Christian burying grounds, and why we do find vases and very ancient medals in their graves, for these things are of their own ancient belief, or for witchcraft, and so they could not he placed in the campo santi.

"For in the old times witchcraft had a religion, and it was called la religione della stregoneria–the religion of sorcery–andwhat you see on the old vases are the names and portraits of witches andwizards of the olden time. And on them are the pictures of Tigna and Faflon and all other witches or magicians who became spirits." ¹

I have read of a man who had "foregone to be a Christian reality, and perverted himself into a Pagan idealist." This was in a novel, but my friends were real Pagan survivals, and though the spirit fire had burned low, so that it smouldered in the ashes, and only now and then sent outa jet of flame, still it was marvellous to me–yea, awful–that through the ages such a glimmering had come down of a heathen faith outworn, and that women now live who speak of the Etruscan Jupiter and Bacchus as of deities whom a few still adore, and whose pictures are to be seen on ancient vases! Though degraded to the humblest condition and fast fleeting, Stregoneria is still a belief, and not mere fragmentsof folk-lore or of ancient superstitions. Yes, the ceremonies and incantations, charms and amulets which I have so often seen practised or prepared, till they were to me as familiar things–all, as I have elsewhere shown, were of the same hoar aniquity.

Heine could not give the flicker of the fire nor the beating of hearts; what I would fain convey is the classically stern, almost terrible beauty which appears in the face of an old Italian witch when it is illuminated by an earnest thought, and the same beauty in the thoughts themselves. The reason why there seems to be so much light in an Italian smile, such intensity in the passion, even of peasants, allied to a certain indescribable picturesqueness, is because all their habits of thought and traditions have been derived for thousands of years from stages of society in which Art and Faith in their most comprehensive sense influenced everyact of life. And though the Art no longer exists, the impulses which itcreated still live in blood and brains, and are transmitted by heredity–even as the water of a stream continues to leap and sparkle long after it has passed some mighty cataract. That was Art which inspired Etruscan vases, and jewellery, and mirrors; not less artistic was the feeling which created deities, goblins, spiriti folletti, and elves, with their lays and legends, and mystical cognate sorcery. Faith without art is an egg not yet hatched; art with out faith is an empty egg-shell worthnothing–unless it be for some wizard, like Zola, to make a boat of to ride to the devil withal. These descendants of the old

¹The nakedness, the dancing and wild revelry depicted on the Etrusco-Greek vases, with their satyrs, goblins, and winged lases and mysterious emblems or hieroglyphs, would all very naturally suggest to the contadini magic and sorcery. Does not all this Greek beauty and joyousness seem even to us like a dream of fairyland–a Paradise?

Italians who have kept in simple faith their old superstitions, have alsokept with them, unconsciously, the art which giveth life–andlife is light and fire and feeling.

This speaking of old Etruscan art made me think of serpents, and I asked if the peasants in le Romagne had any beliefs regarding them.

"Yes. They sometimes paint a serpent on the wall to keep away the evil eye or witch evils, and to bring good luck. But the head must be down and interlaced, and the tail uppermost." ¹

"And do interlaced serpents mean good fortune?"

"Ah, that is a well-known thing, and not as to serpents alone, but all kinds of interweaving and braiding and interlacing cords, or whatever can attract the eyes of the witches. When a family is afraid of witchery theyshould undertake some kind of lavori intrecciati–braided work–for witches cannot enter a house where there is anything of the kind hung up, as for instance, patterns of two or three serpents twining together, o altri ricami, or other kinds of embroidery, but always of intertwining patterns. So in making shirts or drawers or any garments for men or women–camice, muntande o vestiti–one should always in sewing try to cross the cotton (thread) as shoemakers do when they stitch shoes, and make a cross-stitch, because shoes are most susceptible to witchcraft (perche le scarpe sono quelle più facile a prendere le stregonerie). And when the witches see such interlacings they can do nothing, because they cannot count either the threads nor the stitches (ne il filo ne i punti). And if we have on or about us anything of the kind they cannot enter because it bewilders or dazzles theirsight (le fa a bagliare la vista), and they are incapable of mischief. And to do this well (tenere il sistema) you should take cotton, or silk, or linen thread, and make a braid of six, seven, or eight columns, as many as you will–the more the better–and always carry it in your pocket, and this will protect you from witches. You can get such braids very beautifully made of silk of all colours in some shops; and they keep them for charms against the evil eye."

I took great pains to have this carefully recorded, for it is intimately connected with an interesting subject which possibly enters into the raison d'etre or real inspiration of all the most characteristic decorative art of all Europe, especially during the Middle Ages. In my work onGypsy Sorcery the following passage occurs (page 98):–

"There is a very curious belief or principle attached to the use of songsin conjuring witches or in averting their own sorcery. It is that the witch is obliged, willy-nilly, to listen to the end what is in metre–an idea founded on the attraction of melody, which is much stronger amongsavages and children than with civilised adults. Nearly allied to this is the belief that if the witch sees interlaced, or bewildering and confused patterns, she must follow them out, and by means of this her thoughts are diverted or scattered. Hence the serpentine inscriptions of the Celts and Norsemen, and their intertwining bands which were firmly believed to bring good luck, or avert evil influence. A traveller in Persia states that the patterns of the carpets of that country are made as bewildering as possible 'to avert the evil eye.' And it is with this purpose that, in Italian as in all other witchcraft, so many spells and charms depend on interwoven braided cords (vide the Spell of the Holy Stone).

"The basis for this belief is the fascination or interest which many persons, especially children, feel to trace out patterns, to thread the mazesof labyrinths, or to analyse and distangle knots and 'cats' cradles.' Did space permit, nor inclination fail, I could point out some curious proofs that the old belief in the power of long and curling hair to fascinate, was derived not only from its beauty, but also because of the magic of its curves and entanglements."

---

¹ Probably the caduceus of Mercury, which often appears on vases as simply two serpents with interlaced heads.

I have made serious and extensive study of interlaced patterns, beginningwith Westwood's Palæographia Picta in which the claims of the Irish to be the originators of such art are upheld, down to the latestworks on design. I have studied them with intense interest in the museums of Ireland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, England, and Scotland, and copied literally thousands of them. And I was deeply convinced from the beginning that in all these Celtic intertwinings of infinite Irish lizards, and eternal Scandinavian serpents, down to Gothic ribbon and Florentine cord and vine braidings, there ran a mystic meaning, expressing as it werein an occult writing, deep and strange secrets of sorcery. What gave methe suggestion is worth mentioning. There is a book of which TROLLOPE declared that he believed he was the only person in Europe who had ever read it. I had, however, perused it thrice in as many versions before I was sixteen years of age, which I mention to show what an impression it made on me, for such reading at such an age sinks deep into the soul. This was The Unheard-of Curiosities, by GAFFAREL, in which he sets forth naïvely, yet strikingly, a grand Paracelsian idea that the stars in heaven in their relative aspects and courses form the points of Hebrew or geomantic letters, and that the lines on the bark of all trees, and the marks on sea shells and fishes, the curve of the waters as they wind inthe brook or bound upwards in the ocean-wave, the flight of the bird andthe flickering bend of a flame; or all forms, inspired by the spirit of Nature, or the Archæus, form eternally varied hieroglyphics of a vast writing, to which we may get the key by inspiration and study.The poetry of this idea entered into my soul, and I cherished it for a long time, the more so as I read much in Wordsworth and Shelley. It was in my first year at college, where I took daily long and lonely walks in wild woods, and seated by grey rocks and silent waters, tried to trace by the aid of poetry some of this Divine caligraphy. About the same time I began to study Gothic art, and to copy illuminations, and, as may be supposed, the spirit of Gaffarelius guided me here to many deep and strange conclusions. And from it I have since drawn many more which have apparently no connection with it. That some tradition and association, some extremely deeply-seated feeling and serious sense of meaning must have attacheditself to this immensity, this universality of a system of designwhich endured for a thousand years, and was found in every work of art, every letter, every article of Northern jewellery, stands to reason. In an age when symbolism and magic permeated everything it would have been a miracle indeed if Art were meaningless. And what the Interlace meant everywhere has been, as I think, clearly set forth by the Italian strega in the preceding pages.

Identical with this law, or instinct, by which the evil eye must perforcetrace out patterns is that which compels the witch to count, con gré ma gré, all the

grains of rice or sesame or corn which she may encounter. So in the Arabian Nights the ghoul Amina must eat her rice grain by grainwith a bodkin. In South Carolina, rice strewed in the form of a cross about a bed prevents a witch from getting at her victim, for she must remove it, grain and grain, ere she can reach him, nor must she shirk the task. And as I have elsewhere shown the erba Rosolaccio, or Rice of the Goddess of the Four Winds, is esteemed as a protective, because the witches cannot count its rice-like leaves, and so they get bewildered in them. This belief was carried to the extent of regarding corrugated and rugged surfaces of any kind as protecting from evil. Hence the stalagmite,or salagrana stone, is very popular against malocchio, which means all inimical sorcery.

I conjecture–for it is not as yet a matter of proof–thatthe Celtic peoples from the earliest times, in the East, during the migration of races, e.g., through Hungary, and in Great Britain and Gaul, had the interlace and constantly used it. The Britons, generally, made gaily-painted baskets–bascaudæ–which were sent to Rome. This suggests interlaces. The Irish monks and artisans developed these basket-patterns, manifestly using, as a more pliable suggestive, ribbons, ropes, or cords, as I have often done myself to make designs. I do not think it necessary to adopt the rather unpleasant idea setforth in a great book on needlework that the entrails of animals were thus used for models. A month's work of intelligent designing is worth all the theory in the world, and I no more believe that "insides" were employed to suggest motives than I do that earth-worms were taken for the same purpose, as was indeed once suggested to me by a certain wood-carver, whocould see no beauty in anything save baroque patterns.

I have been told, or I have read, that the theory of the basket-pattern is now "exploded" as also that of the Irish claim to have developed or invented the interlace; in fact, I find that everything nowadays is "exploded" almost before the powder has been put into it. Thus a certain blue-stocking lady, speaking to me of agnosticism, declared languidly that she had gone through with it all, and that it was a vanished quantity. I begged her to define it for me. "Let me hear your definition first?" asked the blasée-bleue. But I was not to be caught thus, and the learned dame, with an ill grace, explained that an agnostic was "a kind of infidel-sceptic,–but all that sort of thing is quite out of fashion now, you know." So I have been told, on the best authority, that somebody–I forget who–has exploded the Altaic-Tartar Accadian theory–a theory which, however, the firm and gentle Sayce and the fiery Oppert still maintain. And I am also told by other men that Fetishism is exploded, or

utterly blown up, though I have before me, specially manufactured for my own use, as undeniable specimens of fetishes of many kinds as could emanate from the brains of Italian witches and American Voodoos. So they go on, building up every man his little cardboard system and blowing down those of others–"and one live nigger would walk over the whole of them," as I heard it tersely expressed at the termination of the Folk-lore Congress of 1891.

But to return to the interlace, or the magic power of intertwining knots,for there is more of it in the lore of the strege. The mulberry-tree, being of great importance in Italy, has, of course, its peculiar superstitions, and curious among them is the following:–

"When a peasant prunes the mulberry-trees which are for silkworms, he must trim them so that the boughs restino intrecciati–may remaininterlaced–in which case the silkworms will be protected against any malocchio, or evil influence from any witch.
"But care must also be taken that, however fine (belli) the silkworms may be, no one shall say so, because calling them 'fine' during the three trials (malattie) which they pass through before spinning their silk would cause their death.

"Be therefore attentive that if any one entering the house should say, 'Belli quei bacchi' ('Those are fine silkworms'), to throw at that person a handful of leaves, because the person, being vexed, will throw the leaves at the silkworms, and the evil charm, if they have taken it, will be removed."

In Italy, as in the East, there is great dread of unpremeditated praise, be it of animals or children, because those who fascinate or bewitch always use it.

The convolvulus, which includes the honeysuckle and morning-glory, and indeed all that twineth as a vine or "bine," is also a protection against witches, owing to its twisted tendrils.

"Those who fear enchantment or the evil eye should have the convolvolo in their gardens or in a pot in the window, because it is of all others the flower which witches cannot endure. And they cannot enter a house where it is, because it bears tendrils (nerbolini) like a mass of little serpents intertwined (come tante piccole serpia rotolate)and all entangled, for which reason it keeps them out. This plant flowers by night, and its beautiful flowers in a bouquet and its tendrils bewilder the sight (fa affogliare la vista) of sorceresses, and keeps them afar."

All of which, if the reader be "a thinking character," may give him some thing to think over when he sees a Gothic interlace, or serpentine ornaments, or love-knots, or fish-nets, or Hegel's sentences!

Lenormant, in his Magie Chaldaienne, speaks of the very ancient weaving of magic knots–that is, plaiting interlaces, as old Assyrian, of which he says that the efficacy was so firmly believed in, even up to the Middle Ages, and gives in illustration the following against a disease or pain in the head:–

From which we can see that plaiting the hair in interlaces was a charm for a headache. Taking it altogether, this application of interlacing cords to the temple or other parts of the body is quite identical with modernusage.

This subject of the interlace as a guard against evil magic, or an amulet, is nearly allied to the idea of holes and corrugations in stones–vide the Salagrana–to magic rhymes and bewildering music, and mingled colours, and all that attracts and confuses the mind. All produce one effect.

I am indebted to Miss Mary Owen, of Missouri, for the following (learned from a black sorceress), which is nearly connected with the interlace:–

"When a man is visited in sleep by witches who ride or torment him, you should fasten in the chimney a coarse linen cloth or a sieve; tie at the head of the bed a pair of wool cords or a branch of fern leaves, in which the seeds are almost ripe; sprinkle a cup of mustard seed on the door-sill. The witch must count the interstices of the cloth or sieve, the seedsof the fern or the teeth of the cords, and must pick up every mustard seed, counting as she does so, ere she is free to torment the sleepers by knotting their feathers, riding on their breasts, or whispering to them awful dreams."

The black Takroori, or sorcerers of Africa, draw their magic and lore largely from Arabic-cabalistic sorcerers, as I know, having examined their books when in Egypt, and all this is known to the Arabs. It is very curious that Prætorius speaks of a man who, in jest, used curry-combs or wool-cords to defend himself from a nightmare witch. Here, I think, in these cases we probably have tradition or transmission.

"Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live" (Ezekiel xxxvii. 9).

Among all primitive or superstitious people, the medicinal or other virtues of herbs are attributed to some deeply mysterious cause of a supernatural nature. In the Romagna, just as among the Red Indians of America, this faith is carried so far

that certain plants are regarded as being in some strange way fairies or spirits in themselves. He who bears one of these about him–always in a red bag, as in old Etrusco-Roman times–carries a small guardian angel, or, if he plants it in a pot, he will be like the ancient Egyptians of whom Juvenal said they had gods growing in their gardens–in allusion to their reverence for onions or garlic.

One of these plants which is an object of culture not only in a literal, but also in a religious and æsthetic sense, is the Rosolaccio which has also the curious double-meaning name of the rice (riso), also laughter, or the smile, of the Goddess of the Four Winds. I had the following account given to me with a specimen of the herb:–

"Rosolaccio is a plant the leaves of which, drawn up like a many-fingered little hand, look like grains of rice, whence it is called the rice (or the smile) of the Goddess of the Four Winds. It is also called the plant of good luck because it brings great good fortune. A sprig of it may be kept growing in a small pot, or, if this be impossible, in a red bag. If the former, it must always be in the window, if in a bag, the latter should be hung up behind the window, and this done, no witches can enter, for there are so many grains (or grain-like leaves), or eyes, that the witches cannot count them and therefore cannot pass by. For they are so closed together that counting is impossible. And should it happen that in any family a child or grown person is bewitched, then we take this plant, either growing or else in the bag, and go to the sufferer who must be fasting, even from water, early in the morning, and say:–

Then let the sign of the cross be made three times with the herb, and this must be done for three mornings.

" 'But who was the Goddess of the Four Winds?'

"Well, I have heard that her mother was a beautiful girl who was of greatrank, perhaps a princess; however she loved a poor young man, and her parents would not hear of such a match.

"How it came to pass, who knows? but the young man dwelt near her, and they found a subterranean passage which led to her room–some say she had it dug, for she was of fairy kind–but it came to a trap-door in her room, and under her bed.

"And the end was that she was with child, and remained many months in herroom, lest the world should know it. And she prepared a fine cradle all made of roses. And her mother, who was a fairy, kept her secret, and aided her, and when the time came for the princess to give birth to the child, the mother made a fire of laurel, so that in its crackling the cries of the babe should not be heard.

"And when this happened, and while the mother burned the laurel, she said:–

"And this child was the Goddess of the Four Winds. E questa fu la fatadetta la dea dei quattro venti."

This marvellous and mysterious story can hardly fail to suggest much to every folk-lorist. First of all the infant goddess of the wind is rocked in a cradle of roses. FRIEDRICH (Symbolik d. Natur) observes that in the Greek myth, the Wind, Æolos, has in his home six sonsand six daughters–wohl die ælteste Andeutung einer Windrose–"the first indication of the wind-rose or anemone." The real rosalaccio (rose-lace) is the red poppy or corn-flower, but the name rose refers to the colour. We have in it, however, a connection of roses with the wind, and of the dew-drop, "rocked by the wind in the cradle of a rose." The anemone or wind-flower sprung from the blood of Adonis, that is, in the flower he lives again as a spirit of the wind. Adonis, the spirit of spring, is the same with Favonius, "the Greek zephyr, the sweet and fructifying south wind who comes with the swallow and the spring." It can hardly be denied that all this seems to be indicated in this strange Tuscan tale.

The burning of laurel twigs so that they shall make a noise is of ripe antiquity. "There was a special divination or foretelling the future by burning laurel leaves, and it was regarded as a good sign if they crackled and made a loud noise" (TIBULLUS, Eleg., ii. 6, 81). Hence came a common proverb, Clamosior lauro ardente–"Noisier than burninglaurel." Or, as we are told by the author of the Trinum Magicum (A.D. 1611), "Et lauri quoque ramis divinatio sumebatur, and there was also divination by a branch of laurel, which if it made a loud sound was a good sign, and the contrary if it burned out quietly."

But the chief aim of this story is to show how it was that the babe was made to pass from a mere mortal into a fairy or goddess, as Ceres attempted to do with the infant Triptolemus. She also employed a fire, but I do not know that it was of laurel boughs. But the laurel, as FRIEDRICH declares, was not only consecrated to prophecy or magic, and, as an evergreen, to immortality, but it was peculiarly a symbol of a new life–neues Leben im Tode. "Among the Romans the corpse in a

funeral was sprinkled with water from laurel boughs; and in the early times of Christianity the dead were laid on laurel leaves to signify that those who died in Christ had not ceased to live. And the baptism, or the new life in CHRIST, was also symbolised by laurel" (WINCKELMANN Versuch einer Allegorie, besonders für die Kunst, iii. c.; also HARTUNG,die Relig. der Römer, part i., p.46). WINCKELMANN also mentions that on a rare medal, Lucilla, the wife of the Emperor Lucius Verus,is represented as holding a branch of laurel, near her kneels a woman drawing water, and there stands by her a half-naked child awaiting baptism.This has a special application to the Tuscan tale, with this difference–that in one case there is a baptism by fire, and in the other by water. In both the babe is to be prepared for a new life by means of the mystic laurel.

There is some obscurity in this myth, but it may be remarked that the zephyr, the dew-drop, and the rose, were mystically combined in ancient fable and that they reappear in the birth of the Goddess of the Four Winds. Again, peasants usually retain, or relate, only fairy stories, whereas this is not a tale at all in the real sense of the word, but an explanation of the origin of a spirit who is, we may say, worshipped in a plant.

In another Romagnolo legend the Wind appears as male and female. It is asfollows:–

"The Wind is a magician (mago) and Corina (Romagnolo, Curena) is his sister.

"A youth had a sweetheart and believed she had been false to him while she was innocent. But the youth in his sorrow fled far, far away so that he might see her no more.

"Then she went to a wise old woman, who consulted the cards (that is 'divined' in any way), to know if she would ever find her lover again, and the old woman bade her go to the Wind, and to his sister Curena." (Here there is a manifest hiatus.) "And they departed with her; the morning had just dawned when they came to a city, they put her down before the window of her love, and she sang:–

"So they were united, and lived happily ever after."

It is possible that in this Curena we have the Teutonic "Wind's bride," who is ever hunting, and who blows a horn which is indicatedin cor or curen. Corinth, Corinna, and Curena seem to be certainly allied to Coronis, the wind: raven, typical of the north-west wind, or Skiron.

As regards the rosalaccio it is evident that the names and associations of the herb which I have described are confused and intermingled with those of the poppy or red corn-flower, which is the true rosalaccio, and the red anemone or wind-flower. And there are those in Ireland who maintain that the so-called wild wind flower, which is white, and has a triple leaf, is the real shamrock. Out of all which those who have better material wherewith to work than I, may make what they can. There are somealso who assert that the red sorrel is the true shamrock because the blood of the Saviour dropped upon it, even as the blood of Adonis dropped on the anemone.

Of which confusion there is a great deal in all legends of a people in which old tradition has long since run into decay and new growth, and I begthe reader to pardon me if I cannot clear it up.

"Sic in igne praeter alia elementa, sacra omnia insistebant, quod is, credo, proximus cœlo sit, quod in specie ignis Deus Mosen primum allocutus."–ELIAS SCHEDIUS, De Die Germanic, 1648.

It was formerly a custom at Forli in the Romagna Toscana to give annuallya grand procession, the occasion of which was the showing an image of the Virgin seated on a dragon surrounded by flames. This extremely heathenceremony is now discontinued, so far as Forli is concerned, but it is still kept up in the neighbouring small town of Civitella.

I have looked over a rather large Latin work, profusely illustrated, published about two hundred years ago, which is entirely devoted to describing this Madonna of Fire and Dragons, from which I gather that once upon a time the festival must have been very magnificent. It is remarkable thatthe witches and wizards, either guided by a sagacious intuition or ancient tradition, regard this Madonna as one of their own heathen deities whohas been unjustly filched from them, and placed in the Christian pantheon. On which subject one of the sisterhood expressed herself not without a certain amount of righteous or pious indignation, to the effect that the Lady of the Fire was a great spirit before the other Madonna was ever heard of; her words being, in part, as follows:–

"She was a spirit (i.e., heathen) who indeed worked many miracles,and so the priests took her and called her la donna miracolosa del fuoco.

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