Fables and Frejudices regarding Serpents. 71 



work, I shall notice the magic power which certain persons 

 pretend to be able to exercise over snakes. This pretended 

 art, which formed at all times, and among various nations, 

 the occupation of a particular caste, consists in certain tricks 

 which the serpents execute at the will of the conjurors^ who 

 have trained them expressly for the purpose : as they chiefly 

 make use of the Naja tripudians and Naja haje, I have, in 

 these two articles, stated the manner in which they employ 

 serpents in those tricks.* 



Such conjurors exist now in the Indian Peninsula, and in 

 ^^ypt ;t those of the latter country boast themselves to be the 

 descendants of the Psylli,J — ^a tribe who inhabited ancient 

 Lybia and India, and were celebrated for their skill in curing 

 the bites of snakes, and securing themselves against them. 

 Another people inhabiting Italy, but less known, were the 

 Marsi ;§ we know still less of the Ophigenoi, whose country 

 was Greece. II 



Among the more civilized people of Europe, persons who 

 pretend to possess the art of fascinating serpents, are very 

 rarely to be met : they consist most frequently of ignorant 

 charlatans, who impose on the lower orders, seeking to alarm 

 them by playing familiarly with serpents, while they are only 

 thus familiar with the innocuous. M. Lenz has given in his 

 workl the history and tragic end of one of those pretended 

 conjurors, who paid with his life for a temerity, founded on 

 absolute ignorance of the nature of vipers. 



* [The author here alludes to the descriptive part of his work, not yet trans- 

 lated.] 



t Greoffroy, Descrip. del Egypte, xxiv., p. 88. 



X Plin. vii. 2 ; ^lian, 16, 37, 17, 27 ; Lucan, ix. 891. Ck)nsult also the paper 

 of Mr Spalding, entitled Uber die Zauberei durch Schlangen, and inserted in the 

 Memoirs of the Academy of Berlin, 1804-11, Historico-philosophical Class, p. 9. 



§ Virgil, En. vii. 750 ; Silius Italicus, viii. 495. 



II Plinius, vii. 2; iElian, xii. 39. 



IT Page 192. 



