The Humbugs of the World, P. T. Barnum [suggested reading .txt] 📗

ignorant districts still believe that to write Abracadabra on a slip of paper and keep it with you, will protect you from wounds, and that if your house is on fire, to throw this strip into it will put the fire out.

Many charms or incantations call on God, Christ or some saints, just as the heathen ones call on a spirit. Here is one for epilepsy that seems to appeal to both religions, as if with a queer proviso against any possible mistake about either. Taking the epileptic by the hand, you whisper in his ear “I adjure thee by the sun and the moon and the gospel of today, that thou arise and no more fall to the ground; in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

A charm for the cramp found in vogue in some rustic regions is this:

“The devil is tying a knot in my leg,
Mark, Luke and John, unloose it, I beg,
Crosses three we make to ease us⁠—
Two for the thieves, and one for Christ Jesus.”

Here is another, often used in Ireland, which in the same spirit of superstition and ignorant irreverence uses the name of the Savior for a slight human occasion. It is to cure the toothache, and requires the repeating of the following string of words:

“St. Peter sitting on a marble stone, our Savior passing by, asked him what was the matter. ‘Oh Lord, a toothache!’ Stand up, Peter, and follow me; and whoever keeps these words in memory of me, shall never be troubled with a toothache, Amen.”

The English astrologer Lilly, after the death of his wife, formerly a Mrs. Wright, found in a scarlet bag which she wore under her arm a pure gold “sigil” or round plate worth about ten dollars in gold, which the former husband of the defunct had used to exorcise a spirit that plagued him. In case any of my readers can afford bullion enough, and would like to drive away any such visitor, let them get such a plate and have engraved round the edge of one side, “Vicit Leo de tribus Judae tetragrammaton .” Inside this engrave a “holy lamb.” Round the edge of the other side engrave “Annaphel” and three crosses, thus: ; and in the middle, “Sanctus Petrus Alpha et Omega.”

The witches have always had incantations, which they have used to make a broomstick into a horse, to kill or to sicken animals and persons, etc. Most of these are sufficiently stupid, and not half so wonderful as one I know, which may be found in a certain mysterious volume called The Girl’s Own Book, and which, as I can depose, has often power to tickle children. It is this:

“Bandy-legged Borachio Mustachio Whiskerifusticus, the bald and brave Bombardino of Bagdad, helped Abomilique Bluebeard Bashaw of Babelmandel beat down an abominable bumblebee at Balsora.”

But to the other witches. Their charms were repeated sometimes in their own language and sometimes in gibberish. When the Scotch witches wanted to fly away to their “Witches’ Sabbath,” they straddled a broom-handle, a corn stalk, a straw, or a rush, and cried out “Horse and hattock, in the Devil’s name!” and immediately away they flew, “forty times as high as the moon,” if they wished. Some English witches in Somersetshire used instead to say, “Thout, tout, throughout and about;” and when they wished to return from their meeting they said “Rentum, tormentum!” If this form of the charm does not manufacture a horse, not even a sawhorse, then I recommend another version of it, thus:

“Horse and pattock, horse and go!
Horse and pellats, ho, ho, ho!”

German witches said (in High Dutch:)

“Up and away!
Hi! Up aloft, and nowhere stay!”

Scotch witches had modes of working destruction to the persons or property of those to whom they meant evil, which were strikingly like the negro obeah or mandinga. One of these was, to make a hash of the flesh of an unbaptised child, with that of dogs and sheep, and to put this goodly dish in the house of the victim, reciting the following rhyme:

“We put this until this hame
In our Lord the Devil’s name;
The first hands that handle thee.
Burned and scalded may they be!
We will destroy houses and hald,
With the sheep and nolt (i.e. cattle) into the fauld;
And little shall come to the fore (i.e. remain,)
Of all the rest of the little store.”

Another, used to destroy the sons of a certain gentleman named Gordon was, to make images for the boys, of clay and paste, and put them in a fire, saying:

“We put this water among this meal
For long pining and ill heal,
We put it into the fire
To burn them up stock and stour (i.e. stack and band.)
That they be burned with our will,
Like any stikkle (stubble) in a kiln.”

In case any lady reader finds herself changed into a hare, let her remember how the witch Isobel Gowdie changed herself from hare back to woman. It was by repeating:

“Hare, hare, God send thee care!
I am in a hare’s likeness now;
But I shall be woman even now⁠—
Hare, hare, God send thee care!”

About the year 1600 there was both hanged and burned at Amsterdam a poor demented Dutch girl, who alleged that she could make cattle sterile, and bewitch pigs and poultry by saying to them “Turius und Shurius Inturius.” I recommend to say this first to an old hen, and if found useful it might then be tried on a pig.

Not far from the same time a woman was executed as a witch at Bamberg, having, as was often the case, been forced by torture to make a confession. She said that the devil had given her power to send diseases upon those she hated, by saying complimentary things about them, as “What a strong man!” “what