JUGGLERS, THEIR ORIGIN, EXPLOITS, &c.
Those occupations which were of the most absolute necessity to the support of existence, were, doubtless, the earliest, and, in the infancy of society, the sole employments that engaged attention. But when the art and industry of a fewwere found sufficient for the maintenance of many, property began to accumulate in the hands of individuals, and as all could no longer be engaged in the productions of the necessaries of life, those who were excluded applied their ingenuity to those arts which, by contributing to the convenience of the former, might enable them to participate in the fruits of their labour; and several of these have acquired a pre-eminence over the more useful avocations. A taste for the wonderful seems to be natural to man in every stage of society, and at almost every period of life; we, therefore, cannot wonder that, from the earliest ages, persons have been found, who, more idle or more ingenious than others, have availed themselves of this propensity, to obtain an easy livelihood by levying contributions on the curiosity of the public. Whether this taste is to be considered as a proof of the weakness of our judgment, or of innate inquisitiveness, which stimulates us to enlarge the sphere of our knowledge, must be left to the decision of metaphysicians; it is sufficient for our present purpose to know that it gave rise to a numerous class of persons, whom, whether performers of sleight of hand, rope-dancers, mountebanks, teachers of animals to perform extraordinary tricks, or, in short, who delude the senses, and practice harmless deception on spectators, we include under the common title of Jugglers.
If these arts served no other purpose than that of mere amusement, they yet merit a certain degree of encouragement, as affording at once a cheap and innocent diversion: but Jugglers frequentlyexhibit instructive experiments in natural philosophy, chemistry, and mechanics; thus, the solar microscope was invented from an instrument to reflect shadows, with which a Savoyard amused a German populace; and the celebrated Sir Richard Arkwright is said to have conceived the idea of the spinning machines, which have so largely contributed to the prosperity of the cotton manufacture in this country, from a toy which he purchased for his child of an itinerant showman. These deceptions have, besides, acted as an agreeable and most powerful antidote to superstition, and to that popular belief in miracles, conjuration, sorcery, and witchcraft, which preyed upon the minds of our ancestors; and the effects of shadows, electricity, mirrors, and the magnet, once formidable instruments in the hands of interested persons for keeping the vulgar in awe, have been stripped of their terrors, and are no longer frightful in their most terrific forms.
That this superstitious dread led to the persecution of many innocent beings, who were supposed to be guilty of witchcraft, is too well known to require illustration: our own statute books are loaded with penalties against sorcery; at no very distant period our courts of law have been disgraced by criminal trials of that nature; and judges who are still cited as models of legal knowledge and discernment, not only permitted such cases to go to a jury, but allowed sentences to be recorded which consigned reputed wizards to capital punishment. In Poland, even so late as the year 1739, a Juggler was exposed to the torture,until a confession was extracted from him that he was a sorcerer, upon which, without further proof, he was immediately hanged; and instances in other countries might be multiplied without end. But this, although it exceeds in atrocity, does not equal in absurdity, the infatuation of the tribunal of the inquisition in Portugal, which actually condemned to the flames, as being possessed with the devil, a horse belonging to an Englishman, who had taught it to perform some uncommon tricks; and the poor animal is confidently said to have been publicly burned at Lisbon, in conformity with his sentence, in the year 1601.
The only parts of Europe in which the arts of sorcery now obtain any credit, is Lapland; where, indeed, supposed wizards still practise incantations, by which they pretend to obtain the knowledge of future events, and in which the credulity of the people induces them to place the most implicit confidence. On such occasions a magic drum is usually employed. This instrument is formed of a piece of wood of a semi-oval form, hollow on the flat side, and there covered with a skin, in which various uncouth figures are depicted; among which, since the introduction of Christianity into that country, an attempt is usually made to represent the acts of our Saviour and the Apostles. On this covering several brass rings of different sizes are laid, while the attendants dispose themselves in many antic postures, in order to facilitate the charm; the drum is then beat with the horn of a rein-deer, which occasioning the skin to vibrate, puts the rings in motion round the figures, and, accordingto the positions which they occupy, the officiating seer pronounces his prediction.
It is unfortunate that of all the books (and there were several) which treated of the arts of conjuration, as they were practised among the ancients, not one is now extant, and all that we know upon the subject is collected from isolated facts which have been incidentally mentioned in other writings. From these it would, however, appear, that many of the deceptions which still continue to excite astonishment, were then common.
A century and a half before our æra, during the revolt of the slaves in Sicily, a Syrian of their number, named Eunus, a man of considerable talent, who after having witnessed many vicissitudes, was reduced to that state, became the leader of his companions by pretending to an inspiration from the gods; and in order to confirm the divinity of his mission by miracles, he used to breath flames from his mouth when addressing his followers. By this art the Rabbi Barchschebas also made the credulous Jews believe that he was the Messiah, during the sedition which he excited among them in the reign of Adrian; and, two centuries afterwards, the Emperor Constantius was impressed with great dread, when informed that one of the body-guards had been seen to breathe out fire. Historians tell us that these deceptions were performed by putting inflammable substances into a nut-shell pierced at both ends, which was then secretly conveyed into the mouth and breathed through. Our own fire-eaters content themselves with rolling a little flax, so as to form a small ball,which is suffered to burn until nearly consumed; more flax is then tightly rolled round it, and the fire will thus remain within for a long time, and sparks may be blown from it without injury, provided the air be inspired, not by the mouth but through the nostrils. The ancients also performed some curious experiments with that inflammable mineral oil called Naphtha, which kindles on merely exposing near a fire. Allusion is supposed to have been made to this in the story of the dress of Herculus, when it is said to have been dipped in the blood of Nessus. Many assert that it was with this substance Medea destroyed Creusa, by sending to her a dress impregnated with it, which burst into flames when she drew near the fire of the altar; and there can be no doubt that it was used by the priests on those occasions when the sacrificial offerings took fire imperceptibly.
The trial by Ordeal, in the middle ages, in which persons accused of certain crimes were forced to prove their innocence by walking blindfold among burning ploughshares, or by holding heated iron in their hands, was probably little else than a juggling trick, which the priests conducted as best suited their views. The accused was committed to their care during three entire days previous to the trial, and remained in their custody for the same space after it was over; the Ordeal took place in the church under their own immediate inspection; they not only consecrated, but heated, the iron themselves; mass was then said, and various ceremonies were performed, all calculated to divert the attention of the spectators; and when the operation was over, the part which had been exposed to thefire was carefully bound up and sealed, not to be opened until the end of the third day; doubtless, therefore, the time before the trial was occupied in preparing the skin to resist the effects of the heat, and that afterwards in obliterating the marks of any injury it might have sustained. That such was the fact has, indeed, been acknowledged in the works of Albertus Magnus, a Dominican friar, who, after the trial by Ordeal had been abolished, published the secret of the art, which, if his account be correct, consisted in nothing more than covering the hands and feet at repeated intervals with a paste made of the sap of certain herbs mixed together with the white of an egg.
This deception was, however, practised in times more remote than the period to which we have alluded. There was anciently an annual festival held on Mount Soracte, in Etruria, at which certain people calledHirpi, used to walk over live embers, for which performance they were allowed some peculiar privileges by the Roman senate; the same feat was achieved by women at the temple of Diana, at Castabala, in Cappadocia; and allusion is even made, in the Antigone of the Grecian poet Sophocles, who wrote nearly five centuries anterior to our æra, to the very species of Ordeal which has been just noticed.
In modern times, much notice has been excited by jugglers, who practised deceptions by fire. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, one Richardson, an Englishman, excited great astonishment at Paris, by pretending to chew burning coals and to swallow melted lead, with many otherequally extraordinary feats; some of which are thus recorded in Evelyn’s diary:—“October the 8th, 1672, took leave of my Lady Sunderland, who was going to the Hague to my Lord, now ambassador there. She made me stay dinner at Leicester House, and afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. He, before us, devoured brimstone on glowing coals, chewing and swallowing them. He melted a beere glasse and eate it quite up; then taking a live coal on his tongue, he put on it a raw oyster; the coal was blowne on with bellows till it flamed and sparkled in his mouth, and so remained until the oyster was quite boiled; then he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he dranke down as it flamed.” Many of our readers must recollect Signora Girardelli; and Miss Rogers, the American fire-eater, who was announced as having entered a heated oven with a leg of mutton in her hand, and having remained there until it was baked! This young lady exhibited all the tricks usually performed by such persons; she washed her hands in boiling oil, and then suffered aquafortis to be poured over them; but below the oil, there, no doubt, was a quantity of water, the air from which, when heated, forcing itself through the supernatant oil, gave it the appearance of boiling, when in reality its temperature probably did not exceed a hundred degrees of Fahrenheit; and when the hands were once well coated with oil, there was no danger from the aquafortis. She had also a ladle of melted lead, out of which she appeared to take a little with a spoon and pour into her mouth, and then to return in theshape of a solid lump; but in pretending to take the lead into the spoon, it was, in fact, quicksilver that was received, through a dexterous contrivance in the ladle, and this she swallowed, the solid lead having been previously placed in her mouth. She, besides, repeatedly placed her foot on a bar of hot iron; but the rapidity with which she removed it scarcely allowed time to injure the most delicate skin, even had it not been previously prepared: the cuticle of the hands and of the soles of the feet may, however, be easily rendered sufficiently callous to support a longer experiment. This effect will be produced if it be frequently punctured, or injured by being in continual contact with hard substances; repeatedly moistening it with spirit of vitriol will also at length render it horny and insensible; and thus it is not uncommon to see the labourers at copper-works take the melted ore into their hands.
The exhibition of cups and balls is of great antiquity, and depends entirely on manual dexterity. It is mentioned in the works of various ancient authors, one of whom relates the astonishment of a countryman, who, on first witnessing the performance, exclaimed, “that it was well he had no such animal on his farm, for under such hands no doubt all his property would soon disappear.”
Feats of strength have been common to all countries in every age. More than fifteen hundred years ago, there were persons who excited astonishment by the since ordinary exhibition of supporting vast weights upon the breast, and of even suffering iron to be forged on an anvil placedupon it. But these were mere tricks: to support the former, it is only necessary to place the body in such a position, with the shoulders and feet resting against some support, as that it shall form an arch; and as for the latter, if the anvil be large and the hammer small, the stroke will scarcely be felt; for the action and reaction being equal and reciprocal, an anvil of two hundred pounds weight will resist the stroke of a hammer of two pounds, wielded with the force of one hundred pounds, or of four pounds with the impetus of fifty, without injury to the body.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a German, who travelled over Europe under the appropriate name of Sampson, and who rendered himself celebrated by the uncommon strength which he displayed: among many other extraordinary feats, it is said, that he could so fix himself between two posts, as that two or even more horses, could not draw him from his position. The same exploit was attempted not many years back, in this country, by a person who placed himself with his feet resting in a horizontal posture against a strong bar; only one horse was employed, and the man was enabled to resist the entire force of the animal, until both his thigh bones suddenly snapped asunder. Another had the temerity to try the same experiment, and, in like manner, broke both his legs. These instances clearly show, that apparent strength is often nothing more than a judicious application of the mechanical powers to the human frame; and from the catastrophe attending the two latter may be deduced the anatomicalfact, that the sinews of the arms possess a greater power of resistance than the largest bones of the body.
Feats of tumbling, rope dancing, and horsemanship, were practised at very early periods. Xenophon mentions a female dancer at Athens, who wrote and read while standing on a wheel which revolved with the greatest velocity; but the manner in which this was performed is not explained. Juvenal seems also to have alluded to a similar performance at Rome, in that passage where he says:
“An magis oblectant animum jactata petauro,Corpora quique solent rectum descendere funem,Quam tu.”Sat.xiv. v. 265.
“An magis oblectant animum jactata petauro,Corpora quique solent rectum descendere funem,Quam tu.”Sat.xiv. v. 265.
“An magis oblectant animum jactata petauro,Corpora quique solent rectum descendere funem,Quam tu.”Sat.xiv. v. 265.
“An magis oblectant animum jactata petauro,
Corpora quique solent rectum descendere funem,
Quam tu.”Sat.xiv. v. 265.
which, however, also wants explanation, although one of his most judicious translators has rendered it
——“The man who springsLight through the hoop, and on the tight-rope swings.”Gifford.
——“The man who springsLight through the hoop, and on the tight-rope swings.”Gifford.
——“The man who springsLight through the hoop, and on the tight-rope swings.”Gifford.
——“The man who springs
Light through the hoop, and on the tight-rope swings.”
Gifford.
Addison tells us, that, in his travels through Italy, he witnessed an annual exhibition that is peculiar to the Venetians. “A set of artisans, by the help of poles, which they laid across each others’ shoulders, built themselves up in a kind of pyramid; so that you saw a pile of men in the air, of four or five rows, rising one above another. The weight was so equally distributed that every man was well able to bear his part of it; the stories, if they might be so called, growing less and less as they advanced higher and higher. Alittle boy presented the top of the pyramid, who, after a short space, leaped off, with a great deal of dexterity, into the arms of one who caught him at the bottom.” But this was only the revival of an ancient feat, which, as we learn from the following verses of the poet Claudian, was formerly practised among the Romans:—
“Vel qui mare arrum sese jaculantur in auras,Corporaque adificant celeri cressentia nexu,Queram compositam puer augmentatus in arcemEmicat, et vinctas plantæ, vel eruribus hærens,Pendulo librato figit vestigia sulta.”De Pr. et Obyb. Cono.
“Vel qui mare arrum sese jaculantur in auras,Corporaque adificant celeri cressentia nexu,Queram compositam puer augmentatus in arcemEmicat, et vinctas plantæ, vel eruribus hærens,Pendulo librato figit vestigia sulta.”De Pr. et Obyb. Cono.
“Vel qui mare arrum sese jaculantur in auras,Corporaque adificant celeri cressentia nexu,Queram compositam puer augmentatus in arcemEmicat, et vinctas plantæ, vel eruribus hærens,Pendulo librato figit vestigia sulta.”De Pr. et Obyb. Cono.
“Vel qui mare arrum sese jaculantur in auras,
Corporaque adificant celeri cressentia nexu,
Queram compositam puer augmentatus in arcem
Emicat, et vinctas plantæ, vel eruribus hærens,
Pendulo librato figit vestigia sulta.”
De Pr. et Obyb. Cono.
“Men pil’d on men, with active leaps arise,And build the breathing fabric to the skies;A sprightly youth above the topmast rowPaints the tall pyramid, and crowns the show.”Addison.
“Men pil’d on men, with active leaps arise,And build the breathing fabric to the skies;A sprightly youth above the topmast rowPaints the tall pyramid, and crowns the show.”Addison.
“Men pil’d on men, with active leaps arise,And build the breathing fabric to the skies;A sprightly youth above the topmast rowPaints the tall pyramid, and crowns the show.”Addison.
“Men pil’d on men, with active leaps arise,
And build the breathing fabric to the skies;
A sprightly youth above the topmast row
Paints the tall pyramid, and crowns the show.”
Addison.
In the thirteenth century, these performances were introduced at Constantinople, by a strolling company from Egypt, who afterwards travelled to Rome, and thence through great part of Europe. They could stand in various postures on horses while at full speed, and both mount and dismount without stopping them; and their rope-dancers sometimes extended the rope on which they poised themselves between the masts of ships.
It appears also that the ancients taught animals to perform many tricks that are still exhibited, and some even yet more extraordinary. In the year 543, a learned dog was shown at the Byzantine court, which not only selected, and returned to the several owners, the rings and ornaments of thespectators, which were thrown together before him, but on being asked his opinion respecting the character of some of the females who were present, he expressed it by signs at once so significant and correct, that the people were persuaded he possessed the spirit of divination. In the reign of Galba, an elephant was exhibited at Rome which walked upon a rope stretched across the theatre; and such was the confidence reposed in his dexterity, that a person was mounted on him while he performed the feat.
It must require the exercise not alone of vast patience, but also of extraordinary cruelty, mingled perhaps with much kindness, to train animals to exhibit a degree of intelligence approaching to that of human beings. It is said that bears are taught to dance by being placed in a den with a floor of heated iron: the animal, endeavouring to avoid the smart to which his paws are thus exposed, rears himself on his hind legs, and alternately raises them with the utmost rapidity, during all which time a flageolet is played to him; and after this lesson has been frequently repeated, he becomes so impressed with the associated recollection of the music and the pain, that, whenever he hears the same tune, he instinctively recurs to the same efforts, in order to escape the fancied danger.
In the middle of the last century, there was an Englishman, named Wildman, who excited great attention by the possession of a secret through the means of which he enticed bees to follow him, and to settle on his person without stinging him. A similar circumstance is related in Francis Bruce’svoyage to Africa in 1698, in which mention is made of a man who was constantly surrounded by a swarm of these insects, and who had thence obtained the title of “King of the bees.”
Only one instance is recorded in ancient history of the art of supplying the deficiency of hands by the use of toes; and that is of an Indian slave belonging to the emperor Augustus, who, being without arms, could, notwithstanding, wield a bow and arrows and put a trumpet to his mouth with his feet.
Of late years some persons have exhibited themselves in the character of stone-eaters; but although these are to be considered as mere jugglers, yet it would appear that there have been others who actually possessed the faculty of digesting similar substances. Of the instances on record we shall merely select one, from the “Dictionnaire Physique,” of father Paulian:—“The beginning of May 1760, there was brought to Avignon a true lithophagus, or stone-eater, who had been found, about three years before that time, in a northern island, by the crew of a Dutch ship. He not only swallowed flints of an inch and a half long, a full inch broad, and half an inch thick, but such stones as he could reduce to powder, such as marble, pebbles, &c., he made up into paste, which was to him a most agreeable and wholesome food. I examined this man with all the attention I possibly could; I found his gullet very large, his teeth exceedingly strong, his saliva very corrosive, and his stomach lower than ordinary, which I imputed to the vast quantity of flints he had swallowed,being about five and twenty, one day with another. His keeper made him eat raw flesh with the stones, but could never induce him to swallow bread; he would, however, drink water, wine, and brandy, which last liquor appeared to afford him infinite pleasure. He usually slept twelve hours a day, sitting on the ground, with one knee over the other, and his chin resting on it; and when not asleep he passed the greater part of his time in smoking.” In the year 1802, there was a Frenchman, who, indeed, did not profess to eat stones, but who publicly devoured at the amphitheatre, in the city of Lisbon, a side of raw mutton, with a rabbit and a fowl,both alive: he advertised a repetition of the experiment, with the addition of a live cat; but the magistrates, deeming the exhibition too brutal for the public eye, would not again allow its performance. Notwithstanding the public display of this man, and the extraordinary fact of his having appeared to swallow living animals, may rank him in the class of jugglers, it is still probable that he was no impostor; for instances of such uncommon powers of the stomach are by no means rare, and among others we read of another Frenchman who was in the constant habit, as an amateur, of eating cats alive, and was even strongly suspected of having devoured a child.