CAIN AND HIS WORSHIPPERS
the spell of the mirror—the invocation to cain—the witch-history of cain and abel

“And within the box first of all put a good layer of coarse salt, and form on the salt a ring or wreath of incense, and in the middle of this a cross of cummin, and above all put the small mirror.  Then take the photograph of your lover, but not the real photograph but the negative, because it must be on a plate of glass (lastra di vetro).  Then take some hairs of the lover and join them to the photograph (sono uniti dalla parte del quore), and then take a fine sprig of rue.

“And with all this nicely arranged in the box, take a boat and sail out to sea; and if a woman works the spell she must take three men with her only, and if a man three women and no other person.  And they must go forth at an instant when the moon shines brightly (risplende bene) on the mirror.  Then hold the left hand over the mirror, and hold up the rue with the right.  Then repeat the following: [255]

Incantesimo.

“Luna! Luna! Luna!
Tu che siei tanto bella!
E nel tuo cerchio rachiude
Un si pessimo sogetto
Rachiude Chaino che per gelosia
Uccise il proprio fratello.

“Ed io che per la gelosia
Del mio amante non ho potuto
Ne bere e ne mangiare,
Ne colle amiche
Non posso conversare,
Io l’amo tanto, tanto,
E non sono corrisposta,
Quanto lo vorrei e per la sua
La sua fredezza io ne sono
Tanto gelosa non so qual’ malarono
Quale malarono io commetterei,
Vado a letto non passo riposare,
Mi viene visioni che
Il mio amante mi debba ingannare.

“Luna, Luna, mia bella Luna!
Che tanto bella siei e ben’ risplende,
Ti prego volere pregare per me
Chaino che per gelosia
Uccise il proprio fratello,
Ed io vorrei punire il mio amante,
Ma non farlo morire
Ma pero farlo soffrire,
Che non abbia mai bene
Ne giorno, ne notte,
Non possa ne bene ne mangiare.
E la notte non possa riposare,
E Chaino col suo fascio,
Suo fascio, di pruini,
Il mio amante dal su’letto
Puo le fare, alzare
E alla casa mia
Farlo presto ritornare!

“Con questo ramo di ruta
Lo bagno nel mare,
E bagno le mie due compagne
Che pronunzierrano queste parole
Tale [secondo il nome] colla ai uta
Di Chaino vai dalla tua amante
Per non lasciarla mai più.

“Moon, moon, O beauteous moon!
As thou art fair and bright,
I pray thee, pray for me;
Cain who from jealousy
Slew his own brother born,
As I would punish well
The one whom I yet love,
Yet would not cause his death,
So may he suffer thus:
May suffering be his lot
By day as in the night,
May he not eat or drink,
Nor may he sleep at night!

“Thou who from heaven on high
Seest all things, here behold
This casket well prepared!
The mystic tapers four
All lighted, look on them!
Then in this mirror look.
Then if thou wilt but speak
Three words—then all the thorns
Which on thy back thou bear’st,
All in a bundle bound,
Will pass into the life,
The body and the heart
Of him whom yet I love,
So that he sleep no more,
And be compelled to rise,
Compelled to clothe himself,
And hasten to my home,
Never to leave me more.

“Now, with this branch of rue,
Which I dip in the sea,
I sprinkle both my friends,
That they may speak these words:
That ---, [259a] by the aid
Of Cain shalt seek thy love,
And never leave her more.

“If thou wilt grant me this,
Cause a high wind to blow,
Extinguishing the lights.
O Cain! O Cain! O Cain!”

Before proceeding further, I would explain that the use of a photograph, which must be a negative on glass, instead of being, as was suggested to me, a modern interpolation, is, strangely enough, a proof of the antiquity of the rite.  In the old time, a picture or portrait painted in transparent colour on glass was held up to the moon that its rays might pass through it and enchant the subject.  And among the Romans, when one had a portrait of any one cut on diaphanous stone, it was used in the same way.  I had in my possession once such a portrait-gem, [259b] and a fine needle-hole had been bored through the right eye so as to blind the original of the likeness.  And I had a friend who lived in Russia, who discovered that a person who hated him had obtained his photograph, and pricked holes with a very fine needle in the eyes to blind him.  The negative of a photograph on glass would very naturally occur as a substitute for a picture.  But what is most important is that this mention of the translucent negative proves fully that the whole ceremony, in its minutest detail, has actually been preserved to this day, and that the incantation, long as it is, exists as I have given it, since every line in it corresponds to the rite.  And as I know that it was gathered by a witch and fortune-teller among others, and carefully compared and collated, I am sure that it is authentic and traditional.

“Ma vienne omai che già tiene ’l confine
   D’ambedue gli emisperi, e tocca l’onda
Sotto Sibilia, Caino e le spine
   E gia iernotte fu la Luna tonda.”

“But now he comes who doth the borders hold
Of the two hemispheres, and drive the waves
Under the sibyl, Cain, with many thorns.
And yesternight the moon was round and full;
Take care that it may never do thee harm
At any time when in the gloomy wood.”

I would now note that the thorns which Cain carries signify, not only in modern Italian, but in old Roman sorcery, the sting of hatred and of jealousy.  It is a most apparent and natural simile, and is found from the crown of thorns on Christ to the Voodoo sorcery in Western America.  Miss Mary Owen knew a black girl in Missouri who, as a proof of being Christianised, threw away the thorn which she kept as a fetish to injure an enemy.  But in early times the thorn was universally known as symbolical of sin, just as Cain was regarded as the first real sinner.  Therefore the two were united.  Menzel tells us in his Christliche Symbolik (Part I. p. 206) that it is a legend that “there were no thorns before the Fall; they first grew with sin, therefore thorns are a symbol of the sorrow or pain which came from sin.”  Of all of which there is a mass of old German myths and legends, which I spare the reader, for I have endeavoured in this comment to avoid useless myth-mongering in order to clearly set forth the connection between Cain, his thorns, and the moon.

“Strepsiades.  If I were to buy a Thessalian witch, and then draw down the moon by night, and then shut her up in a round helmet-case like a mirror, and then keep watching her—

Socrates.  What good would that do you, then?

Strepsiades.  What!  If the moon were not to rise any more anywhere, I should not pay the interest.

Socrates.  Because what?

Strepsiades.  Because the money is lent on interest.” [262]

These instances could be multiplied.  What I have given are enough to show the antiquity of the conjuration; and I also venture to declare that any Italian scholar who is familiar with these formulas of sorcery will admit that, making all due allowance for transmission among peasants, the language, or words, or turns of expression in this incantation denote great antiquity.

“And Cain also was a good man, and set himself contentedly to work, believing that he could become as rich as his brother, but he did not succeed in this, for which reason he became so envious of Abel that it resulted in tremendous hate, and he swore to be revenged.

“‘Non chiamate questo, Abele!
E Chaino, non lo vedete,
Per la gola della monete
Il fratello ammazato,
E dei suoi panni e vestito.
O Chaino or siei chiamato
Alla presenza del gran Dio,
Che a morte ti ’a condannato
Che di richezza eri assetato.’

“But God replied: [265]

“A punishment thou shalt have because thou didst slay thy brother from a desire to become rich.  Likewise thou didst meddle with witchcraft and sorceries, as did thy brother.  And Abel made much money and was very rich, because he did not love God, but sorcerers.  Albeit, ever good he never did evil things, and many good, wherefore God pardoned him.  But thou shalt not be pardoned because thou didst imbrue thy lands in human blood, and, what is worse, in thy own brother’s blood.

“The thorns [266] which thou didst put upon thy brother are now for thee.

“Thou shalt be imprisoned in the moon, and from that place shalt behold the good and the evil of all mankind.

“And the bundle of thorns shall never leave thee, and every time when any one shall conjure thee, the thorns shall sting thee cruelly; they shall draw thy blood.

“And thus shalt thou be compelled to do that which shall be required of thee by the sorcerers or by conjuring, and if they ask of thee that which thou wilt not give, then the thorns shall goad thee until the sorceries shall cease.”

This is clearly enough no common popular nursery tale, such as make up collections of Tuscan tales or popular legends, gathered from pious or picturesque peasants.  Through it all runs a deep current of dark heresy, the deliberate contravention of accepted Scripture, and chiefly the spell of sorcery and deadly witchcraft.  It is a perfect and curious specimen of a kind of forbidden literature which was common during the Middle Ages, and which is now extremely rare.  This literature or lore was the predecessor of Protestantism, and was the rock on which it was based.

There have always been in the world since time began certain good people whose taste or fate it was to be invariably on the wrong side, or in the opposition; like the Irishman just landed from a ship in America, who, being asked how he would vote, replied, “Against the Government, of course, whatever it is,” they are always at war with the powers that be.  With Jupiter they would have opposed the Titans; with Prometheus, Jupiter; as early Christians they would have rebelled against the Pagans, and as heretics, Orientalised Templars, Vaudois, illuminati, sorcerers, and witches, they would have undermined the Church, never perceiving that its system or doctrine was, au fond, fetish, like their own.  Among these rebels it was long the rule to regard those gods or men who were specially reviled by their foes or oppressors as calumniated.  Even Satan was to them “the puir deil;” according to the Taborites, an oppressed elder brother of Christ, or a kind of Man in an Iron Mask kept out of his rights by Jehovah the XIV.  These discontented ones deified all who had been devilled, found out that Jezebel had been a femme incomprise, and the Scarlet Woman only an interesting highly-coloured variant of the ancient hoary myth of Mademoiselle or Miss Salina the Innocent.  When Judas was mentioned, they solemnly remarked that there was a great deal to be said on both sides of that question; while others believed that Ananias and Sapphira had been badly sat upon, and deserved to be worshipped as saints of appropriation—a cult, by the way, the secret observance of which has by no means died out at the present day—several great men being regarded in Paris as its last great high priests.

Considering what human nature is, and its instincts to opposition, we can see that there must have been naturally a sect who regarded Cain as a misjudged martyr.  Abel appeared to them as the prosperous well-to-do bourgeois, high in favour with the Lord, a man with flocks, while Cain was a tiller of the ground, a poor peasant out of favour.  It must be admitted that in the Book of Genesis, in the history of the first murder, we are much reminded of the high priest Chalcas in La Belle Helene, where he exclaims, “Trop de fleurs!” and expresses a preference for cattle.  It is the old story of the socialists and anarchists, which is ever new.

The witches and sorcerers of early times were a widely spread class who had retained the beliefs and traditions of heathenism with all its license and romance and charm of the forbidden.  At their head were the Promethean Templars, at their tail all the ignorance and superstition of the time, and in their ranks every one who was oppressed or injured either by the nobility or the Church.  They were treated with indescribable cruelty, in most cases worse than beasts of burden, for they were outraged in all their feelings, not at intervals for punishment, but habitually by custom, and they revenged themselves by secret orgies and fancied devil-worship, and occult ties, and stupendous sins, or what they fancied were such.  I can seriously conceive—what no writer seems to have considered—that there must have been an immense satisfaction in selling or giving one’s self to the devil, or to any power which was at war with their oppressors.  So they went by night, at the full moon, and sacrificed to Diana, or “later on” to Satan, and danced and rebelled.  It is very well worth noting that we have all our accounts of sorcerers and heretics from Catholic priests, who had every earthly reason for misrepresenting them, and did so.  In the vast amount of ancient witchcraft still surviving in Italy there is not much anti-Christianity, but a great deal of early heathenism.  Diana, not Satan, is still the real head of the witches.  The Italian witch, as the priest Grillandus said, stole oil to make a love-charm. [269]  But she did not, and does not say, as he declared, in doing so, “I renounce Christ.”  There the priest plainly lied.  The whole history of the witch mania is an ecclesiastical falsehood, in which such lies were subtly grafted on the truth.  But in due time the Church, and the Protestants with them, created a Satanic witchcraft of their own, and it is this after-growth which is now regarded as witchcraft in truth.

Cain-worshippers and witches seem to have been all in the same boat.  I think it very likely that in these two traditions which I have given we have a remnant of the actual literature of the Cainites, that Gnostic-revived and mystical sect of the Middle Ages.  But I doubt not that its true origin is far older than Christianity, and lost in earliest time.

One last remark.  We are told in the tale that Abel, having become rich, “cut” the Lord, or would speak to him no longer.  I suppose that he dropped the synagogue and Yom kippur, and became a Reformirter, and his children in due time Goyim.  Also that he wanted to become a wizard, which may be a hint that he was “no conjuror.”  But it is seriously a proof of the naïveté, and consequent probable antiquity of the tale, that these details are not “wrote sarcastic,” nor intended for humour.  And it is also interesting to observe how impartially the narrator declares that Cain was “a good man,” and how he, in pleading his own cause before the Lord, insists that in killing Abel he only inadvertently forgot himself for an instant.  One almost expects to hear him promise that he will not do it again.

It is a striking proof of the antiquity of this tradition of Cain, as I have given it, that the witch or wizard sympathy for the first murderer is in it unmistakable.  The sending Cain to the moon, instead of hell, is understood to be a mitigation of his sentence.  In his work on magicians and witches, a.d. 1707, Goldschmidt devotes many pages to set forth what was believed by all the learned of his time, that Cain was the father of all the wizards, and his children, the Cainites, the creators of the Gaber, fire-idolators, Cabiri, magic soothsaying, and so forth.  So the tradition lived on, utterly forgotten by all good people, and yet it is to me so quaint as to be almost touching to find it still existing, a fragment of an old creed outworn here among poor witches in Florence.

From an article in La Rivista delle Tradizione Popolare of July 1894, by F. Montuori, I learn that in a little work by San Prato on “Cain and the Thorns according to Dante and Popular Tradition,” Ancona, 1881, which I have not seen, the history of Cain is given much as told by Maddalena.  What is chiefly interesting in the version of Maddalena is, however, wanting in all the folklore on the subject collected by others; it is the manifest trace of Cainism, of sympathy with the first murder, and in its heresy.  This opens for us a far wider field of research and valuable historical information than the rather trivial fact that Cain is simply the Man in the Moon.

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh and London

[3a]  Nel miglio salotto di recevimento.  This is all an accurate picture of old Florentine customs.

[3b]  Necessità fa la vecchia trottare.  On which proverb Matteo Villani comments as follows: “And thus he truly verified the saying of Valerius Maximus, that ‘the wants caused by human weakness are a common bond of security,’ all of which is briefly expressed in the French proverb, ‘Need makes the old woman (or old age) bestir herself.’”  Valerius Maximus was the prototype of Guicciardini.

[8] “Chiese alla regina di dormir seco.”  Which was certainly very plain blunt speaking, even for the time.

[14] “Le cattive nove volano,
Le male son sempre vere;
Prima l’annunzio, poi malanno,
Chi me ne da una calda, e chi una fredda.”

—Italian Proverb.

[15]  The cappa is a cloak with a hood or “capuchin;” a cotta is the stole worn by Catholic priests.

[21]  Folletto.  This, which meant originally an airy tricksy sprite, is now applied not only to fairies and goblins in general, but also to every kind of supernatural apparition.  I have a book in which even comets are described as folletti.

[23]  Redi’s Bacco in Toscana is known to the most ignorant in Florence, there being very cheap editions of it constantly sold.

[24]  “Can a horn play second fiddle?” inquires Flaxius.  “This comes of trying to improve on the simple Italian text.”

[27]  Zoccoloni or Zoccolanti, sandalled friars of the lowest order, who are indeed common beggars.

[31] The partial inscription referred to is still on the column.

[33]  This is strikingly like the ceremony for the same purpose used by the ancient Romans, the object in both being to frighten away evil spirits.  Vide “Etruscan Roman Remains,” by C. G. Leland, p. 305.

[43]  Una vecchietta, tutta Gesù e Maria.

[47]  I have elsewhere explained that the fata in these traditions is a witch or sorcerer become a spirit.

[48a]  It may be conjectured from this context that the child was partly human in form, perhaps like the Pig-faced Lady, or not more swinish than William of Ardennes in face.

[48b]  Truly she was, to use a really ancient phrase, “ready to go the whole hog.”  It is said that Mahomet told his disciples that there was one part of a pig which they must not touch; but as he did not specify what it was, they among them devoured the entire animal.

[50]  “Symbola Heroica,” Antwerp, 1583.

[63]  Raised footway, high curbstone, causeway, bench.

[67]  “D’una gran purga bisogna avete,
E questa purga davero dovete
Farla all’ anima, cosi guarirete!”

[71]  It appears from this story that La Certosa was “even then as now” visited by strangers as one of the lions of Florence.

[77a]  This word is apparently allied to Marráno, an infidel Moor, miscreant, traitor, or to amaro, bitter or painful.

[77b]  A peculiarly Florentine word.  Renajo, sand-pit, a place so called near the Arno in Florence (Barretti’s Dictionary).  I can see several of these renaioli with their boats from the window at work before me as I write.  Vide “The Spirit of the Arno.”

[82]  “Echoes of Old Florence,” by Temple Leader.

[83]  Like Proteus, the evasive slippery nature of water and the light which plays on it accounts for this.

[92]  “Well, yes, I think you might;
A cart of hay went through this afternoon.”

I believe this is by Peter Pindar.  The Italian proverb probably suggested it.

[94]  Rizzar l’uovo di Pippo sù un píano.  “To do a difficult thing, or achieve it by tact and skill.”  This hints at the egg of Columbus.  But Columbus set the egg upright by breaking its end, which was not a fair game.  Any egg can be set on end on a marble table (I have done it), by patient balancing, without breaking.

[96]  “Florentine Life during the Renaissance,” by Walter B. Scaife.  Baltimore, 1893.

[98]  The diavolino of Gian di Bologna is of bronze, but popular tradition makes light of accuracy.

[103]  This is supposed to be addressed to another, not to the fairy.

[108]  Ucellato, caught like a bird, or, as they say on the Mississippi, “sniped.”

[126]  The reader may observe that these popular names of Oratorio and Orto are most likely to have given the prefix Or’.

[150]  Ha tanta lingua che spazzarebbe un forno, ò un cesso.  Said of virulent gossips.

[152]  Mago, which, like magus, implies more dignity than magician or sorcerer.

[153]  “The Mugnone, whose course has been shifted to the west, formerly flowed into the Arno, through the heart of the city.”—Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Central Italy.

[155]  L’anguilla si rizzo in piedi—“The eel rose upon her feet.”  This will remind the reader of some of the difficulties experienced by Gothic artists in depicting Eve and the Serpent.

[156]  There is much confusion here.  It appears that the fairy made the fountain now in the Signoria, and that Biancone saw this in a vision.

[158]  This refers to the satyrs who are among the bronze figures below Neptune.

[161a]  I here omit a long, detailed, and wearisome account of the research, which, however, indicates the accuracy with which the tradition had been preserved, and the full belief in it of the narrator.

[161b]  A kind of cruel pillory.

[162]  In allusion to seeing it from behind the squares formed by the grates of iron before prison windows.

[164]  Landucci, 233, cited by Scaife.

[171]  Una medichessa.

[177]  Not a fairy here, but a witch of a certain degree.

[180]  Si la Messa de Villani era finito.

[181]  E appunto hora comincia quella delle puttane, pero caminate, che farete a tempo con l’altre.

[189]  Nella guerra d’amor, che fugge vince.

[196]  Viene tutte le mattine
Colle sue belle manine.

Though very rude, even to illiteracy in form, the train of thought is here very gracefully managed in the original.

[201]  So called because criminals passed through it on their way to execution.

[202]  “Da qualche bacio
Vi chascha il vero bacio d’amor.”

—Original.

[203a]  “Altrimenti
L’avrebbero levato il collare.”—Original.

[203b]  “In una altra stella
Per raggiungere la sua bella.”—Original.

[205]  Faceva il verso del lupo, the deep baying which is a subject of superstition in all countries.

[207]  Friedrich, “Symbolik der Natur.”

[208]  A humming-top.

[212]  The Philological Society (Circolo), has also its rooms in this building.

[213]  Perche si rendeva alle persone troppo triviale—A graphic sketch of a character who would be peculiarly offensive in a highly patrician community.

[220]  “Col mio pugnale ammazato,
Col pugnale e sotterato.”

[224]  Since writing the foregoing, I have found in Am Urquelle, vol. vi. 3, May 1895, a legend credited to a book by A. Bondeson, Historic Gulbar på Dal (Stockholm, 1886), or a story entitled “The Lover with a Green Beard,” which is much the same in incident as this.  The editor, H. Feilberg, notices the affinity of this and other tales to the Vampyre and Burger’s “Leonora.”

[227]  Zufolo—a rude flageolet, such as is still commonly played by the shepherds all over Italy.

[238]  Il suo spirito lo fa presentare qualunque ombra, that is, in any or varied shadow; a haunting shade, and not strictly the mere shadow of the one who is haunted.

[239]  That which here follows of the invocation was obtained subsequently by my agent, I think, from another source.  What precedes is evidently only a fragment.

[251]  The concluding portion of this chapter is taken from the Italian original paper read by me at the first meeting of the Italian Folklore Society in the Collegio Romano, Rome, November 20, 1894.

[253]  These references to Marietta Pery are in regard to a certain Italian poetess, of whose work I originally intended to give specimens in this book, but which were omitted as want of space did not permit their insertion.  I hope to include them in another volume of legends.—C. G. Leland.

[255]  Such incantations are intoned or chanted in a very peculiar style, so that those who can only hear the sound know that it is a magic spell.  Therefore they must be expressed very accurately to the letter.  It may be observed that there is a contradiction in the original MS., which here speaks of three companions, and subsequently of two.  I believe the latter to be correct.

[259a]  Here the name of the lover is pronounced by the friends.

[259b] Now in possession of Mrs. January of St. Louis, Missouri.

[262]  “Moon Lore,” p. 152.

[265] I have no doubt that originally all the spoken parts of this narrative were sung.

[266]  Thorns here plainly mean suffering, Fasio di pruini che ai messo al tuo fratello.

[269]  It is amusing that this stealing oil wherewith to make love-charms, which was denounced so bitterly as damnable sorcery at one time, and frequently punished by death, i.e., by burning alive, is now tacitly encouraged by the priests.  There are churches about Rome in which the oil is placed where it may be stolen or taken, it being understood that a soldo or two shall be left to pay for it.