,
that when the governor, who had sold it to the parish, asked for payment,
the answer made him was, that it had been Huguenot, that it had been
_newly converted_, and that consequently it had a right to demand a delay
of three years before paying its debts, according to the law passed by the
king for the benefit of those recently converted!”
We propose now giving the particulars of a remarkable action brought
against some ants, towards the commencement of the eighteenth century, for
violation of the rights of property. It is related by P. Manoel Bernardes
in his _Nova Floresta_ (Lisbóa, 1728), and is quoted by M. Emile Agnel
among his _Curiosités Judiciaires et Historiques_; to whom and to the
paper of M. Menabréa, entitled “Procès fait aux Animaux,” in the twelfth
volume of the _Transactions of the Chambéry Society_, we are indebted for
much of our information.
Action brought by the Friars Minor of the province of Pridade no
Maranhao in Brazil, against the ants of the said territory.
“It happened, according to the account of a monk of the said order in that
province, that the ants, which thereabouts are both numerous, large, and
destructive, had, in order to enlarge the limits of their subterranean
empire, undermined the cellars of the Brethren, burrowing beneath the
foundations, and thus weakening the walls which daily threatened ruin.
Over and above the said offence was another, they had burglariously
entered the stores, and carried off the flour which was kept for the
service of the community. Since the hostile multitudes were united and
indefatigable night and day--
Parvula, nam exemplo est, magni formica laboris
Ore trahit quodcumque potest, atque addit acervo
Quern struit ... (Horace, _Sat._ i.)--
the monks were brought into peril of famine, and were driven to seek a
remedy for this intolerable nuisance: and since all the means to which
they resorted were unavailing, the unanimity of the multitude being quite
insurmountable, as a last resource, one of the friars, moved by a superior
instinct (we can easily believe that), gave his advice that, returning to
the spirit of humility and simplicity which had qualified their seraphic
founder, who termed all creatures his brethren--brother Sun, brother Wolf,
sister Swallow, etc.--they should bring an action against their sisters
the Ants before the divine tribunal of Providence, and should name counsel
for defendants and plaintiffs; also that the bishop should, in the name of
supreme Justice, hear the case and give judgment.
“The plan was approved of; and after all arrangements had been made, an
indictment was presented by the counsel for the plaintiffs, and as it was
contested by the counsel for the defendants he produced his reasons,
requiring protection for his clients. These latter lived on the alms which
they received from the faithful, collecting offerings with much labour
and personal inconvenience; whilst the ants, creatures whose morals and
manner of life were clearly contrary to the Gospel precepts, and were
regarded with horror on that account by S. Francis, the founder of the
confraternity, lived by fraud; and not content with acts of larceny,
proceeded to open violence and endeavours to ruin the house. Consequently
they were bound to show reason, or in default be concluded that they
should all be put to death by some pestilence, or drowned by an
inundation; at all events, should be exterminated from the district.
“The counsel for the little black folk, replying to these accusations,
alleged with justice to his clients, in the first place: That, having
received from their Maker the benefit of life, they were bound by a law of
nature to preserve it by means of those instincts implanted in them.
_Item_, That in the observance of these means they served Providence, by
setting men an example of those virtues enjoined on them, viz. prudence--a
cardinal virtue--in that they (the ants) used forethought, preparing for
an evil day: ‘Formicæ populus infirmus, qui præparat in messe cibum sibi’
(Prov. xxx. 25); diligence, also, in amassing in this life merits for a
life to come according to Jerome: ‘Formica dicitur strenuus quisque et
providus operarius, qui presenti vita, velut in æstate, fructus justitiæ,
quos in æternum recipiet, sibi recondit’ (S. Hieron., in Prov. vi.);
thirdly, charity, in aiding each other, when their burden was beyond their
strength, according to Abbat Absalon: ‘Pacis et concordiæ vivum exemplum
formica reliquit, quæ suum comparem, forte plus justo oneratum, naturali
quadam charitate alleviat’ (Absalon apud Picinellum, _in Mundo symbolico_,
8); lastly, of religion and piety, in giving sepulture to the dead of
their kind, as writes Pliny, ‘sepeliuntur inter se viventium solæ, præter
hominem’ (Plin., lib. xi. 36); an opinion borne also by the monk Malchus,
who observes, ‘Hæ luctu celebri corpora defuncta deportabant’ (S. Hieron.,
_in Vita Malchi_).
“_Item_, That the toil these ants underwent far surpassed that of the
plaintiffs, since their burdens were often larger than their bodies, and
their courage greater than their strength.
“_Item_, That in the eyes of the Creator men are regarded as ‘worms’; on
account of their superior intelligence, perhaps superior to the
defendants, but inferior to them morally, from having offended their
Maker, by violating the laws of reason, though they observed those of
nature. Wherefore they rendered themselves unworthy of being served or
assisted by any creatures, since they (men) had committed greater crimes
against heaven than had the clients of this learned counsel in stealing
their flour.
“_Item_, That his clients were in possession of the spot in question
before the appellants had established themselves there; consequently that
the monks should be expelled from lands to which they had no other right
than a seizure of them by main force.
“_Finally_, he concluded that the plaintiffs ought to defend their house
and meal by human means which they (the defendants) would not oppose;
whilst they (the defendants) continued their manner of life, obeying the
law imposed on their nature, and rejoicing in the freedom of the earth;
for the earth belongs not to the plaintiffs but to the Creator: ‘Domini
est terra et plenitudo ejus.’
“This answer was followed by replies and counter-replies, so that the
counsel for the prosecution saw himself constrained to admit that the
debate had very much altered his opinion of the criminality of the
defendants. He had, the learned counsel for the defendants argued,
admitted that the action was brought by brethren against sisters, brethren
Monks against sister Ants. The sister Ants, conform to the law of nature
imposed on them, continued the counsel for the insects; the brother Monks,
claiming to be ruled by an additional law, that of reason, violate it, so
that they place themselves only under the law of animal instinct, the same
which regulates the ants. The latter are not raised to the level of man,
but the friars have lowered themselves to that of brutes. Consequently,
the action is not between man and beast, but between beast and beast. All
arguments founded on the assumption of higher intelligence in man
consequently break down.
“The judge revolved the matter carefully in his mind, and finally rendered
judgment, that the Brethren should appoint a field in their neighbourhood,
suitable for the habitation of the Ants, and that the latter should
change their abode immediately under pain of major excommunication. By
such an arrangement both parties would be content and be reconciled; for
the Ants must consider that the Monks had come into the land to sow there
the seed of the Gospel, and that they themselves could easily obtain a
livelihood elsewhere, and at less cost. This sentence having been given,
one of the friars was appointed to convey it to the insects, which he did,
reading it aloud at the openings of their burrows.
“Wondrous event! ‘It nigrum campis agmen,’ one saw dense columns of the
little creatures, in all haste, leaving their ant-hills, and betaking
themselves direct to their appointed residence.”
Manoel Bernardes adds, that this sentence was pronounced on the 17th of
January 1713, and that he saw and examined the papers referring to this
transaction, in the monastery of Saint Anthony, where they were
deposited.
GHOSTS IN COURT
The following very curious story is from the _Eyrbyggja Saga_, one of the
oldest and noblest of the Icelandic histories. As it results in an action
unique in its way,--a lawsuit brought against a party of ghosts who
haunted a house,--it well merits attention from all lovers of curiosities.
In the summer of 1000, the year in which Christianity was established in
Iceland, a vessel came off the coast near Snæfellness, full of Irish and
natives of the Hebrides, with a few Norsemen among them; the ship came
from Dublin, and lay alongside of Rif, waiting a breeze which might waft
her into the firth to Dögvertharness. Some people went off in boats from
the ness to trade with the vessel. They found on board a Hebridean woman
called Thorgunna, who, hinted the sailors, had treasures of female attire
in her possession the like of which had never been seen in Iceland. Now
when Thurida, the housewife at Frod river, heard this, she was all
excitement to get a glimpse of these treasures, for she was a dashing,
showy sort of a woman. She rowed out to the ship, and on meeting
Thorgunna, asked her if she had really some first-rate ladies’ dresses? Of
course she had, was the answer; but she was not going to part with them to
any one. Then might she see them? humbly asked Thurida. Yes, she might see
them. So the boxes were opened, and the Iceland lady examined the foreign
apparel. It was good, but not so very remarkable as she had anticipated;
on the whole she was a bit disappointed, still she would like to purchase,
and she made a bid. Thorgunna at once refused to sell. Thurida then
invited the Hebridean lady home on a visit, and the stranger, only too
glad to leave the vessel, accepted the invitation with alacrity.
On the arrival of the lady with her boxes at the farm, she asked to see
her bed, and was shown a convenient closet in the lower part of the hall.
There she unlocked her largest trunk, and drew forth a suit of bed-clothes
of the most exquisite workmanship, and she spread over the bed English
linen sheets and a silken coverlet. From the box she also extracted
tapestry hangings and curtains to surround the couch; and the like of all
these things had never been seen in the island before.
Thurida opened her eyes very wide, and asked her guest to share
bed-clothes with her.
“Not for all the world,” replied the strange lady, with sharpness; “I’m
not going to pig it in the rushes, for _you_, ma’am!”
An answer which, the Saga writer assures us, did not particularly gratify
the good woman of the house.
Thorgunna was stout and tall, disposed to become fat, with black eyebrows,
a head of thick bushy brown hair, and soft eyes. She was not much of a
talker, not very merry, and it was her wont to go to church every day
before beginning her daily task. Many people took her to be about sixty
years old. She worked at the loom every day except in haymaking time, and
then she went forth into the fields and stacked the hay she had made. The
summer that year was wet, and the hay had not been carried on account of
the rain, so that at Frod river farm, by autumn, the crop was only half
cut, and the rest was still standing.
One day appeared bright and cloudless, and the farmer, Thorodd, ordered
the house to turn out for a general haymaking. The strange lady worked
along with the rest, tossing hay till the hour of nones, when a black
cloud crossed the sky from the north, and by the time that prayers had
been said such a darkness had come on that it was almost impossible to
see. The haymakers, at Thorodd’s command, raked their hay together into
cocks, but Thorgunna, for no assignable reason, left hers spread. It now
became so dark that there was no seeing a hand held up before the face,
and down came the rain in torrents. It did not last many minutes, and then
the sky cleared, and the evening was as bright as had been the morning.
It was observed by the haymakers on their return to their work that it had
rained blood, for all the grass was stained. They spread it, and it soon
dried up; but Thorgunna tried in vain to dry hers, it had been so
thoroughly saturated that the sun went down leaving it dripping blood, and
all her clothes were discoloured. Thurida asked what could be the meaning
of the portent, and Thorgunna answered that it boded ill to the house and
its inmates. In the evening, late, the strange woman returned home, and
went to her closet and stripped the stained clothes off her. She then lay
down in her bed and began to sigh. It was soon ascertained that she was
ill, and when food was brought her she would not swallow it.
Next morning the bonder came to her bedside to inquire how she felt, and
to learn what turn the sickness was likely to take. The poor lady told him
that she feared her end was approaching, and she earnestly besought him to
attend to her directions as to the disposal of her property, not changing
any particular, as such a change would entail misery on the family.
Thorodd declared his readiness to carry out her wishes to the minutest
detail.
“This, then,” said she, “is my last request. I desire my body to be taken
to Skalholt, if I die of this disease, for I have a presentiment that that
place will shortly become the most sacred in the island, and that clerks
will be there who will chant over me; and do you reimburse yourself from
my chattels for any outlay in carrying this into effect. Let your wife
Thurida have my scarlet gown, lest she be put out at the further
distribution of my effects, which I propose. My gold ring I bequeath to
the Church; but my bed, with its curtains, tapestry, coverlet, and sheets,
I desire to have burned, so that they go into nobody’s possession. This I
desire, not because I grudge the use of these handsome articles to
anybody, but because I foresee that the possession of them would be the
cause of innumerable quarrels and heart-burnings.”
Thorodd promised solemnly to fulfil every particular to the letter.
The complaint now rapidly gained ground, and before many days Thorgunna
was dead. The farmer put her corpse into a coffin; then took all the
bed-furniture into the open air, and, raising a pile of wood, flung the
clothes on top of it, and was about to fire the pile, when, with a face
pale with dismay, forth rushed Thurida to know what in the name of wonder
her husband was about to do with those treasures of needlework, the
coverlet, sheets, and curtains of the strange lady’s bed.
“Burn them! according to her dying request,” replied Thorodd.
“Burn them?” echoed Thurida, casting up her hands and eyes; “what
nonsense! Thorgunna only desired this to be done because she was full of
envy lest others should enjoy these incomparable treasures.”
“But she threatened all kinds of misfortunes unless I strictly obeyed her
injunctions; and I promised to do what she bid,” expostulated the worthy
man.
“Oh, that is all fancy!” exclaimed the wife; “what misfortune can these
articles possibly bring upon us?”
Thorodd still stood out; but in his house, as in many another, the gray
mare was the better horse, and what with entreaties, embraces, and tears,
he was forced to effect a compromise, and relinquish to his wife the
hangings and the coverlet in order that he might secure immunity for
burning the pillow and the sheets. Yet neither party was satisfied, says
the historian.
Next day preparations were made for flitting the corpse to Skalholt, and
trustworthy men were appointed to accompany it. The body was swathed in
linen, but not stitched up; it was then put into the coffin and placed on
horseback. So they started with it over the moor, and nothing particular
happened till they reached Valbjarnar plain, where there are many pools
and morasses, and the corpse had repeated falls into the mire. Well, after
a bit they crossed the North river at Eyar ford, but the water was very
deep, for there had been heavy rains.
At nightfall they reached Stafholt, and asked the farmer to take them in.
He declined peremptorily, probably disliking the notion of housing a
corpse, and he shut the door in their faces. They could go no farther that
night, as the White river was before them, which was very deep and broad
and could only be traversed in safety by day; so they took the coffin
into an outhouse, and after some trouble persuaded the farmer to let them
sleep in his hall; but he would not give them any food, so they went
supperless to bed. Scarcely, however, was all quiet in the house before a
strange clatter was heard in the shed serving as larder. One of the farm
servants, thinking that thieves were breaking in, stole to the door, and
on looking in, beheld a tall naked woman, with thick brown hair, busily
engaged in preparing food. The poor fellow was so frightened that he fled
back to his bed, quaking like an aspen leaf. In another moment the nude
figure stalked into the hall, bearing victuals in both hands, and these
she placed on the table. By the dim light the bearers recognised
Thorgunna, and they understood now that she resented the churlishness of
the host, and had left her coffin to provide food for them. The farmer and
his wife were now speedily brought to terms, and leaving their beds they
displayed the utmost alacrity in supplying the necessities of their
guests. A fire was lighted; the wet clothes were taken off the travellers;
curd and beer, and a stew of Iceland-moss were set before them.
Hist!--a little noise in the outhouse! It is only Thorgunna stepping back
into her coffin.
Nothing transpired of any moment during the rest of the journey. The
bearers had but to narrate the story of the preceding night’s events, and
they were sure of a ready welcome wherever they halted.
At Skalholt all went well; the clerks accepted the gold ring, and chanted
over the body: they buried her deep, and put green turf over her. So,
their errand accomplished, the servants of Thorodd returned home.
At Frod river there was a large hall, with a closed bedroom at one end of
it. On each side of the hall were closets; in one of these closets dried
fish were stacked up, and flour was kept in the other. Every evening,
about meal-time, a great fire was lighted in the hall, and men used to sit
before it ere they adjourned to supper. The same night that the funeral
party returned the men were sitting chatting round the fire, when suddenly
they perceived a phosphorescent half-moon grow into brilliancy on the wall
of the apartment, and travel slowly round the hall against the sun. The
appearance continued all the while the men sat by the fire, and was
visible every evening after. Thorodd asked Thorir Stumpleg, his bailiff,
what this portended; and the man replied that it boded death to some one,
but to whom he could not say.
One day a shepherd came in, gloomy, and muttering to himself in a strange
manner. When addressed, he answered wildly, and they thought he must have
lost his wits. The man remained in this state for some little while. One
night he went to bed as usual, but in the morning when the men came to
wake him, they found him lying dead in his place.
He was buried in the church.
A few nights after, strange sounds were heard outside the house; and one
night when Thorir Stumpleg went outside the door, he saw the shepherd
stride past him. Thorir attempted to slip indoors again, but the shepherd
grasped him, and after a short tussle cast him in, so that he fell upon
the hall floor bruised and severely injured. He succeeded in crawling to
his bed, but he never rose from it again. His body was purple and swollen.
After a few days he died, and was buried in the churchyard. Immediately
after, his spectre was seen to walk in company with that of the shepherd.
A servant of Thorir now sickened, and after three days’ illness died.
Within a few days five more died. The fast preceding Christmas approached,
though in those days the fashion of fasting was not introduced. In the
closet containing dried fish, the stack was so big that the door could not
be closed, and when fish were wanted, a ladder was placed against the pile
and the top fish were taken away for use. In the evening, as men sat over
the fire, the stack of dried fish was suddenly upset, and when people went
to examine it, they could discover no cause. Just before Yule, also,
Thorodd, the bonder, went out in a long boat with seven men to Ness, after
some fish, and they were out all night. The same evening, the fires having
been kindled in the hall at Frod river, a seal’s head was seen to rise out
of the floor of the apartment. A servant girl, who first saw it, rushed
to the door, and catching up a bludgeon which lay beside it, struck at the
seal’s head. The blow made the head rise higher out of the floor, and it
turned its eyes towards the bed-curtains of Thorgunna. A house-churl now
took the stick and beat at the apparition, but he fared no better, for the
head rose higher at each stroke till its forefins appeared, and the fellow
was so frightened that he fainted away. Then up came Kiartan, the bonder’s
son, a lad of twelve, and snatching up a large iron mallet for beating the
fish, he brought it down with a crash on the seal’s head. He struck again
and again, till he drove it into the floor, much as one might drive a
pile; he then beat down the earth over it.
It was noticed by all that on every occasion the lad Kiartan was the only
one who had any power over the apparitions.
Next morning it was ascertained that Thorodd and his men had been lost,
for the boat was driven ashore near Enni; but the bodies were never
recovered.
Thurida, and her son Kiartan, immediately invited all their kindred and
neighbours to a funeral feast. They had brewed for Yule, and now they kept
the banquet in commemoration of the dead. When all the company had
arrived, and had taken their places--the seats of the dead men being, as
customary, left vacant--the hall door was darkened, and the guests beheld
Thorodd and his servants enter, dripping with water. All were gratified,
for at that time it was considered a token of favourable acceptance with
the goddess Ran if the dead men came to the wake; “and,” says the Saga
writer, “though we are Christian men, and baptized, we have faith in the
same token still.” The spectres walked through the hall without greeting
any one, and sat down before the fire. The servants fled in all
directions, and the dead men sat silently round the flames till the fire
died out, then they left the house as they had entered it. This happened
every evening as long as the feast continued, and some deemed that at the
conclusion of the festivities the apparition would cease. The wake
terminated, and the visitors dispersed. The fire was lighted as usual
towards dusk, and in, as before, came Thorodd and his retinue, dripping
with water; they sat down before the hearth, and began to wring out their
clothes. Next came in the spectres of Thorir Stumpleg and the six who had
died in bed after him, and had been buried; they were covered with mould,
and they proceeded to shake the mould off their clothes upon Thorodd and
his men.
The inmates of the house deserted the room, and remained without light and
heat in another apartment. Next day the fire was not lighted in the hall
but in the other room; the farm-people reckoning upon the ghosts keeping
to the hall. But no! in came the spectral train, and upon the living men
vacating their seats, the ghosts occupied them, and sat looking grimly
into the red fire till it died out, whilst the terrified servants spent
the evening in the hall.
On the third day two fires were kindled--one in the hall for the ghosts,
and another in the small chamber for the living men; and so it had to be
done throughout the whole of Yule.
Fresh disturbances now began in the fish closet, and it seemed as though a
bull were among the fish, tossing them about; and this went on night and
day. A man set the ladder against the stack and climbed to the top. He
observed emerging from the pile of stockfish a tail like that of a cow
which had been singed, but soft and covered with hair like that of a seal.
The fellow caught the tail and pulled at it, calling lustily for help. Up
ran men and women, and all dragged at the tail, but none of them could
pull it out; it seemed stiff and dead, yet suddenly it was whisked out of
their hands, and rasped the skin off their palms. The stack was now taken
down, but no traces of the tail could be found, only it was discovered
that the skin had been peeled off the fish, and at the bottom of the stack
not a bit of flesh was left upon them.
Thorgrima, the widow of Thorir Stumpleg, fell ill shortly after this; on
the evening of her burial she was seen in company with Thorir and his
party. All those who had seen the tail were now attacked, and died--men
and women. In the autumn there had been thirty household servants at Frod
river, of these now eighteen were dead, the ghosts had frightened five
away, and at the beginning of the month of May there remained but seven.
Things had come to such a pass as to render ruin imminent, unless some
decisive measure were pursued to rid the house of the spectres that
haunted it. Kiartan, accordingly, determined on consulting Snorri, the
Lawman, his mother’s brother, and one of the shrewdest men Iceland ever
produced. Kiartan reached his uncle’s house at Helgafell at the same time
that a priest arrived from Gizor White, the apostle of Iceland. Snorri
advised Kiartan to take the priest with him to Frod river, to burn all the
bed-furniture of Thorgunna, to hold a court at his door, and bring a
formal action at law against the spectres, and then to get the priest to
sprinkle the house with holy water, and to shrive the survivors on the
farm. Along with him Snorri sent his son Thord Kausi, with six men, that
he might summons Kiartan’s father, considering that there might be a
little delicacy in the son bringing an action against the ghost of his own
father.
So it was settled, and Kiartan rode home. On his way he called at
neighbours’ houses and asked help: so that by the time he reached Frod
river his party was considerably swelled. It was Candlemas day, and they
drew up at the farm door just after the fires had been lighted and the
ghosts had assumed their customary places. Kiartan found his mother in
bed, with all the premonitory symptoms of the same complaint which had
carried off so many others in the house. The lad passed the spectres, and
going up to the bed of Thorgunna, removed the quilt and curtains and every
article which had belonged to her. Then he pushed boldly up to the fire
past the ghosts, and took a brand from it.
In a few minutes he had made a pile of brushwood, and had thrown the
bed-furniture on the top. The flames roared up around the luckless
articles and consumed them. A court was next constituted at the door,
according to proper legal forms, and Kiartan summoned Thorir Stumpleg,
whilst Thord Kausi summoned Thorodd for entering a gentleman’s house
without permission, and bringing mischief and death among his retainers.
Every spectre there present was summoned by name in due and legal form.
The plaintiffs argued their case, and witnesses were called and examined.
The defendants were asked what exceptions they had to plead, and upon
their remaining silent, sentence was pronounced. Each case was taken
separately, and the court sat long. The first action disposed of was that
against Thorir. He was ordered to leave the house forthwith. Upon hearing
this decree of the court, Stumpleg rose from his chair and said--
“I sat whilst sit I might,” and hobbled out of the hall by the door
opposite to that before which the court was held.
The case of the shepherd was next disposed of. On hearing the sentence he
rose,--
“I go; better had I been dismissed before,” he vanished through the door.
When Thorgrima was ordered to depart, she followed the others, saying,--
“I remained whilst to remain was lawful.”
Each who left said a few words which evinced a disinclination to desert
the fireside for the grave and sea depths.
The last to go was Thorodd, and he said,--
“There is now no peace for us here; we are flitting one by one.”
After this Kiartan went in, and the priest took holy water and sprinkled
the walls of the house; then he sang mass, and performed many ceremonies.
So the spectres haunted Frod river no more; Thurida got better rapidly,
and the prospects of the farm mended.
STRANGE PAINS AND PENALTIES
Punishment is efficacious in deterring from crime only if it be certain
and speedy. Severity is quite a minor point, and it will be found that the
deterring effect of punishment is by no means proportionate to its
cruelty.
The first requisite is certainty, for human nature is so constituted that
if there be a chance of escape, ninety-nine out of a hundred will be found
to run the risk. A slight punishment, if certain, is infinitely more
likely to produce the required results than the most terrible exhibition
of cruelty upon representative criminals. If certainty be a main
requisite, speediness is also necessary; lasting and cruel punishments
harden but do not reclaim.
Of this our forefathers in the middle ages were profoundly ignorant. With
an inefficient police, it was not to be expected that one tithe of the
malefactors, then so numerous, should fall into the hands of justice, and
the authorities endeavoured to make up for this imperfection by
exaggerated severity, and by grotesqueness in the punishments they
inflicted.
I have said our forefathers in the middle ages, for the Anglo-Saxons and
Danes were far too sensible to resort to cruel or absurd penalties, when
milder and reasonable ones would answer their purpose.
Thus the laws of Canute direct that the correction of a criminal should be
so regulated that it may appear seemly in the eyes of Him who said,
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us,”
and they enjoin that the judge should not be unduly severe, but lean
rather to a gentle punishment; and also that if it appeared likely that
the criminal was fully penitent and inclined to amend, full mercy should
be shown to him.
Indeed it was a feature characteristic of Saxon and Danish laws, that
compensation should be aimed at and the reclamation of the criminal,
rather than retribution. Capital punishments were sanctioned, but in all
cases an opportunity was offered for the substitution of a fine. Thus, by
the law of King Ina, if a thief were caught, he was sentenced to death,
but his life could be redeemed by pecuniary satisfaction being made to the
persons robbed. So the fine inflicted on a murderer was regulated
according to the sum at which the life of the murdered party was valued;
thus, if a man slew a freeman, he had to make compensation to the amount
of one hundred shillings, but for the murder of a thrall a much less sum
was demanded. If a freeman slew his thrall, he paid a nominal fine to the
king for a breach of the peace; but if a slave killed his master, the
doctrine of blood for blood was carried into effect, as the thrall had no
personal property to pay in compensation for his crime.
Fines were imposed by the Anglo-Saxons for all kinds of personal injuries.
Thus by the laws of King Ethelbert, for breaking a man’s front tooth the
fine imposed was six shillings, but a molar was regarded as worth only one
shilling, and a canine tooth was valued at six. King Alfred however,
revised these laws, and taking into consideration the fact that the molar
is a double tooth, and that it is a very serviceable tooth besides, he
raised its market value to fifteen shillings.
If a man struck out the eye of another and blinded him, he was obliged to
make satisfaction with fifty shillings, and one who was in a troublesome
mood and had plenty of loose cash to dispose of, might break a neighbour’s
rib for three shillings, and dislocate his shoulder for twenty. According
to the decrees of the Witan, a fine of one shilling was enacted for
crushing the finger-nail of a neighbour, but if the thumb-nail had
suffered, three shillings was its value.
A testy Saxon might venture to pull the nose of his enemy if he had three
shillings to spare, but then he had to be cautious, for if the pull were
sufficiently violent to make the nose bleed, he had to pay six shillings.
It was the almost universal custom throughout Europe that forgiveness
should be judged according to the laws of their native country, and not
according to the law of the land in which the offence was committed; and
“thus,” says Dr. Henry, “the nose of a Spaniard was perfectly safe in
England, because it was valued at thirteen marks, but the nose of an
Englishman ran a great risk in Spain, because it was valued at twelve
shillings. An Englishman might have broken a Welshman’s head for a mere
trifle, but few Welshmen could afford to return the compliment.”
Among the Anglo-Saxons the penalty inflicted on coiners was the loss of
one hand; hardly a cruel sentence in comparison with that which was
inflicted during the middle ages, up to the close of the sixteenth
century, namely, boiling alive in oil or water.
An old German code of laws gives the following horrible directions:
“Should a coiner be caught in the act, then let him be stewed in a pan, or
in a caldron half an ell deep for the body, so that the man may be bound
to a pole which shall be passed through the rings of the caldron, and
which shall be tightly strapped and bound to upright posts on either side,
and thus he shall be made to stew in oil and wine.” A scene such as this
was witnessed in Sweden in 1500, by Archbishop Olaus Magnus of Upsala, and
instances without number might be cited from German and French city
registers. Taking one town alone, Lübeck, we find that a poor fellow who
gave himself out to be the dead king Frederick II., and who was probably
an inoffensive madman, was thus put to death in 1287.
A second instance occurred in the year 1329, when the man was boiled in
the market-place in the midst of a vast concourse of people. A similar
sentence was pronounced in 1459, and again in 1471, but in this instance,
at the last moment, in consideration of the earnest entreaty of the
bishop, the sentence was commuted to burning alive on a pile of faggots,
at the Mühlenthor. This poor wretch was less fortunate than the coiner
Jacob von Jülich, who, when crouching in the caldron, and shrieking with
agony, obtained the mercy of having his head struck off.
In the sixteenth century, coiners were hanged instead of boiled: till
lately, however, the caldron which was used for this horrible purpose was
visible in the market-place of Osnabrück.
A punishment much in vogue during the middle ages for those who were
guilty of stabbing with intent to wound, but without causing death, was
sufficiently terrible. The hand which had dealt the blow was placed upon a
table with the fingers spread out, and the weapon which had been used was
struck violently into the back of the hand, pinning it to the table, and
the criminal had to draw his hand away without removing the knife. This
was statute law pretty nearly throughout Europe, and it continued in force
till the middle of the seventeenth century, but the Frisian laws permitted
the penalty to be remitted if the culprit chose to pay compensation to
the amount of twenty-five gulden.
In 1638, Count Anthony Gunter of Oldenburg ordered a post to be erected
before the church, or in the market, and the criminal to be fastened to it
by a knife driven through his hand; and thus he was to stand for three
hours. This law was not abrogated in Germany till 1661.
Mutilation was common enough in the middle ages. We find in the laws of
William the Conqueror--
“We forbid that criminals of any sort should be killed or hanged, but let
their eyes be plucked out, or let their hands and feet be chopped off, so
that nothing may remain of the culprit but a living trunk, as a memorial
of his crime.” How different this from the tone of Saxon laws.
At Avignon, in 1245, false witnesses had their noses and upper lips cut
away, and the same penalty was inflicted in Switzerland on blasphemers.
Eugène Sue suggested that capital punishment should be replaced by
privation of sight. But if his system were carried into effect, those
unhappy individuals who have either been born blind or have lost their
sight by accident, would be compelled to carry about with them a
certificate to the effect that they were honest men, as did the Arab
grammarian Zamakuschari, who died in 1144. This writer, having had a foot
frost-bitten in Kharism, carried ever about with him an attestation to the
fact, signed by a number of persons of credit, so that no one would
regard him as a criminal who had suffered mutilation.
Our own King John, according to Matthew Paris, invented a punishment of
great cruelty. Geoffry, Archdeacon of Norwich, having offended him, he had
him encased in a sheet of lead, which was folded round him and fitted to
his shoulders like a cloak. The unhappy man died of the burden and of
horror. “This,” says an Anglo-Norman writer, “is the judgment of ‘pain
fort et dure’; to wit, the condemned shall be placed in a low chamber
locked. And he shall lie naked on the ground without litter, bedding, or
cloth, and without anything over him; and he shall lie on his back with
his head to the west, and his feet to the east, and one arm shall be drawn
to one quarter of the room by a rope, and the other arm in like manner to
the other quarter, and in the same way shall his legs be extended, and
upon his body shall be placed iron and stone, as much as he can bear; the
first day he shall have three lumps of barley bread, but nothing to drink,
and next day he shall drink thrice, as much as he wants, of water brought
from near at hand to the prison, excepting that it be running water, and
he shall have no bread, and this succession shall be followed till he
dies.”
Can it be believed that such a terrible death as this was inflicted in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, on the 25th of March 1586, and that the person
who suffered was a woman, on the indictment “that she had harboured and
maintained Jesuit and seminary priests, traitors to the Queen’s Majesty
and the laws; and that she had heard mass, and the like.” The law of the
land required that those who would not plead “guilty” or “not guilty,”
should be made to plead, “by being laid upon the back on the ground, and
as much weight laid upon the accused as he or she can bear, and that the
accused shall so continue for three days, and should he or she still
refuse to plead, then to be pressed to death, the hands and feet tied to a
post, and a sharp stone set under the back.” The unfortunate woman,--her
name was Margaret Clitheroe,--labouring under the idea that she was being
martyred for her religion, whereas she was simply a victim to her own
obstinacy in refusing to plead, endured this fearful death. Had she
pleaded she would have escaped, for the evidence against her was of so
slender a nature that she must have been acquitted. The judge, Clinch, who
gave the sentence, did so with great reluctance, and only because, as the
law stood, it was impossible for him to evade it.
In the reign of James I., we learn from Sir Walter Scott, a Highland chief
in Ross, of the name of M’Donald, hearing that a poor widow had determined
to go on foot to Edinburgh to see the king, and obtain from him justice
against the chief, sent for her, and telling her that the way was long,
and that she would require to be well shod for the journey, had a
blacksmith brought, and made him nail her shoes to her feet, in the same
way in which horses are shod. The widow, however, was a woman with a will
of her own, and as soon as she had recovered, she betook herself on foot
to Edinburgh, and casting herself at the feet of the king, besought of him
punishment on the tyrannical chief. King James, indignant at her
treatment, had M’Donald seized along with twelve of his accomplices, and
had iron soles nailed to their feet. They were exposed in this condition
to the public gaze, and were then decapitated.
When Richard Cœur de Lion was on his way to the Holy Land he drew up a
code of criminal laws by which discipline was to be maintained among his
troops. One of these contains the following article:--“If any one is
convicted of theft, boiling pitch shall be poured over his head, and then
a pillowful of feathers shall be shaken over it, so that the fellow may be
certainly recognised. And he shall be abandoned on the first land where
the vessel touches.”
This reminds me of the trick played by certain wags on a poor nun in 1198.
They covered her with honey, rolled her in feathers, mounted her on
horseback, and paraded her about the town. Philip Augustus, hearing of
this, had the unfortunate jokers seized and plunged into a vat of boiling
water.
A curious ordinance in force at Dortmund, in Westphalia, A.D. 1348,
required that, “if two women quarrel so as to come to blows, and at the
same time use abusive language, they shall be required to carry, the whole
length of the town along the High Street, two stones weighing together one
hundred pounds, attached to chains. The first woman shall carry them from
the east gate to the west gate, whilst the second goads her on with a
needle fastened to the end of a stick,” and both are directed to wear the
lightest of all possible costumes. “The second is then to take the stones
upon her shoulders and to carry them back to the east gate, the first
applying the same stimulus.” This punishment was common all over Germany.
In Lübeck the stones were shaped like bottles, in other places they were
rudely-carved heads of women with protruding tongues; and in some towns
they were in the shape of cats. At Hamburg a procession of women sounding
cows’ horns was part of the programme, and at Worms a band of
bell-ringers.
The old English cucking-stool for shrews is well known; it was common
abroad also, with some customs peculiarly foreign. For instance, the
unfortunate persons who had to do penance for their shrewish tongues were
sometimes put into a large hamper, or a cage, and so suspended to a
gallows, in the evening to be plunged, basket and all, into the nearest
pond.
In the museum at Cahors the iron cage in which shrews were dipped is still
shown.
Fools’ caps have long served as punishment in village schools, but their
use in them was probably derived from the legal practice of condemning
certain delinquents to the use of peculiar caps. Thus in Germany some
minor crimes were punished by the culprit being sentenced to sit all day
on a post in the middle of a canal, with a tall scarlet steeple cap on his
head. In Rome, bankrupts were condemned to wear in public black bonnets of
a sugar-loaf form. At Lucca they wore them of an orange colour; and in
Spain they bore in addition an iron collar.
The ancient Roman manner of punishing parricide, by casting the murderer
into the water in a sack which contained as well a cock, an ape, and a
serpent, was not unused in the middle ages, and we find it threatened in
an ordinance of the Provost of Paris, published on 25th June 1493, in
which all persons sick with smallpox are bidden leave Paris at a day’s
notice, or suffer the penalty above mentioned.
I might extract accounts of the most fearful of punishments which the
cruelty of man could devise, from Oriental sources, but the barbarities
practised by the Mussulmans are sickening through their excessive cruelty.
Suffering enough has been undergone in our own quarter of the globe, and
that too at no great distance of time from the age in which we live.
I will instance, in conclusion, the painful account of the execution of
Balthazar Gerard, who assassinated William of Orange, on the 10th of July
1584, as given by Brantôme. “First he was racked with extraordinary
cruelty, without his uttering a word, except that he persisted in his
former assertion.
“Then, before he died, for eighteen days he was tortured with excessive
cruelty. On the first day he was taken into the public square, where
there was a caldron of boiling oil, into which was thrust the arm which
had dealt the blow. On the morrow this arm was chopped off, and it fell at
his feet. He calmly moved it with his foot, and pushed it before him down
from the scaffold. On the third day his breast and the front of his arm
were plucked with red-hot pincers; on the following day his back and the
back of his arm, and legs, were treated in the same manner. This was
continued for eighteen days, and after each torture he was conducted back
to prison, he all the while enduring his sufferings with great constancy.
The greatest torture of all that he endured, except death, was when he was
bound naked in the middle of the square, and around him at a little
distance waggon-loads of charcoal were set on fire, and thus he was
wrapped in flame. The poor sufferer bore the roasting for a long while,
and then at last he lost patience and cried out; whereupon he was removed.
For the final torture he was broken on the wheel, but he did not die at
once, for they had only broken his legs and arms, so as to make him
linger. Thus he lived for six hours, imploring some one to bring him a
drop of water, but no one had the courage to give it him. At length the
officer was entreated to put an end to this scene, and to strangle him,
lest he should die in despair, and so his soul perish. The executioner
approached, and when close to him asked how he felt. The tortured man
replied, ‘As you left me.’ But when the cord was produced to be put round
his neck, he raised himself, as though fearing death, as he had not feared
it before, and said to the executioner:--‘Ah! pray leave me alone. Do not
torture me any more! Pray let me die as I am!’ So having been strangled,
his life closed. Awful were the torments he endured!”
WHAT ARE WOMEN MADE OF?
In the palmy days of childhood we were taught in nursery jingle, and we
implicitly believed, that little girls were made of
Sugar and spice
And all that’s nice.
But, growing older, we learned to our disappointment that they were
produced from Adam’s rib; and when we asked why woman was made of that
particular bone, we were told because it was the most crooked in Adam’s
body.
“Observe the result,” preached Jean Raulin, in the beginning of the
sixteenth century: “man, composed of clay, is silent and ponderous; but
woman gives evidence of her osseous origin by the rattle she keeps up.
Move a sack of earth and it makes no noise; touch a bag of bones and you
are deafened with the clitter-clatter.”
This observation did not fall to the ground; it was repeated by Gratian de
Drusac in his _Controversies des Sexes Masculin et Féminin_, 1538. The
learned in medieval times did not spare women. Jean Nevisan, professor of
law at Turin, who died in 1540, is harder still on them in his _Sylva
Nuptialis_. Therein he audaciously asserts that woman was formed by the
Author of Good till the head had to be made, and _that_ was a production
of the great enemy of mankind. “Permisit Deus illud facere dæmonio.”
But the Rabbis are equally unsparing. They assert that when Eve had to be
drawn from the side of Adam she was not extracted by the head, lest she
should be vain; nor by the eyes, lest they should be wanton; nor by the
mouth, lest she should be given to tittle-tattle; nor by the ears, lest
she should be inquisitive; nor by the hands, lest she should be
meddlesome; nor by the feet, lest she should be a gadabout; nor by the
heart, lest she should be jealous; but she was drawn forth by the side;
yet, notwithstanding these precautions, she has every fault specially
guarded against, because, being extracted sideways, she was perverse.
Another Rabbinical gloss on the text of Moses asserts that Adam was
created double; that he and Eve were made back to back, united at the
shoulders, and that they were severed with a hatchet. Eugubinus says that
their bodies were united at the side.
Antoinette Bourignon, that extraordinary mystic of the seventeenth
century, had some strange visions of the primeval man and the birth of
Eve. The body of Adam, she says, was more pure, translucent, and
transparent than crystal, light and buoyant as air. In it were vessels and
streams of light, which entered and exuded through the pores. The vessels
were charged with liquors of various colours of intense brilliancy and
transparency; some of these fluids were water, milk, wine, fire, etc.
Every motion of Adam’s body produced ineffable harmonies. Every creature
obeyed him; nothing could resist or injure him. He was taller than men of
this time; his hair was short, curled, and approaching to black. He had a
little down on his lower lip. In his stomach was a clear fluid, like water
in a crystal bowl, in which tiny eggs developed themselves, like bubbles
in wine, as he glowed with the ardour of Divine charity; and when he
strongly desired that others should unite with him in the work of praise,
he deposited one of these eggs, which hatched, and from it emerged his
consort, Eve.
The inhabitants of Madagascar have a strange myth touching the origin of
woman. They say that the first man was created of the dust of the earth,
and was placed in a garden, where he was subject to none of the ills which
now afflict mortality; he was also free from all bodily appetites, and
though surrounded by delicious fruit and limpid streams, yet felt no
desire to taste of the fruit or quaff the water. The Creator had,
moreover, strictly forbidden him either to eat or to drink. The great
enemy, however, came to him, and painted to him in glowing colours the
sweetness of the apple, the lusciousness of the date, and the succulence
of the orange. In vain: the first man remembered the command laid upon
him by his Maker. Then the fiend assumed the appearance of an effulgent
spirit, and pretended to be a messenger from heaven commanding him to eat
and drink. The man at once obeyed. Shortly after a pimple appeared on his
leg; the spot enlarged into a tumour, which increased in size and caused
him considerable annoyance. At the end of six months it burst, and there
emerged from the limb a beautiful girl.
The father of all living turned her this way and that way, sorely
perplexed, and uncertain whether to pitch her into the water or give her
to the pigs, when a messenger from heaven appeared, and told him to let
her run about the garden till she was of a marriageable age, and then to
take her to himself as a wife. He obeyed. He called her Bahouna, and she
became the mother of all races of men.
There seems to be some uncertainty as to the size of our great mother. The
French orientalist, Henrion, member of the Academy, however, fixed it with
a precision satisfactory, at least, to himself. He gives the following
table of the relative heights of several eminent historical personages:--
Adam was precisely 123 feet 9 inches high
Eve 118 " 9.75 in. "
Noah 103 " "
Abraham 27 " "
Moses 13 " "
Hercules 10 " "
Alexander 6 " "
Julius Cæsar 5 " "
It is interesting to have the height of Eve to the decimal of an inch. It
must, however, be stated that the measures of the traditional tomb of Eve
at Jedda give her a much greater stature. “On entering the great gate of
the cemetery, one observes on the left a little wall three feet high,
forming a square of ten to twelve feet. There lies the head of our first
mother. In the middle of the cemetery is a sort of cupola, where reposes
the middle of her body, and at the other extremity, near the door of
egress, is another little wall, also three feet high, forming a
lozenge-shaped enclosure: there are her feet. In this place is a large
piece of cloth, whereon the faithful deposit their offerings, which serve
for the maintenance of a constant burning of perfumes over the midst of
her body. The distance between her head and feet is 400 feet. How we have
shrunk since the creation!”--_Lettre de H. A. D., Consul de France en
Abyssinie, 1841._
But to return to the substance of which woman was made. This is a point on
which the various cosmogonies of nations widely differ. Probably the
discoverers of these cosmogonies were men, for they seldom give to woman a
very distinguished origin. But then the poets make it up to her. Nature,
the singer of the Land of Cakes tells us,
Her ’prentice hand she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses, O.
Guillaume de Salluste du Bastas (b. 1544; d. 1590) composed a lengthy poem
on the Creation, in which he does ample justice to the ladies. His poem
was translated into Latin by Dumonin, and into German, Spanish, Italian,
and English.
A specimen will suffice:--
The mother of mortals in herself doth combine
The charms of an Adam, and graces all Divine.
Her tint his surpasses, her brow is more fair,
Her eye twinkles brighter, more lustrous her hair;
Far sweeter her utterance, her chin is quite smooth,
Dream of Beauty incarnate, a lover and a love!
Our own Milton has done poor Eve justice in lines which need no quotation.
Pygmalion, says the classic story, which is really a Phœnician myth of
creation, made a woman of marble or ivory, and Aphrodite, in answer to his
prayers, endowed the statue with life. We do not believe it. No woman was
ever marble. She may seem hard and cold, but she only requires a sturdy
male voice to bid her
Descend, be stone no more!
to show that the marble appearance was put on, and that she is, and ever
was, genuine palpitating flesh and blood.
“Often does Pygmalion apply his hands to the work. One while he addresses
it in soft terms, at another he brings it presents that are agreeable to
maidens, as shells, and smooth pebbles, and little birds, and flowers of a
thousand hues, and lilies, and painted balls, and tears of the Heliades,
that have distilled from the trees. He decks her limbs, too, with
clothing, and puts a long necklace on her neck. Smooth pendants hang from
her ears, and bows from her breast. All things are becoming to
her.”--Ovid, _Metam._ x. 254-266.
There is something tender and kindly in this myth; it represents woman as
man would have her, pure as the ivory, modestly arrayed, simple, and
delighted with small trifles, birds, and pebbles, and flowers--a thing of
beauty and a joy for ever. But Hesiod gives a widely different account of
the creation of woman. According to him, she was sent in mockery by Zeus
to be a scourge to man:--
The Sire who rules the earth and sways the pole
Had spoken; laughter fill’d his secret soul:
He bade the crippled god his hest obey,
And mould with tempering water plastic clay;
With human nerve and human voice invest
The limbs elastic, and the breathing breast;
Fair as the blooming goddesses above,
A virgin’s likeness with the looks of love.
He bade Minerva teach the skill that sheds
A thousand colours in the gliding threads;
He call’d the magic of love’s golden queen
To breathe around a witchery of mien,
And eager passion’s never-sated flame,
And cares of dress that prey upon the frame;
Bade Hermes last endue, with craft refined
Of treacherous manners, and a shameless mind.
Hesiod, _Erga_, 61-79.
If such was the Greek theory of the creation of woman, it speaks ill for
the Greek men; for woman is ever what man makes her. If he chooses her to
be giddy and light and crafty, giddy, light, and crafty will she become;
but if he demands of her to be what God made her, modest, and thrifty, and
tender, such she will ever prove. This our grand old Northern forefathers
knew, and they made her creation a sacred matter, and fashioned her from a
nobler stock than man. He was of the ash, she of the elm; they called the
first woman Embla, or Emla, which means a laborious female--from the root
_amr_, _aml_, _ambl_, signifying “work.” “One day as the sons of Bör were
walking along the sea-beach, they found two stems of wood, out of which
they shaped a man and a woman. The first, Odin, infused into them life and
spirit; the second, Vili, endowed them with reason and the power of
motion; the third, Ve, gave them speech and features, hearing and vision.”
This reminds one of the ancient Iranian myth of Ahoura Mazda creating the
first pair, Meschia and Meschiane, from the Beivas tree. But the
Scandinavians also spoke of three primeval mothers: Edda
(great-grandmother), Amma (grandmother), and Mother, from whom sprang the
three classes of thrall, churl, and earl. It is noticeable that these
primeval women are represented as good housewives in the venerable
Rîgsmàl, which describes the wanderings of the god Heimdal, under the name
of Rîg. The deity comes to the hut of Edda, and at once--
From the ashes she took a loaf,
Heavy and thick, with bran mixed;
More beside she laid upon the board;
There is set a bowl of broth on the table;
There is a calf boiled, and cates the best.
Then he goes to the house of Amma, the wife of Afi.
Afi’s wife sat plying her rock
With outspread arms, busked to weave.
A hood on her head, a sark over her breast,
A kerchief round her neck, and studs on her shoulders.
He next enters the hall of Mother.
The housewife looked on her arms,
Smoothed her veil, and fastened her sleeves,
Her headgear adjusted. A clasp was on her bosom,
Her robe was ample, her sark blue;
Brighter her brow, fairer her breast,
Whiter her neck than purest snowdrift.
She took, did Mother, a figured cloth
Of white linen, and the table decked.
She then took cakes of snow-white wheat,
On the table them she laid.
She set forth salvers, silver adorned,
Full of game, and pork, and roasted birds.
In a can was wine, the cups were costly.
Not a word of disparagement of woman is found in those old cosmic lays.
The sturdy Northerner knew her value, and he respected her, whilst the
frivolous Greek despised her as a toy.
The Provençal troubadours caught the classic misappreciation of woman.
Massillia was a Greek colony, and Greek manners, tastes, and habits of
thought prevailed for long in the south-east of France. The troubadours
idolised her, as an idol-puppet, but they knew not how to commend, and by
commending develop in her those qualities which lie ready to germinate
when called for by man--devotion, self-sacrifice, patience, gentleness,
and all those homely yet inestimable treasures, the domestic virtues.
Pierre de Saint Cloud, in the opening of his poem on Renard, has his fling
at poor Eve. He says that Adam was possessed of a magic rod, with which he
could create animals at pleasure, by striking the earth with it. One day
he smote the ground, and there sprang forth the lamb. Eve caught the rod
from his hand, and did as he had done; forthwith there bounded forth the
wolf, which rent the creation of Adam. He struck, and the domestic fowls
came forth. Eve did likewise, and gave being to the fox. He made the
cattle, she the tiger; he the dog, she the jackal.
Turning to America, we encounter a host of myths relative to the first
mother. The sacred book of the Quiches tells of the gods Gucumatz, Tepu,
and Cuz-cah making man of earth, but when the rain came on he dissolved
into mud. Then they made man and woman of wood, but the beings so made
were too thick-headed to praise and sacrifice, wherefore they destroyed
them with a flood; those who escaped up tall trees remain to this day, and
are commonly called monkeys. The three gods having thus failed, consulted
the Great White Boar and the Great White Porcupine, and with their
assistance made man and woman of white and red maize. And men show by
their headstrong character that the mighty boar had a finger in their
creation, and women by their fretfulness indicate the great porcupine as
having had the making of them.
The Minnatarees have a story that the first woman was made of such rich
and fatty soil that she became a miracle of prolificness; she came out of
the earth on the first day of the moon of buffaloes, and ere it waned, she
had a child at her breast. Every month she bestowed upon her husband a son
or a daughter, and these children were fertile equally with their mother.
This was rather sharp work, and the Great Spirit, seeing that the world
would be peopled in no time, at this rate, killed the first parents, and
diminished the productiveness of their children.
The Nanticokes relate that their great ancestor was without a wife, and he
wandered over the face of the earth in search of one: at last the king of
the musk rats offered him his daughter, assuring him that she would make
the best wife in the world, as she could keep a house tidy, was very
shrewd, and neat in her person. The Nanticoke hesitated to accept the
obliging offer, alleging that the wife was so very small, and had four
legs. The Micabou of the musk rats now appeared, and undertook to remedy
this defect. “Man of the Nanticokes,” said the spirit, “rise, take thy
bride and lead her to the edge of the lake; bid her dip her feet in
water, whilst thou, standing over her, shalt pronounce these words:
“For the last time as musk rat,
For the first time as woman.
Go in beast, come out human!”
The spirit’s directions were obeyed to the letter. The Nanticoke took his
glossy little maiden musk rat by the paw, led her to the border of the
lake, and whilst she dipped her feet in the water, he used the appointed
formulary; thereupon a change took place in the little animal. Her body
was observed to assume the posture of a human being, gradually erecting
itself, as a sapling, which, having been bent to earth, resumes its
upright position. When the little creature became erect, the skin began to
fall from the head and neck, and gradually unveiling the body, exhibited
the maiden, beautiful as a flowery meadow, or the blue summer sky, or the
north lit up with the flush of the dancing lights, or the rainbow which
follows the fertilising shower. Her hand was scarce larger than a
hazel-leaf, and her foot not longer than that of the ringdove. Her arm was
so slight that it seemed as though the breeze must break it. The Nanticoke
gazed with delight on his beauteous bride, and his gratification was
enhanced when he saw her stature increase to the proportions of a human
being.
Other American Indian tribes assert that the Great Spirit, moved with
compassion for man, who wasted in solitude on earth, sent a heavenly
spirit to be his companion, and the mother of his children. And I believe
they are about right. But the Kickapoos tell a very different tale.
There was a time throughout the great world, say they, when neither on
land nor in the water was there a woman to be found. Of vain things there
were plenty--there were the turkey, and the blue jay, the wood duck, and
the wakon bird; and noisy, chattering creatures there were plenty--there
were the jackdaw, the magpie, and the rook; and gadabouts there were
plenty--there were the squirrel, the starling, and the mouse; but of
women, vain, noisy, chattering, gadabout women, there were none. It was
quite a still world to what it is now, and it was a peaceable world, too.
Men were in plenty, made of clay, and sun-dried, and they were then so
happy, oh, so happy! Wars were none then, quarrels were none. The
Kickapoos ate their deer’s flesh with the Potowatomies, hunted the otter
with the Osages, and the beaver with the Hurons. Then the great fathers of
Kickapoos scratched the backs of the savage Iroquois, and the truculent
Iroquois returned the compliment. Tribes which now seek one another’s
scalps then sat smiling benevolently in each other’s faces, smoking the
never-laid-aside calumet of peace.
These first men were not quite like the men now, for they had tails. Very
handsome tails they were, covered with long silky hair; very convenient
were these appendages in a country where flies were numerous and
troublesome, tails being more sudden in their movements than hands, and
more conveniently situated for whisking off the flies which alight on the
back. It was a pleasant sight to see the ancestral men leisurely smoking,
and waving their flexible tails at the doors of their wigwams in the
golden autumn evenings, and within were no squalling children, no
wrangling wives. The men doted on their tails, and they painted and
adorned them; they platted the hair into beautiful tresses, and wove
bright beads and shells and wampum with the hair. They attached bows and
streamers of coloured ribbons to the extremities of their tails, and when
men ran and pursued the elk or the moose, there was a flutter of colour
behind them, and a tinkle of precious ornaments.
But the red men got proud; they were so happy, all went so well with them,
that they forgot the Great Spirit. They no more offered the fattest and
choicest of their game upon the memahoppa, or altar-stone, nor danced in
his praise who dispersed the rains to cleanse the earth, and his
lightnings to cool and purify the air. Wherefore he sent his chief Manitou
to humble men by robbing them of what they most valued, and bestowing upon
them a scourge and affliction adequate to their offence. The spirit obeyed
his Master, and, coming on earth, reached the ground in the land of the
Kickapoos. He looked about him, and soon ascertained that the red men
valued their tails above every other possession. Summoning together all
the Indians, he acquainted them with the will of the Wahconda, and
demanded the instant sacrifice of the cherished member. It is impossible
to describe the sorrow and compunction which filled their bosoms when they
found that the forfeit for their oblivion of the Great Spirit was to be
that beautiful and beloved appendage. Tail after tail was laid upon the
block and amputated.
The mission of the spirit was, in part, performed. He now took the severed
tails and converted them into vain, chattering, and frisky women. Upon
these objects the Kickapoos at once lavished their admiration; they loaded
them as before with beads, and wampum, and paint, and decorated them with
tinkling ornaments and coloured ribbons. Yet the women had lost one
essential quality which as tails they had possessed. The caudal appendage
had brushed off man the worrying insects which sought to sting or suck his
blood, whereas the new article was itself provided with a sharp sting,
called by us a tongue; and far from brushing annoyances off man, it became
an instrument for accumulating them upon his back and shoulders. Pleasant
and soothing to the primeval Kickapoo was the wagging to and fro of the
member stroking and fanning his back, but the new one became a scourge to
lacerate.
However, woman retains indications of her origin. She is still beloved as
of yore; she is still beautiful, with flowing hair; still adapted to
trinketry. Still she is frisky, vivacious, and slappy; and still, as of
old, does she ever follow man, dangling after him, hanging at his heels,
and never, of her own accord, separating from him.
The Kickapoos, divested of their tails, the legend goes on to relate, were
tormented by the mosquitoes, till the Great Spirit, in compassion for
their woes, mercifully withdrew the greater part of their insect
tormentors. Overjoyed at their deliverance, the red men supplicated the
Wahconda also to remove the other nuisances, the women; but he replied
that the women were a necessary evil and must remain.[1]
This is worse treatment than that which the ladies received from Hesiod.
We have all heard of a young and romantic lady who was so enraptured with
the ideal of American Indian life as delineated by Fenimore Cooper, that
she fled her home, and went to the savages in Canada. We hope she did not
fall to the lot of a Kickapoo.
Poor woman! it is pleasanter to believe that she is made from our ribs,
which we know come very close to our hearts, and thus to explain the
mutual sympathy of man and woman, and thereby to account for that
compassion and tenderness man feels for her, and also for the manner in
which she flies to man’s side as her true resting-place in peril and
doubt. But we have a cosmogony of our own, elucidated from internal
convictions, assisted by all the modern appliances of table-rapping and
clairvoyancy. According to our cosmogony, woman is compounded of three
articles, sugar, tincture of arnica, and soft soap. Sugar, because of the
sweetness which is apparent in most women--alas! that in some it should
have acidulated into strong domestic vinegar; arnica, because in woman is
to be found that quality of healing and soothing after the bruises and
wounds which afflict us men in the great battle of life; and soft soap,
for reasons too obvious to need specification.
“FLAGELLUM SALUTIS”
There is a strange old book with the above title to be found in the
libraries of the curious, so quaint in character as to deserve to be
better known. It was composed by Christian Franz Paullini, a German
physician, and was published at Frankfort-on-Maine in 1608. It is a
treatise on the advantage of the whip for curative purposes in various
disorders.
Dr. Paullini, in the first section of his work, directs attention to the
consecration of corporal punishment by Scripture and the Church. Did not
St. Paul assert, “Castigo corpus meum et in servitutem redigo”? Does not
the bishop in confirmation box the ear of the candidate, in token that he
is to be ready to endure suffering and shame as a good Christian soldier?
And look at the saints of the calendar, were they not mighty in
flagellation, fervent in rib-whacking?
Shall precious saints and secret ones,
Break one another’s outward bones?
When savage bears agree with bears,
Shall secret ones lug saints by the ears?
asks the Puritan in his metrical version of Psalm lxxxiii, and Dr.
Paullini promptly answers: “Certainly, it is good for health of soul and
body that they should so act towards one another.”
Scorpius atque fabæ nostra fuere salus.
Had our learned author been acquainted with the Rabbinical gloss on the
account of the Fall of Man, he would, maybe, have hesitated to attribute
universal benefit to the application of the rod. For, say the Rabbis, when
Adam pleaded that the woman gave him of the tree, and he did eat, he means
emphatically that she _gave_ it him palpably. Adam was recalcitrant, Eve
_dedit de ligno_; the branch was stout, the arm of the “mother of all
living” was muscular, and the first man succumbed, and “did eat” under
compulsion.
There is nothing like the rod, says the doctor; it is a universal
specific, it stirs up the stagnating juices, it dissolves the
precipitating salts, it purifies the coagulating humours of the body, it
clears the brain, purges the belly, circulates the blood, braces the
nerves; in short, there is nothing which the rod will not do, when
judiciously applied.
Antidotum mortis si verbera dixero, credas!
Attonitum morbum nam cohibere valent.
Having laid down his principle, the doctor proceeds to apply it to various
complaints, giving instances, the result of experience.
And first as to melancholy.
One predisposing cause of melancholy, observes Paullini, is love, and that
eventuates in idiotcy or insanity.
To parents and guardians our author gives the advice, when the first
symptoms of this complaint appear in young people under their charge, let
them grasp the rod firmly, and lay it on with vigour and promptitude. The
remedy is infallible. Valescus de Taranta says, in the case of a young
man--and his words are words of gold--“Whip him well, and should he not
mend immediately, keep him locked up in the cellar on bread and water till
he promises amendment.”
I saw, continues our author, an instance of the good effect of this
treatment at Amsterdam. A stripling of twenty, comely enough in his
appearance, the son of an artisan in the town, fell in love with the
mayor’s daughter. He could neither eat, drink, sleep, nor do anything in
the remotest degree rational. The father, unaware of the cause, put him
into the hands of a medical practitioner, who did his utmost to cure him,
but signally failed. At last the father’s eyes were opened by means of an
intercepted letter. Like a sensible man he packed his son off to the
public whipping-place, there to learn better _moralia_. And this had the
desired effect; for the youth returned perfectly cured and in his right
senses.
But for this treatment he might have sunk into his grave, like him
mentioned by P. Boaysten, who died of a broken heart through unrequited
love; and, at the post-mortem examination, his bowels were discovered to
be uncoiled, his heart shrivelled, his liver shrunk to nothing, his lungs
corroded, and his skull entirely emptied of every trace of brains.
For short sight there is nothing like a good thrashing, or at least a
violent blow, says our doctor.
An old German, aged eighty, who had all his lifetime suffered from short
sight, was one day jogging to market on his respectable mare, Dobbin.
Dobbin tripped on a stone and flung her rider. The old man fell upon a
stone, which pierced his skull. The dense vapours which had obscured his
vision for so long were enabled to escape through the aperture, and on his
recovery the venerable gentleman had the sight of an eagle.
A cavalier was troubled with the same infirmity. He saw a large salmon
hanging up outside a fishmonger’s shop, and, mistaking it for a young lady
of his acquaintance, removed his cap and addressed it with courtesy.
Another youth having made great fun of the mistake, the short-sighted
cavalier felt himself constrained in honour to call him out. In the duel
he received a sword wound over his left eye, and this completely cured his
vision.
For deafness Dr. Paullini recommends a box on the ear. Especially
successful is this treatment in the case of children who do not attend to
the commands and advice of their parents on the plea of “not having
heard.” In such cases the employment of corporal punishment cannot be too
highly estimated. The doctor tells the story of a boy destined for the
ministry who ran away from school and apprenticed himself to a tailor, and
who was cured of deafness and tailoring propensities by the application of
a large pair of drumsticks to a sensitive part of his person, and who
eventually became a Lutheran pastor, and was, to the end of his days, able
to mend his own clothes.
This story furnishes the author of _Flagellum Salutis_ with matter for a
digression on clerical education. He quotes with approval the sentiments
of his old patron, Dr. Schupp, expressed thus: “Nowadays that every
bumpkin makes his son study for the ministry, we have them scrambling
about the country begging for promotion, and grumbling because it does not
come as fast as they expect. The learned son is a poor curate, with no
benefice. Such a to-do about this--complaints, murmurs, and what not! Why
did he not learn a trade in addition to his theology? Luke the Evangelist
was a theologus and medicus as well, and a painter to boot. Paul in his
youth studied divinity at the feet of Gamaliel, but he was a carpet
manufacturer besides. Was the Kaiser Rudolph a worse Emperor for being as
well a clever craftsman? ‘If I could recall my past years and begin life
again,’ said Dr. Schupp, ‘I would not become a student only, but learn a
trade besides. Then, if the thankless world kicked me, I would measure
its foot for a boot; if it made faces at me, I would paint its portrait
for it; if my divinity did not agree with its stomach, I would dose it
with purgatives like Luke. I would make the world respect me for my
diligence in trade, if it turned up its nose at my theology. Anyhow, I
would not go about snivelling and crying poverty and want of promotion.’”
To this speech of Dr. Schupp, Paullini adds a few pertinent remarks. “The
lad I was telling you about,” he says, “had a hankering after tailoring.
Well, tailoring is an honourable and useful profession. Was not Moses
bidden, ‘Thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, for glory
and for beauty. And thou shalt speak unto all that are wise-hearted, whom
I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they may make Aaron
garments.’ Tailors filled with the spirit of wisdom! Why despise the craft
which God has honoured?”
It must be allowed that there is sense in this little digression.
Doubtless it would be well if not only those destined for the ministry,
but all the sons of the higher classes of society, were taught some manual
employment in addition to the cultivation of their intellectual faculties.
That our grammar schools should take the hint is not to be anticipated;
masters and governors have the same implicit confidence in classic studies
as the universal panacea that Dr. Paullini professes for the rod and Dr.
Sangrado for cold water and blood-letting. I do not dispute the fact that
the most useful knowledge for a lad to acquire who is destined for
colonial farming, or for a mercantile life at home, is Greek prosody; but
I suggest that an acquaintance with carpentering, land-surveying, or
book-keeping might be found advantageous in a secondary degree.
Lockjaw is to be treated in the same manner, asserts our author, and he
tells an amusing anecdote on the subject from Volquard Iversen.
Nicolas Vorburg was an Oriental traveller. In the course of his wanderings
he reached Agra, the capital of the Great Cham. The European was
introduced to His Majesty at the dinner-hour, and found the monarch just
returned from the expedition, and as hungry as a hunter. A bowl of rice
was brought in. The Great Cham dipped his hands into it, and ladled so
much rice as they would hold into his capacious mouth, distended to the
utmost conceivable extent. But the Great Cham had overestimated the
capabilities of the distension of his jaws, and they became dislocated. At
the sight, the servants were distracted with fear. The nobles stroked
their chins in uncertainty how to act, the priests had recourse to their
devotions, but no one assisted the monarch out of his dilemma. He sat upon
his imperial throne purple in the face, his eyes distended with horror,
his mouth gaping, and full of rice. Suffocation was imminent. Nicolas
Vorburg, without even prostrating himself before the emperor, ran up the
steps of his throne, and hit him a violent crack with the palm of his
hand upon the cheek. The rice fell out of his mouth upon the imperial lap,
some, it is surmised, descended the imperial red-lane. Another slap
accomplished the relief of the monarch, and set the jaw once more in
working order. At the same moment the servants screamed at the outrage
committed upon the sacred majesty of the emperor, the nobles drew their
swords to avenge it, and the priests converted their prayers for the
recovery of their king into curses on the head of him who had
sacrilegiously raised his hand to violate his divinity. Poor Vorburg would
have been made into mincemeat, had not the emperor providentially
recovered his breath in time to administer a reproof to his over-zealous
subjects. He acknowledged the relief afforded him by the stranger by a
present of a thousand rupees.
A tailor had a son who was half-witted. The father was out one day, and
the child, who was left in the house, after the manner of children, looked
about him in quest of some mischief which he might perpetrate. A pair of
elegant breeches, just completed by his father, and designed for the legs
of a nobleman, hung suspended from the wall. The child made a figured
pattern upon the amber silk with his finger, dipped at intervals in the
ink-pot. The mother was the first to discover the transformation of the
breeches, and, not regarding the alteration in the same light as did her
child, caught up the yard-measure and administered a castigation to the
culprit, sufficient to “stir up the stagnating juices, dissolve the
precipitating salts, and purify the coagulating humours,” in at least one
portion of the lad’s body. The youth, under the impression that high art
is never appreciated at first sight, made himself scarce for some hours.
The father, on his return, used every effort to obliterate the flowering
of ink which his son had drawn over the amber breeches, but with only a
limited degree of success--so limited, in fact, that the nobleman for whom
they were destined utterly refused to invest his person in them, and they
were returned on the tailor’s hands. The boy, towards evening, impelled by
hunger, had returned home, and was soothing his injured feelings with
bread and butter, when the father re-entered the house. In a moment the
parental left hand had grasped the scruff of his neck, whilst the right
hand dexterously completed the stirring up the stagnant juices, dissolving
of precipitating salts, and purifying of coagulating humours with such
success, that Dr. Paullini assures us the child grew up a miracle of
discretion, and never after decorated articles of clothing other than his
own pinafore.
Under the heading of “Swollen Breasts,” the learned doctor gives us his
ideas on the subject of schoolmasters and their titles. These remarks are
sensible enough in their way, but hardly come under the heading he has
selected for the chapter. Connected still more vaguely with swollen
breasts is the commentary on some verses in the twenty-first chapter of
St. John’s Gospel, which closes the section.
To those who suffer from toothaches he recommends the practice of a
learned professor under whom he studied. This man suffered excruciating
torture from his teeth at night. The professor, the moment that his
sufferings began, was wont to leave his bed and spend his night in jumping
on to his table, and then jumping down again, till the pain ceased.
Paullini does not state the feelings of those who slept in the room
immediately underneath that occupied by Dr. Erasmus Vinding; neither does
it seem clear at first sight how the jumping diversion is connected with
the subject of the rod, concerning the merits of which the book treats;
but on further consideration the connection becomes apparent. Dr. Paullini
being silent on this point, we have but the light of nature to guide us to
the conclusion that the saltatory performances of Dr. Erasmus would arouse
and exasperate the other lodgers into an application of the universal
panacea to his scantily protected person.
For constitutional indolence the rod is inestimable; the monotony of its
use as a specific may, however, be pleasingly varied by an application of
corporal punishment in the following disguised form, which, if severe, is
nevertheless infallible as a cure. Hermann Habermann, a native of Mikla,
deserves the credit of being the first to communicate it to the medical
profession. Habermann had spent many years in Iceland, and it was there
that he saw the treatment in use. An artisan suffering from indolence was
recommended by a native doctor to let himself be sewn up in a sack stuffed
with wool, and then be dragged about, rolled down hill, thumped, kicked,
and jumped upon by his friends and acquaintances. When he emerged from the
sack he was to take a draught to open his pores, and to go to bed. The
remedy was tried, and succeeded.
A somewhat similar cure came under Paullini’s personal observation. A
nobleman had a jester who was dotingly fond of fowls. He stole all his
master’s poultry, so that his master was obliged to do without eggs for
his breakfast. The fool, moreover, was deficient in fun, and was by no
means worth his keep. At last his master determined on correcting him
severely. He had him sewn up in a hop-bag and well thrashed, and then
rolled down hill and thrashed again. The fool never stole eggs from that
day forward, and from being but a poor fool he became one famous for his
brilliant parts and sparkling humour.
For tertian fever, the rod is an admirable specific. A lawyer once
suffered from this complaint, which left him at times able to continue his
avocation. He had brought upon himself the ill-feeling of a certain
gentleman whom he had, in one of his pleadings, turned into ridicule. This
person determined to punish the advocate as soon as a convenient
opportunity presented itself. The opportunity came. The lawyer was riding
home one day, past the house of the nobleman, when the latter descried
him, and immediately sent him a message requesting a moment’s private
conversation. The unfortunate advocate fell into the trap. Expecting to
get employment in a fresh suit, he hurried eagerly to the castle, only to
find the gates closed upon him and all egress prevented. In another moment
the insulted gentleman stood before him.
“Vile bloodhound of the law!” he exclaimed, “you have long escaped the
punishment due to you for your insolence and temerity. You disgraced me
publicly, and I shall revenge myself upon you by degrading you in a manner
certain to humble your pride. Yet I am merciful. I give you your choice of
two modes of suffering. You shall either sit on an ant-hill, in the
clothing provided you by nature, till you have learned by heart the seven
penitential psalms; or you shall run the gauntlet in the same _dégagé_
costume round my courtyard, where will be ranged all my servants armed
with rods wherewith to belabour you.”
The hapless lawyer cast himself on his knees before the nobleman, and
implored mercy. He pleaded that he had his wife and children to provide
for; but the other replied that this was not to the point, as he had no
intention of injuring the lady or the infants. Then the lawyer alleged his
illness, saying that the access of fever would be on him next day, and
that the punishment wherewith he was threatened--either of them in
fact--might terminate fatally.
“That,” replied the injured gentleman, “can only be ascertained by
experiment. My own impression is that the ants or the whips will produce a
counter irritation, which may prove beneficial. Still,” he continued,
stroking his chin, “we mortals are all liable to err, and my impression
may be unfounded. I will frankly acknowledge my mistake if convinced by
the result taking the direction you anticipate.”
Reluctantly the poor advocate made his election of the treatment he was to
undergo. From the ants and the penitential psalms he recoiled with horror,
and he chose shudderingly to run the gauntlet. So he ran it.
Black and blue, bruised and bleeding, the wretched man was dismissed at
last, to return to the bosom of his family. The nobleman was right, the
lawyer was forever cured of his tertian fever.
In another work of the same author (_Zeitkürzende, erbauliche Lust_, 8vo,
Frankfort, 1693) the doctor argues the case, whether an honourable man may
thrash his wife; and concludes that such a course of action entirely
depends on the behaviour and temperament of the wife.
Woman was created to be good, quiet, and orderly; when she is otherwise
she is going contrary to her vocation, and art must be employed to
correct nature. Eve was given to Adam, reasons Paullini, to be a helpmeet
to him, and not to be the plague and worry of his life. Woman’s vocation
is to be a modest and gentle angel, and not to be a brazen, furious demon.
Every woman is either one or the other. If she is as heaven made her, she
takes to the bit and rein readily, is easily managed without the whip, and
is perfectly docile. If, however, she is what the evil one would have her,
she takes the bit in her teeth, sets back her ears, plunges, and kicks;
and woe to the man who comes within reach of her tongue, her claws, or her
toes. Then there is need for the rod. To a good wife, “there is a golden
ornament upon her, and her bands are purple lace: thou shalt put her on as
a robe of honour, and shalt put her about thee as a crown of joy.” But as
for the bad wife, deal with her after the advice of the poet Joachim
Rachel:--
Thou wilt be constrained her head to punch,
And let not thine eye then spare her:
Grasp the first weapon that comes to hand--
Horsewhip, or cudgel, or walking-stick,
Or batter her well with the warming-pan;
Dread not to fling her down on the earth,
Nerve well thine arm, let thy heart be stout
As iron, as brass, or stone, or steel.
For no wrath is equal to a woman’s wrath; and better is it to live in the
cage of an African lion, or of a dragon torn from its whelps, than to live
in the house with such a woman. Of all wickedness the worst is woman’s
wickedness. Why, asks the doctor, what sort of a life did Jupiter lead in
heaven with his precious Juno? Poor god! he let her get the upper hand of
him. Had he but taken his stick to her instead of scolding, he might have
had Olympus quiet, and have saved himself from being badgered through
eternity.
They managed things better in Rome. A man had a wife full of bad tempers.
He went to the oracle and asked what should be done with a garment which
had moths in it. “Dust it,” was the oracular response. “And,” added the
man, “I have a wife who is full of her nasty little tempers; should not
she be treated in a similar manner?” “To be sure,” answered the oracle,
“dust her daily.” And never was a truer or better bit of advice given by
an oracle.
The work of Dr. Paullini called forth others in response, and doubtless
enthusiastic devotees of the rod abounded. His views were, however,
combated by others. From a tract against the use of the rod I cull one
curious and droll story, wherewith to conclude this article:--
A husband accompanied his wife to confession. The lady having opened her
griefs, the father who was shriving her insisted on administering a severe
penitential scourging. The husband, hearing the first stroke inflicted on
his better half, interfered, and urged that his wife was delicate, and
that as he and she were one flesh, it would be better for him, as the
stronger vessel, to receive the scourging intended for his helpmate. The
confessor having consented to this substitution, the man knelt in his
wife’s place, while she retired from the confessional. Whack! whack! went
the cat, followed by a moan from the good man’s lips.
“Harder!--harder!” ejaculated the wife; “I am a grievous sinner!”
Whack! whack! whack!
“Lay it on!” cried she; “I am the worst of sinners.”
Whack! whack! and a howl from the sufferer.
“Never mind his cries, father!” exclaimed she; “remember only my sins.
Make him smart here, that I may escape in purgatory.”
“HERMIPPUS REDIVIVUS”
“Man,” said the learned Prioli, “is composed of soul, body, and goods. In
his pilgrimage through life these component parts are constantly exposed
to three mortal enemies: the devils, who are ever seeking the destruction
of his soul; the doctors, who are intent on ruining his constitution; and
the lawyers, who seek to rob him of his goods.”
We will put the devils aside for a moment, the lawyers, too, with the
tongs, and devote our attention to the doctors. We have already examined
the medical treatise entitled _Flagellum Salutis_, wherein was exposed the
excellence of the whip for the cure of every disorder to which mortality
is heir. We propose considering another equally startling tractate in this
paper, one more modern by a few years than that of Dr. Paullini, but its
superior in absurdity. The title of the work is “Hermippus Redivivus, or a
curious physico-medical examination of the extraordinary manner in which
he extended his life to 115 years by inhaling the breath of little girls;
taken from a Roman memorial, but now supported on medical grounds, as
also illustrated and elucidated by a wondrous discovery of philosophical
chemistry, by Johan Heinrich Cohausen, M.D.” 8vo, 1743.[2] This
extraordinary book is adorned with an illustration, representing a
pedagogue with a big nose, of Brobdingnagian proportions, keeping a mixed
school of solemn little girls in jackets and aprons, and little prigs of
boys in stocks, knee-breeches, coats, and wigs. One little boy, whose body
is the size of the master’s hand, sits reading a book on his right knee.
On the ground at his left is a little maiden, just reaching to the top of
the master’s gaiters. A tiny dog is sitting up begging in the midst of a
class in the middle distance; and in the background, behind a row of
urchins who are not looking at their books, is a cat as big as any one of
them, attacking a cage containing a singing bird. The whole of this
strange work is built on a Roman inscription, said to have been found in
the seventeenth century, and figured by Thomas Reinsius in his _Syntagma
Inscriptionum Antiquarum_, and afterwards by Johann Keyser in his
_Parnassus Clivensis_. This inscription, which is almost certainly not
genuine, runs as follows:--
AESCULAPIO . ET . SANITATI .
L . CLODIUS . HERMIPPUS.
QUI . VIXIT . ANNOS . CXV . DIES . V .
PUELLARUM . ANHELITU .
QUOD . ETIAM . POST MORTEM
EIUS.
NON . PARUM . MIRANTUR . PHYSICI .
IAM . POSTERI . SIC . VITAM . DUCITE .
That is to say: “To Æsculapius and to health, L. Clodius Hermippus
dedicates this, who lived 115 years, 5 days, on the breath of little
girls, which, even after his death, not a little astonishes physicians. Ye
who follow, protract your life in like manner.”
Other old writers, as Cujacius and Dalechampius, quote similar
inscriptions, as “L. Clodius Hirpanus vixit Annos CXV. Dies V. alitus
Puerorum anhelitu,” and “L. Clodius Hirpanus vixit Annos CLV. Dies, V.
Puerorum halitu refocillatus et educatus.”
These inscriptions are sufficiently like and unlike to make it more than
probable that they are all forgeries. It is hardly to be conceived that
there should have been two individuals with names so very similar, living
similar lengths of time,[3] the one on little girls’ breath, the other on
that of little boys. If, however, we are to suppose them genuine, we
have:--“Lucius Clodius Hermippus dying aged 115 years, 5 days”; “Lucius
Clodius Hirpanus dying aged 155 years, 5 days.”
However, the authenticity of these monuments is of little importance. Let
us to our book.
Dr. Cohausen enters on a minute verbal commentary on the words of the
inscription, after having relieved his enthusiasm in a lengthy preface,
and a still longer epistle dedicatory to a doctor of his acquaintance.
The commentary is as careful as though life hung upon each letter of the
text. Having completed this portion of his work, the author gives rein to
his fancy, and elaborates from his internal consciousness a life of L.
Clodius Hermippus. This is too curious to be passed over. Dr. Cohausen
asks how the subject of the inscription managed to live upon the breath of
little girls. He inquires whether Hermippus was a very wealthy man, and
enters into reasons which appear to him conclusive to the contrary. He
makes elaborate calculations as to the number of children who would have
been necessary to supply breath to Hermippus, supposing them to have been
changed every five years, and he to have adopted his system of prolonging
life at the age of sixty. After having discussed the question whether
Lucius Clodius were a schoolmaster, or the director of an hospital for
children, he concludes that he was the head of an orphanage supported by
Government; and when he has quite satisfied his mind upon this point, Dr.
Cohausen proceeds to sketch the daily routine of the life of Hermippus, as
follows:--
“The orphanage, which was like a palace, had many handsome dwelling and
dining-rooms, adapted for the daily uses of himself and the children, so
that the breath and exhalations from such a number of little girls might
fill the enclosed air, and might mingle to compose a salubrious vapour;
which, absorbed into the lungs of Hermippus, might the better exercise the
desired properties. In these rooms he spent with them the greater part of
the day, occupying the time in friendly and agreeable conversation,
unfolding to them good rules of life, relating innocent stories, and
wisely pronouncing exhortations on the practice of virtue. Early in the
morning, when the noise of the awaking children aroused him, at his
command they kindled in the room a fire, in order that the air, which had
become thickened during the night, might be rarified. In damp weather they
perfumed it with the best perfumes several times in the day, because they
had been instructed by their master how necessary this was to the
preservation of health. When the aged man left his room the little damsels
waited on him in the breakfast-chamber, and wished him a happy morning.
Often he explained to them the dreams which they related to him, making
them conduce to their moral edification. Some of those sufficiently old to
have an inkling of the art of flattery, combed out his snow-white hair;
others smoothed out his long white beard; others, again, rubbed his back
with a coarse towel, which is considered good for the health of old
people. And if, at that period, tea or coffee had been drunk,
unquestionably they would have supplied him with it. At all events, we
may conclude, as these beverages were not then in vogue, that it is quite
possible to reach a great age without imbibing them. When school-time was
over they passed the rest of the day in childish sports, with the
permission of Hermippus. They jumped about, they played with their dolls,
sometimes they also sang, for old people consider nothing so good for
health, and so invigorating, as vocal music. And in this manner everything
conduced to assist the expirations of the little girls in supporting our
old man. If ever he was compelled to leave the room, one might see the
children dragging at his coat-tails to detain him, and fervently desiring
his return. Adjoining the orphanage was a pleasant garden, in which were
plants and flowers calculated by their odour to quicken the vital spirit,
and assist in the prolongation of life. With these the maidens daily
adorned the rooms. Into this garden Hermippus betook himself with all the
little girls, each provided with a doll; and he walked about with them in
it, chaffed them, romped, danced and sang, acting as though his limbs were
those of youth. A thousand little rogueries, a thousand little jokes on
the part of the tiny lasses assisted in enlivening him, for they possessed
the art of making themselves cheerful. They wreathed flowers, and placed a
crown of spring-blossoms on the white head of Hermippus, and thus he
spited the fates and reached an advanced age.”
Will it be believed that all this detail is pure invention on the part of
Dr. Cohausen?
The learned author next proceeds to reason upon the cause producing these
results; he solves the question why the breath of little girls should tend
to prolong life.
“The breath,” says Dr. Cohausen, “consists of an inhalation and an
exhalation: and if I speak scientifically, I say that when man breathes he
lets forth the thick and thin airs through his mouth and nostrils, which
he had before received into his lungs, where they had become impregnated
with the evaporations from his body, the subtilised watery particles and
vitalising blood, the balsamic and sulphuric atoms. Wherefore the human
breath when outside the spiracles has a material character, namely, an
exhalation from the vapours and gases which are intermixed with the blood
and sap of the human body; and it is so especially in the breath of little
girls. So observes Ficinus. This air is warm or tepid, and it moves and is
endowed unmistakably with life, and like an animal is composed of joints
and limbs, so that it can turn itself about, and not only so, but it has a
soul also; so that we may certainly predicate that it is an animal
composed of vapour, and endowed with reason. Consequently, any one who
draws into his lungs this breath or conglomerated vapour, must necessarily
absorb into his system the properties of that body from which it emanated,
and from which it derived its being. For we know by experience that the
air which enters the lungs dry, goes forth carrying with it moisture, as
may be seen by breathing on a glass, or in cold weather. Also, when we
inhale the breath of any one who is ill, we are conscious of receiving
infection. On the other hand, it is manifest that the breath of a young
and vigorous person, charged with powerful volatile salts, will have a
balsamic and vitalising capacity, or at the least a mechanical elasticity,
which must communicate vigour.” The doctor quotes with approval the
opinion of Van Helmont, that the air absorbed into the lungs penetrates
the whole system, and circulates through every part, to the very hair,
catching up volatile salts on its passage. Thence he concludes that the
exhalations of little girls, who are brimming over with vitality, and
heaven knows what life-giving salts, must be charged with some of their
redundant vitality; and if this breath be inhaled by an old man, he
assumes into himself, and absorbs into his constitution, that life which
had been cast off as superfluous by the children.
Quæ spiramina dat puella? Nectar.
Dat rores animæ suave olentes,
Dat nardumque thymumque cinnamumque,
Et mel, quale jugis tegunt Hymetti
Aut in Cecropiis apes rosetis,
Quæ si multa mihi voranda dentur,
Immortalis in iis repente fiam.
The third line, with its repetition of “_umque_,” is peculiar rather than
elegant. The doctor rates the schoolmasters of his day for smoking during
class hours: he tells them that they are losing an opportunity of
inhaling the most invigorating salts at no expense.
Quando doces pueros, tibi fistula semper in ore est,
Atque scholæ fumos angulus omnis habet.
“Oh, my Orbilius!” he exclaims, “wherefore dost thou do so? Dost thou
complain of the stuffiness of the schoolroom. Thou art mistaken, Orbilius,
these vapours are full of volatile salts, by which, if thou wert wise,
thou wouldst attain a long life. Away with thy nasty pipe, and suck in
rather these redolent exhalations whereby thou mayest become healthy and
aged.”
It must not be supposed that the scientific--or physico-medical, as the
doctor calls it--portion of the subject is dismissed in such few words.
The author dilates on the theory, turns it over, tosses it about, takes a
bite, squeezes it, holds it up for admiration, and then reluctantly puts
it aside. In the course of his physico-medical argument, he introduces a
few illustrative anecdotes. One of these, taken from P. Borellus, is to
this effect: A servant much devoted to his master, on his return from a
journey, found his lord dead and prepared for burial. Full of grief, he
cast himself on the deceased, and kissing his pallid lips poured forth a
whirlwind of sighs. The breath thus emitted penetrated to the lungs of the
corpse, inflated them, and the dead opened his eyes, winked, and sat up.
The sighs of the faithful domestic had fanned into flame the expiring,
and as all had deemed expired, vital spark. From Orubelius our author
quotes another story in confirmation of his hypothesis:--
A woman had died in her first confinement, or, at all events, had fallen
into a state which was believed by the attendants and by Orubelius, who
was the physician present, to be death. She lay thus for a quarter of an
hour devoid of sense and feeling, with pale face, stationary pulse, and
with lungs which had ceased to play. A maid-servant who thus beheld her,
opened her mouth, and breathed into it; whereupon the patient revived. The
physician then asked the girl where she had learned the use of this simple
yet efficient restorative, and the servant replied that she had seen it
practised upon new-born children with the happiest results. The author
also assures us of the beneficial effect produced by wringing the necks of
poultry before a person _in articulo mortis_, and making the cocks and
hens breathe out their souls into the mouth of the dying, whereby he is
not unfrequently restored, and becomes quite well and chirrupy.
But, continues Dr. Cohausen, it is not only the exhalations from the lungs
which are life-generative, but also those from the pores. The pores are
little mouths situated all over the body, constantly engaged in the
aëration of the blood; they inhale the surrounding atmosphere and then
exhale it again, charged with balsamic and sulphurous particles taken up
from the system. Men’s bodies are pneumatic-hydraulic machines, composed
of fluid and solid materials, and health depends on the fluids being
prevented from coagulating, by being stirred up by the constant operations
of the currents of air which penetrate the frame through the pores and
mouth. The solid portion of the body is disposed to harden and dry up and
become stiff, and this produces age and decay; but if the circulation of
the fluids be kept up by the healthful infusion of fresh vital force and
living energies, then decrepitude and death may be almost indefinitely
postponed.
Now the lips of the little mouths or pores all over the person can be kept
flexible by oil, and therefore enabled to perform their functions with
facility. Thus Pollio, an ancient soldier of the Emperor Augustus, when
asked how he had succeeded in prolonging his energies over a hundred
years, replied that he had daily moistened his outer man with oil, and his
inner man with honey. Dr. Cohausen proceeds to lay down that it is better
to absorb the exhalations of little girls than those of little boys,
because females are more oily than males--a view we in no way feel
inclined to dispute, without having recourse to the receipt of Mocrodius
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