_, 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 naivete, 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.

"Sacher Masoch," a Galician novelist, informs us in a romance, "The
Legacy of Cain," that the Cainites still exist in Russia, and that their
religion is represented by the following charming creed:

"Satan is the master of the world; therefore it is a sin to belong to
Church or State, and marriage is also a capital sin. Six things
constitute the legacy of Cain: Love, Property, Government, War, and
Death. Such was the legacy of Cain, who was condemned to be a
wanderer and a fugitive on earth."

I have another apparently very ancient conjuration of a mirror, in two
parts. It is of the blackest witchcraft, of the most secret kind, and is
only intended to injure an enemy.

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