Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling.pdf

GYPSY SORCERY and FORTUNE

TELLING

ILLUSTRATED BY INCANTATIONS, SPECIMENS OF MEDICAL MAGIC, ANECDOTES,

TALES

by Charles Godfrey Leland

Late President of the Gypsy-Lore Society

London: T. Fisher Unwin

[1891]

PREFACE

THIS work contains a collection of the customs,

usages, and ceremonies current among gypsies, as regards fortune-telling, witch-

doctoring, love-philtering, and other sorcery, illustrated by many anecdotes and instances,

taken either from works as yet very little known to the English reader or from personal

experiences. Within a very few years, since Ethnology and Archæology have received a

great inspiration, and much enlarged their scope through Folk-lore, everything relating to

such subjects is studied with far greater interest and to much greater profit than was the

case when they were cultivated in a languid, half-believing, half-sceptical spirit which

was in reality rather one of mere romance than reason. Now that we seek with resolution

to find the whole truth, be it based on materialism, spiritualism, or their identity, we are

amazed to find that the realm of marvel and mystery, of wonder and poetry, connected

with what we vaguely call "magic," far from being explained away or exploded, enlarges

p. vi

before us as we proceed, and that not into a mere cloudland, gorgeous land, but into a

country of reality in which men of science who would once have disdained the mere

thought thereof are beginning to stray. Hypnotism has really revealed far greater wonders

than were ever established by the fascinatores of old or by mesmerists of more modern

times. Memory, the basis of thought according to PLATO, which was once held to be a

determined quantity, has been proved, (the word is not too bold), by recent physiology, to

be practically infinite, and its perfect development to be identical with that of intellect, so

that we now see plainly before us the power to perform much which was once regarded

as miraculous. Not less evident is it that men of science or practical inventors, such as

DARWIN, WALLACE, HUXLEY, TYNDALE, GALTON, JOULE, LOCKYER, and

EDISON, have been or are all working in common with theosophists, spiritualists, Folk-

lorists, and many more, not diversely but all towards a grand solution of the Unknown.

Therefore there is nothing whatever in the past relating to the influences which have

swayed man, however strange, eccentric, superstitious, or even repulsive they may seem,

which is not of great and constantly increasing value. And if we of the present time begin

already to see this, how much more important will these facts be to the men of the future,

who, by virtue of more widely extended knowledge and comparison, will be better able

than we are to draw wise conclusions undreamed of now. But the chief conclusion for us

is to collect as much as we can, while it is yet extant, of all the strange lore of the olden

time, instead of wasting time in forming idle theories about it.

In a paper read before the Congrès des Traditions populaires in Paris, 1889, on the

relations of gypsies to Folk-lore, I set forth my belief that these people have always been

the humble priests of what is really the practical religion of all peasants and poor people;

that is their magical ceremonies and medicine. Very few have any conception of the

degree to which gypsies have been the colporteurs of what in Italy is called "the old

faith," or witchcraft.

p. vii

As regards the illustrative matter given, I am much indebted to DR. WLISLOCKI, who

has probably had far more intimate personal experience of gypsies than any other learned

man who ever lived, through our mutual friend, Dr. ANTHON HERRMANN, editor of

the Ethnologische Mitteilungen , Budapest, who is also himself an accomplished Romany

scholar and collector, and who has kindly taken a warm interest in this book, and greatly

aided it. To these I may add Dr. FRIEDRICH S. KRAUSS, of Vienna, whose various

works on the superstitions and Folk-lore of the South Slavonians--kindly presented by

him to me--contain a vast mine of material, nearly all that of which he treats being

common property between peasants and the Romany, as other sources abundantly

indicate. With this there is also much which I collected personally among gypsies and

fortune-tellers, and similar characters, it being true as regards this work and its main

object, that there is much cognate or allied information which is quite as valuable as

gypsy-lore itself, as all such subjects mutually explain one of the others.

Gypsies, as I have said, have done more than any race or class on the face of the earth to

disseminate among the multitude a belief in fortune-telling, magical or sympathetic cures,

amulets and such small sorceries as now find a place in Folk-lore. Their women have all

pretended to possess occult power since prehistoric times. By the exercise of their wits

they have actually acquired a certain art of reading character or even thought, which,

however it be allied to deceit, is in a way true in itself, and well worth careful

examination. MATTHEW ARNOLD has dwelt on it with rare skill in his poem of "The

Gypsy Scholar." Even deceit and imposture never held its own as a system for ages

without some ground-work of truth, and that which upheld the structure of gypsy sorcery

has never been very carefully examined. I trust that I have done this in a rational and

philosophic spirit, and have also illustrated my remarks in a manner which will prove

attractive to the general reader.

There are many good reasons for believing that the greatest portion of gypsy magic was

brought by the Romany from the East or India. This is specially true as regards those now

dwelling in Eastern Europe.

p. viii

And it is certainly interesting to observe that among these people there is still extant, on a

very extended scale indeed, a Shamanism which seems to have come from the same

Tartar-Altaic source which was found of yore among the Accadian-Babylonians,

Etruscan races, and Indian hill-tribes. This, the religion of the drum and the demon as a

disease-or devil doctoring-will be found fully illustrated in many curious ways in these

pages. I believe that in describing it I have also shown how many fragments of this

primitive religion, or cult, still exist, under very different names, in the most enlightened

centres of civilization. And I respectfully submit to my reader, or critic, that I have in no

instance, either in this or any other case, wandered from my real subject, and that the

entire work forms a carefully considered and consistent whole. To perfect my title, I

should perhaps have added a line or two to the effect that I have illustrated many of the

gypsy sorceries by instances of Folk-lore drawn from other sources; but I believe that it is

nowhere inappropriate, considering the subject as a whole. For those who would lay

stress on omissions in my book, I would say that I have never intended or pretended to

exhaust gypsy superstitions. I have not even given all that may be found in the works Of

WLISLOCKI alone. I have, according to the limits of the book, cited so much as to fully

illustrate the main subject already described, and this will be of more interest to the

student of history than the details of gypsy chiromancy or more spells and charms than

are necessary to explain the leading ideas.

What is wanted in the present state of Folk-lore, I here repeat, is collection from original

sources, and material, that is from people and not merely from books. The critics we

have--like the poor--always with us, and a century hence we shall doubtless have far

better ones than those in whom we now rejoice--or sorrow. But material abides no time,

and an immense quantity of it which is world-old perishes every day. For with general

culture and intelligence we are killing all kinds of old faiths, with wonderful celerity. The

time is near at hand when it will all be incredibly valuable, and then men will wish

p. ix

sorrowfully enough that there had been more collectors to accumulate and fewer critics to

detract from their labours and to discourage them, For the collector must form his theory,

or system great or small, good or bad, such as it is, in order to gather his facts; and then

the theory is shattered by the critic and the collection made to appear ridiculous. And so

collection ends.

There is another very curious reflection which has been ever present to my mind while

writing this work, and which the reader will do well carefully to think out for himself. It

is that the very first efforts of the human mind towards the supernatural were gloomy,

strange, and wild; they were of witchcraft and sorcery, dead bodies, defilement, deviltry,

and dirt. Men soon came to believe in the virtue of the repetition of certain rhymes or

spells in connection with dead men's bones, hands, and other horrors or "relics." To this

day this old religion exists exactly as it did of yore, wherever men are ignorant, stupid,

criminal, or corresponding to their prehistoric ancestors. I myself have seen a dead man's

hand for sale in Venice. According to DR. BLOCK, says a writer in The St. James's

Gazette , January 16, 1889, the corpse-candle superstition is still firmly enshrined among

the tenets of thieves all over Europe. In reality, according to The Standard , we know little

about the strange thoughts which agitate the minds of the criminal classes. Their creeds

are legends. Most of them are the children and grandchildren of thieves who have been

brought up from their youth in the densest ignorance, and who, constantly at war with

society, seek the aid of those powers of darkness in the dread efficacy of which they have

an unshaken confidence.

"Fetishism of the rudest type, or what the mythologists have learned to call 'animism' is part and parcel of

the robber's creed. A 'habit and repute' thief has always in his pocket, or somewhere about his person, a bit

of coal, or chalk, or a 'lucky stone,' or an amulet of some sort on which he relies for safety in his hour of

peril. Omens he firmly trusts in. Divination is regularly practised by him, as the occasional quarrels over

the Bible and key, and the sieve and shears, testify. The supposed power of witches and wizards make

many of them live in terror, and pay blackmail, and although they will lie almost without a motive, the

ingenuity with which the most depraved criminal will try to evade 'kissing the book,' performing this rite

with his thumb instead, is a curious instance of what

p. x

may be termed perverted religious instincts. As for the fear of the evil eye, it is affirmed that most of the

foreign thieves of London dread more being brought before a particular magistrate who has the reputation

of being endowed with that fatal gift than of being summarily sentenced by any other whose judicial glare

is less severe."

This is all true, but it tells only a small part of the truth. Not only is Fetish or Shamanism

the real religion of criminals, but of vast numbers who are not suspected of it. There is

not a town in England or in Europe in which witchcraft (its beginning) is not extensively

practised, although this is done with a secrecy the success of which is of itself almost a

miracle. We may erect churches and print books, but wherever the prehistoric man exists-

-and he is still to be found everywhere by millions--he will cling to the old witchcraft of

his remote ancestors. Until you change his very nature, the only form in which he can

realize supernaturalism will be by means of superstition, and the grossest superstion at

that. Research and reflection have taught me that this sorcery is far more widely and

deeply extended than any cultivated person dreams--instead of yielding to the progress of

culture it seems to actually advance with it. Count ANGELO DE GUBERNATIS once

remarked to one of the most distinguished English statesmen that there was in the country

in Tuscany ten times as much heathenism as Christianity. The same remark was made to

me by a fortune-teller in Florence. She explained what she meant. It was the vecchia

religione --"the old religion"--not Christianity, but the dark and strange sorceries of the

stregha , or witch, the compounding of magical medicine over which spells are muttered,

the making love-philters, the cursing enemies, the removing the influence of other

witches, and the manufacture of amulets in a manner prohibited by the Church.

It would seem as if, by some strange process, while advanced scientists are occupied in

eliminating magic from religion, the coarser mind is actually busy in reducing it to

religion alone. It has been educated sufficiently to perceive an analogy between dead

man's hands and "relics" as working miracles, and as sorcery is more entertaining than

religion, and has, moreover, the charm of secrecy, the prehistoric man, who is still

p. xi

with us, prefers the former. Because certain forms of this sorcery are no longer found

among the educated classes we think that superstition no longer exists; but though we no

longer burn witches or believe in fairies, it is a fact that of a kind and fashion

proportionate to our advanced culture, it is, with a very few exceptions, as prevalent as

ever. Very few persons indeed have ever given this subject the attention which it merits,

for it is simply idle to speculate on the possibility of cultivating or sympathizing with the

lowest orders without really understanding it in all its higher forms. And I venture to say

that, as regards a literal and truthful knowledge of its forms and practices, this work will

prove to be a contribution to the subject not without value.

I have, in fact, done my best to set forth in it a very singular truth which is of great

importance to every one who takes any real interest in social science, or the advance of

intelligence. It is that while almost everybody who contributes to general literature, be it

books of travel or articles in journals, has ever and anon something clever to say about

superstition among the lower orders at home or abroad, be it in remote country places or

in the mountains of Italy, with the usual cry of "Would it be believed--in the nineteenth

century?" &c.; it still remains true that the amount of belief in magic --call it by what

name we will--in the world is just as great as ever it was. And here I would quote with

approbation a passage from "The Conditions for the Survival of Archaic Customs," by G.

L. Gomme, in The Archæological Review of January, 1890:--

"If Folk-lore has done nothing else up to this date it has demonstrated that civilization, under many of its

phases, while elevating the governing class of a nation, and thereby no doubt elevating the nation, does not

always reach the lowest or even the lower strata of the population. As Sir Arthur Mitchell puts it, 'There is

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