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.

That the conjuring the moon with a mirror is very ancient indeed appears
from the legend drawn from classic sources, which is thus set forth in "A
Pleasant Comedie called Summer's Last Will and Testament. Written by
Thomas Nash. London, 1600":

"In laying thus the blame upon the Moone
Thou imitat'st subtill Pythagoras,
Who what he would the People should beleeve,
The same he wrote with blood upon a Glasse,
And turned it opposite 'gainst the New Moone,
Whose Beames, reflecting on it with full force,
Shew'd all those lines to them that stood behinde,
Most pleynly writ in circle of the Moone,
And then he said: 'Not I, but the newe Moone
Fair Cynthia persuades you this and that.'"

In the "Clouds" of Aristophanes the same idea is made into a jest, in
which Strepsiades thus addresses Socrates:

"_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 ant