7382.

[175] Quoted in the _Zoologist_, 2397.

[176] _Pict. Museum_, ii. 107.

[177] _Reptiles_, (Rel. Tr. Soc.,) 206.

[178] _Bengal Sporting Mag._ for Oct. 1836; cited in the _Zoologist_,
5070.

[179] _Zool._, 5214.

[180] _Zool._, 7273.

[181] _Zool._ 4049, 4050.

[182] _Travels_, 144.

IX.

SERPENT-CHARMING.

From the day when the solemn doom was pronounced,--"I will put enmity
between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed," the
serpent-form has begotten revulsion and dread in the human breast. And
deservedly; for a venomous serpent is a terrible enemy: the direful
venom of sin injected by "that old serpent, the Devil," is well
symbolised by the most potent of all lethic agencies,--the poison of the
rattlesnake or the cobra.

And yet in all ages there have been persons in the countries where the
most venomous snakes abound, who have professed, and have been believed
to enjoy, an absolute immunity from their bites, and even to exercise
some inexplicable power over them, whereby their rage is soothed, and
they are rendered for the time gentle and harmless. The Holy Scriptures
repeatedly allude to this ancient art. The Magicians of Egypt, who
turned their rods into serpents, are supposed to have had recourse to a
secret known, it is said, to the modern conjurors of the same country,
who, by pressing the nape of the neck of the cobra with their fingers,
throw it into a sort of catalepsy, by which its whole body becomes rigid
like a rod, and from which it is relieved by suddenly throwing it on the
ground. Aaron's rod was a veritable rod before and after the
transaction, but changed into a serpent by Divine miraculous energy:
theirs were serpents made to assume the appearance of rods for the
moment by a cunning device.

Other and more direct allusions, however, occur to the art of
serpent-charming. Thus the obduracy of the wicked is compared to "the
deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of
charmers, charming never so wisely."[183] And the Aseverity of the
Chaldean invaders is depicted under this imagery:--"Behold, I will send
serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they
shall bite you, saith the LORD."[184]

Among the ancient Romans the Psylli, a people of Africa, and the Marsi,
a German tribe who had settled in Italy, were reputed to have the power
of charming serpents, and to be endowed with immunity from the results
of