SERPENT WORSHIP, ' CHARMING; ETC. 523 



selves. The ancient belief that to devour vipers proved 

 a specific for their bite, has to the present day prevailed 

 among the snake-charmers of Egypt, who — whether or not 

 from this practice — are said so to assimilate their bodies 

 that the venom does not harm them. The Bushmen of 

 South Africa, it is asserted, swallow poison to render 

 themselves proof against its effects ; and history records 

 many other tribes who have had such confidence in their 

 own and an inherited immunity, that they hesitated not in 

 exposing their infants to deadly serpents. The Persian 

 word Bezoar, a popular drug, means counter-poison ; in 

 allusion to the immunity from poison which persons who 

 feed on venomous snakes are believed to enjoy. 



Though much discredit has been thrown on these so- 

 called * immunities,' and though it is so very difficult to know 

 what to believe where a serpent is concerned, the possibility 

 does appear to be borne out by some authentic writers of 

 our own time. The late John Keast Lord, when in Egypt, 

 had frequent opportunities of observing the tricks of the 

 jugglers ; and not only he, but, as he assures us, many 

 intelligent and educated Europeans, fully believed that some 

 secret power was practised by the 'high-caste ' charmers, 

 who really did exhibit astonishing feats with their snakes. 

 Of these, the habit of devouring the reptiles alive can here 

 admit only of bare allusion.^. 



In Dahomey and the DaJioineans, F. E. Forbes tells of the 

 natives walking fearlessly bare legged in the grass where 

 snakes abound, and that on one occasion on alluding to the 



1 Anecdotes of Serpents, by the late J. K. Lord. Messrs. Chambers's J/w^//a«y 

 of Tracts, Edinburgh, 1870. 



