Books: Lives of the Necromancers

W >> William Godwin >> Lives of the Necromancers

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25

Many of the matters most currently related among these supernatural
phenomena, are tales of transformation. A lady has two sisters of the
most profligate and unprincipled character. They have originally the
same share of the paternal inheritance as herself. But they waste it
in profusion and folly, while she improves her portion by good
judgment and frugality. Driven to the extremity of distress, they
humble themselves, and apply to her for assistance. She generously
imparts to them the same amount of wealth that they originally
possessed, and they are once more reduced to poverty. This happens
again and again. At length, finding them incapable of discretion, she
prevails on them to come and live with her. By wearisome and ceaseless
importunity they induce her to embark in a mercantile enterprise. Here
she meets with a prince, who had the misfortune to be born in a region
of fire-worshippers, but was providentially educated by a Mahometan
nurse. Hence, when his countrymen were by divine vengeance all turned
into stones, he alone was saved alive. The lady finds him in this
situation, endowed with sense and motion amidst a petrified city, and
they immediately fall in love with each other. She brings him away
from this melancholy scene, and together they go on board the vessel
which had been freighted by herself and her sisters. But the sisters
become envious of her good fortune, and conspire, while she and the
prince are asleep, to throw them overboard. The prince is drowned; but
the lady with great difficulty escapes. She finds herself in a desert
island, not far from the place where she had originally embarked on
her adventure; and, having slept off the fatigues she had encountered,
beholds on her awaking a black woman with an agreeable countenance, a
fairy, who leads in her hand two black bitches coupled together with a
cord. These black bitches are the lady's sisters, thus metamorphosed,
as a punishment for their ingratitude and cruelty. The fairy conveys
her through the air to her own house in Bagdad, which she finds well
stored with all sorts of commodities, and delivers to her the two
animals, with an injunction that she is to whip them every day at a
certain hour as a further retribution for their crimes. This was
accordingly punctually performed; and, at the end of each day's
penance, the lady, having before paid no regard to the animals'
gestures and pitiable cries, wept over them, took them in her arms,
kissed them, and carefully wiped the moisture from their eyes. Having
persevered for a length of time in this discipline, the offenders are
finally, by a counter-incantation, restored to their original forms,
being by the severities they had suffered entirely cured of the vices
which had occasioned their calamitous condition.

Another story is of a calender, a sort of Mahometan monk, with one eye,
who had originally been a prince. He had contracted a taste for
navigation and naval discoveries; and, in one of his voyages, having
been driven by stress of weather into unknown seas, he suddenly finds
himself attracted towards a vast mountain of loadstone, which first,
by virtue of the iron and nails in the ship, draws the vessel towards
itself, and then, by its own intrinsic force, extracts the nails, so
that the ship tumbles to pieces, and every one on board is drowned.
The mountain, on the side towards the sea, is all covered with nails,
which had been drawn from vessels that previously suffered the same
calamity; and these nails at once preserve and augment the fatal power
of the mountain. The prince only escapes; and he finds himself in a
desolate island, with a dome of brass, supported by brazen pillars,
and on the top of it a horse of brass, and a rider of the same metal.
This rider the prince is fated to throw down, by means of an enchanted
arrow, and thus to dissolve the charm which had been fatal to
thousands. From the desolate island he embarked on board a boat, with
a single rower, a man of metal, and would have been safely conveyed to
his native country, had he not inadvertently pronounced the name of
God, that he had been warned not to do, and which injunction he had
observed many days. On this the boat immediately sunk; but the prince
was preserved, who comes into a desolate island, where he finds but
one inhabitant, a youth of fifteen. This youth is hid in a cavern, it
having been predicted of him that he should be killed after fifty days,
by the man that threw down the horse of brass and his rider. A great
friendship is struck up between the unsuspecting youth and the prince,
who nevertheless fulfils the prediction, having by a pure accident
killed the youth on the fiftieth day. He next arrives at a province of
the main land, where he visits a castle, inhabited by ten very
agreeable young men, each blind of the right eye. He dwells with them
for a month, and finds, after a day of pleasant entertainment, that
each evening they do penance in squalidness and ashes. His curiosity
is greatly excited to obtain an explanation of what he saw, but this
they refuse, telling him at the same time, that he may, if he pleases,
pass through the same adventure as they have done, and, if he does,
wishing it may be attended with a more favourable issue. He determines
to make the experiment; and by their direction, after certain
preparations, is flown away with through the air by a roc, a stupendous
bird, that is capable in the same manner of carrying off an elephant.
By this means he is brought to a castle of the most extraordinary
magnificence, inhabited by forty ladies of exquisite beauty. With
these ladies he lives for eleven months in a perpetual succession of
delights. But in the twelfth month they tell him, that they are
obliged to leave him till the commencement of the new year. In the
mean time they give him for his amusement the keys of one hundred
apartments, all but one of which he is permitted to open. He is
delighted with the wonders of these apartments till the last day. On
that day he opens the forbidden room, where the rarity that most
strikes him is a black horse of admirable shape and appearance, with
a saddle and bridle of gold. He leads this horse into the open air,
and is tempted to mount him. The horse first stands still; but at
length, being touched with a switch, spreads a pair of wings which the
prince had not before perceived, and mounts to an amazing height in
the air. The horse finally descends on the terrace of a castle, where
he throws his rider, and leaves him, having first dashed out his right
eye with a sudden swing of his tail. The prince goes down into the
castle, and to his surprise finds himself in company with the ten
young men, blind of one eye, who had passed through the same adventure
as he had done, and all been betrayed by means of the same infirmity.

PERSIAN TALES.

These two stories are from the Arabian Nights: the two following are
from the Persian Tales.--Fadlallah, king of Mousel, contracted an
intimacy with a young dervise, a species of Turkish friar, who makes a
vow of perpetual poverty. The dervise, to ingratiate himself the more
with the prince, informed him of a secret he possessed, by means of a
certain incantation, of projecting his soul into the body of any dead
animal he thought proper.

To convince the king that this power was no empty boast, he offered to
quit his own body, and animate that of a doe, which Fadlallah had just
killed in hunting. He accordingly executed what he proposed, took
possession of the body of the doe, displayed the most surprising
agility, approached the king, fawning on him with every expression of
endearment, and then, after various bounds, deserting the limbs of the
animal, and repossessing his own frame, which during the experiment
had lain breathless on the ground. Fadlallah became earnest to possess
the secret of the dervise; and, after some demurs, it was communicated
to him. The king took possession of the body of the doe; but his
treacherous confident no sooner saw the limbs of Fadlallah stretched
senseless on the ground, than he conveyed his own spirit into them,
and, bending his bow, sought to destroy the life of his defenceless
victim. The king by his agility escaped; and the dervise, resorting to
the palace, took possession of the throne, and of the bed of the queen,
Zemroude, with whom Fadlallah was desperately enamoured. The first
precaution of the usurper was to issue a decree that all the deer
within his dominions should be killed, hoping by this means to destroy
the rightful sovereign. But the king, aware of his danger, had deserted
the body of the doe, and entered that of a dead nightingale that lay
in his path. In this disguise he hastened to the palace, and placed
himself in a wide-spreading tree, which grew immediately before the
apartment of Zemroude. Here he poured out his complaints and the grief
that penetrated his soul in such melodious notes, as did not fail to
attract the attention of the queen. She sent out her bird-catchers to
make captive the little warbler; and Fadlallah, who desired no better,
easily suffered himself to be made their prisoner. In this new
position he demonstrated by every gesture of fondness his partiality
to the queen; but if any of her women approached him, he pecked at
them in anger, and, when the impostor made his appearance, could not
contain the vehemence of his rage. It happened one night that the
queen's lap-dog died; and the thought struck Fadlallah that he would
animate the corpse of this animal. The next morning Zemroude found her
favourite bird dead in his cage, and immediately became inconsolable.
Never, she said, was so amiable a bird; he distinguished her from all
others; he seemed even to entertain a passion for her; and she felt as
if she could not survive his loss. The dervise in vain tried every
expedient to console her. At length he said, that, if she pleased, he
would cause her nightingale to revive every morning, and entertain her
with his tunes as long as she thought proper. The dervise accordingly
laid himself on a sopha, and by means of certain cabalistic words,
transported his soul into the body of the nightingale, and began to
sing. Fadlallah watched his time; he lay in a corner of the room
unobserved; but no sooner had the dervise deserted his body, than the
king proceeded to take possession of it. The first thing he did was to
hasten to the cage, to open the door with uncontrolable impatience,
and, seizing the bird, to twist off its head. Zemroude, amazed, asked
him what he meant by so inhuman an action. Fadlallah in reply related
to her all the circumstances that had befallen him; and the queen
became so struck with agony and remorse that she had suffered her
person, however innocently, to be polluted by so vile an impostor,
that she could not get over the recollection, but pined away and died
from a sense of the degradation she had endured.

But a much more perplexing and astounding instance of transformation
occurs in the history of the Young King of Thibet and the Princess of
the Naimans. The sorcerers in this case are represented as, without
any intermediate circumstance to facilitate their witchcraft, having
the ability to assume the form of any one they please, and in
consequence to take the shape of one actually present, producing a
duplication the most confounding that can be imagined.--Mocbel, the
son of an artificer of Damascus, but whose father had bequeathed him
considerable wealth, contrived to waste his patrimony and his youth
together in profligate living with Dilnouaze, a woman of dissolute
manners. Finding themselves at once poor and despised, they had
recourse to the sage Bedra, the most accomplished magician of the
desert, and found means to obtain her favour. In consequence she
presented them with two rings, which had the power of enabling them to
assume the likeness of any man or woman they please. Thus equipped,
Mocbel heard of the death of Mouaffack, prince of the Naimans, who was
supposed to have been slain in a battle, and whose body had never been
found. The niece of Mouaffack now filled the throne; and under these
circumstances Mocbel conceived the design of personating the absent
Mouaffack, exciting a rebellion among his countrymen, and taking
possession of the throne. In this project he succeeded; and the
princess driven into exile, took refuge in the capital of Thibet. Here
the king saw her, fell in love with her, and espoused her. Being made
acquainted with her history, he resolved to re-conquer her dominions,
and sent a defiance to the usurper. Mocbel, terrified at the thought
of so formidable an invader, first pretended to die, and then, with
Dilnouaze, who during his brief reign had under the form of a beautiful
woman personated his queen, proceeded in his original form to the
capital of Thibet. Here his purpose was to interrupt the happiness of
those who had disturbed him in his deceitful career. Accordingly one
night, when the queen, previously to proceeding to her repose, had
shut herself up in her closet to read certain passages of the Alcoran,
Dilnouaze, assuming her form with the minutest exactness, hastened to
place herself in the royal bed by the side of the king. After a time,
the queen shut her book, and went along the gallery to the king's
bedchamber, Mocbel watched his time, and placed himself, under the
form of a frightful apparition, directly in the queen's path. She
started at the sight, and uttered a piercing shriek. The king
recognised her voice, and hastened to see what had happened to her.
She explained; but the king spoke of something much more extraordinary,
and asked her how it could possibly happen that she should be in the
gallery, at the same moment that he had left her, undressed and in bed.
They proceeded to the chamber to unravel the mystery. Here a contention
occurred between the real and the seeming queen, each charging the
other with imposture. The king turned from one to the other, and was
unable to decide between their pretensions. The courtiers and the
ladies of the bedchamber were called, and all were perplexed with
uncertainty and doubt. At length they determine in favour of the false
queen, It was then proposed that the other should be burned for a
sorceress. The king however forbade this. He was not yet altogether
decided; and could not resolve to consign his true queen, as it might
possibly be, to a cruel death. He was therefore content to strip her
of her royal robes, to clothe her in rags, and thrust her ignominiously
from his palace.

Treachery however was not destined to be ultimately triumphant. The
king one day rode out a hunting; and Mocbel, that he might the better
deceive the guards of the palace, seizing the opportunity, assumed his
figure, and went to bed to Dilnouaze. The king meanwhile recollected
something of importance, that he had forgotten before he went out to
hunt, and returning upon his steps, proceeded to the royal chamber.
Here to his utter confusion he found a man in bed with his queen, and
that man to his greater astonishment the exact counterpart of himself.
Furious at the sight, he immediately drew his scymetar. The man
contrived to escape down the backstairs. The woman however remained in
bed; and, stretching out her hands to intreat for mercy, the king
struck off the hand which had the ring on it, and she immediately
appeared, as she really was, a frightful hag. She begged for life; and,
that she might mollify his rage, explained the mystery, told him that
it was by means of a ring that she effected the delusion, and that by
a similar enchantment her paramour had assumed the likeness of the
king. The king meanwhile was inexorable, and struck off her head. He
next turned in pursuit of the adulterer. Mocbel however had had time
to mount on horseback. But the king mounted also; and, being the
better horseman, in a short time overtook his foe. The impostor did
not dare to cope with him, but asked his life; and the king,
considering him as the least offender of the two, pardoned him upon
condition of his surrendering the ring, in consequence of which he
passed the remainder of his life in poverty and decrepitude.

STORY OF A GOULE.

A story in the Arabian Nights, which merits notice for its singularity,
and as exhibiting a particular example of the credulity of the people
of the East, is that of a man who married a sorceress, without being
in any way conscious of her character in that respect. She was
sufficiently agreeable in her person, and he found for the most part
no reason to be dissatisfied with her. But he became uneasy at the
strangeness of her behaviour, whenever they sat together at meals. The
husband provided a sufficient variety of dishes, and was anxious that
his wife should eat and be refreshed. But she took scarcely any
nourishment. He set before her a plate of rice. From this plate she
took somewhat, grain by grain; but she would taste of no other dish.
The husband remonstrated with her upon her way of eating, but to no
purpose; she still went on the same. He knew it was impossible for any
one to subsist upon so little as she ate; and his curiosity was roused.
One night, as he lay quietly awake, he perceived his wife rise very
softly, and put on her clothes. He watched, but made as if he saw
nothing. Presently she opened the door, and went out. He followed her
unperceived, by moonlight, and tracked her into a place of graves.
Here to his astonishment he saw her joined by a Goule, a sort of
wandering demon, which is known to infest ruinous buildings, and from
time to time suddenly rushes out, seizes children and other defenceless
people, strangles, and devours them. Occasionally, for want of other
food, this detested race will resort to churchyards, and, digging up
the bodies of the newly-buried, gorge their appetites upon the flesh
of these. The husband followed his wife and her supernatural companion,
and watched their proceedings. He saw them digging in a new-made grave.
They extracted the body of the deceased; and, the Goule cutting it up
joint by joint, they feasted voraciously, and, having satisfied their
appetites, cast the remainder into the grave again, and covered it up
as before. The husband now withdrew unobserved to his bed, and the
wife followed presently after. He however conceived a horrible
loathing of such a wife; and she discovers that he is acquainted with
her dreadful secret. They can no longer live together; and a
metamorphosis followed. She turned him into a dog, which by ill usage
she drove from her door; and he, aided by a benevolent sorceress,
first recovers his natural shape, and then, having changed her into a
mare, by perpetual hard usage and ill treatment vents his detestation
of the character he had discovered in her.

ARABIAN NIGHTS.

A compilation of more vigorous imagination and more exhaustless
variety than the Arabian Nights, perhaps never existed. Almost every
thing that can be conceived of marvellous and terrific is there to be
found. When we should apprehend the author or authors to have come to
an end of the rich vein in which they expatiate, still new wonders are
presented to us in endless succession. Their power of comic exhibition
is not less extraordinary than their power of surprising and
terrifying. The splendour of their painting is endless; and the mind
of the reader is roused and refreshed by shapes and colours for ever
new.

RESEMBLANCE OF THE TALES OF THE EAST AND OF EUROPE.

It is characteristic of this work to exhibit a faithful and particular
picture of Eastern manners, customs, and modes of thinking and acting.
And yet, now and then, it is curious to observe the coincidence of
Oriental imagination with that of antiquity and of the North of Europe,
so that it is difficult to conceive the one not to be copied from the
other. Perhaps it was so; and perhaps not. Man is every where man,
possessed of the same faculties, stimulated by the same passions,
deriving pain and pleasure from the same sources, with similar hopes
and fears, aspirations and alarms.

In the Third Voyage of Sinbad he arrives at an island were he finds
one man, a negro, as tall as a palm-tree, and with a single eye in the
middle of his forehead. He takes up the crew, one by one, and selects
the fattest as first to be devoured. This is done a second time. At
length nine of the boldest seize on a spit, while he lay on his back
asleep, and, having heated it red-hot, thrust it into his eye.--This
is precisely the story of Ulysses and the Cyclops.

The story of the Little Hunchback, who is choaked with a fish-bone,
and, after having brought successive individuals into trouble on the
suspicion of murdering him, is restored to life again, is nearly the
best known of the Arabian Tales. The merry jest of Dan Hew, Monk of
Leicester, who "once was hanged, and four times slain," bears a very
striking resemblance to this. [149]

A similar resemblance is to be found, only changing the sex of the
aggressor, between the well known tale of Patient Grizzel, and that of
Cheheristany in the Persian Tales. This lady was a queen of the Gins,
who fell in love with the emperor of China, and agrees to marry him
upon condition that she shall do what she pleases, and he shall never
doubt that what she does is right. She bears him a son, beautiful as
the day, and throws him into the fire. She bears him a daughter, and
gives her to a white bitch, who runs away with her, and disappears.
The emperor goes to war with the Moguls; and the queen utterly
destroys the provisions of his army. But the fire was a salamander,
and the bitch a fairy, who rear the children in the most admirable
manner; and the provisions of the army were poisoned by a traitor, and
are in a miraculous manner replaced by such as were wholesome and of
the most invigorating qualities.

CAUSES OF HUMAN CREDULITY.

Meanwhile, though the stories above related are extracted from books
purely and properly of fiction, they exhibit so just a delineation of
Eastern manners and habits of mind, that, in the defect of materials
strictly historical, they may to a certain degree supply the place.
The principal feature they set before us is credulity and a love of
the marvellous. This is ever found characteristic of certain ages of
the world; but in Asia it prevails in uninterrupted continuity.
Wherever learning and the exercise of the intellectual faculties first
shew themselves, there mystery and a knowledge not to be communicated
but to the select few must be expected to appear. Wisdom in its
natural and genuine form seeks to diffuse itself; but in the East on
the contrary it is only valued in proportion to its rarity. Those who
devoted themselves to intellectual improvement, looked for it rather
in solitary abstraction, than in free communication with the minds of
others; and, when they condescended to the use of the organ of speech,
they spoke in enigmas and ambiguities, and in phrases better adapted
to produce wonder and perplexity, than to enlighten and instruct. When
the more consummate instructed the novice, it was by slow degrees only,
and through the medium of a long probation. In consequence of this
state of things the privileged few conceived of their own attainments
with an over-weening pride, and were puffed up with a sense of
superiority; while the mass of their fellow-creatures looked to them
with astonishment; and, agreeably to the Oriental creed of two
independent and contending principles of good and of evil, regarded
these select and supernaturally endowed beings anon as a source of the
most enviable blessings, and anon as objects of unmingled apprehension
and terror, before whom their understandings became prostrate, and
every thing that was most appalling and dreadful was most easily
believed. In this state superstition unavoidably grew infectious; and
the more the seniors inculcated and believed, the more the imagination
of the juniors became a pliant and unresisting slave.

The Mantra, or charm, consisting of a few unintelligible words
repeated again and again, always accompanied, or rather preceded, the
supposed miraculous phenomenon that was imposed on the ignorant. Water
was flung over, or in the face of, the thing or person upon whom the
miraculous effect was to be produced. Incense was burned; and such
chemical substances were set on fire, the dazzling appearance of which
might confound the senses of the spectators. The whole consisted in
the art of the juggler. The first business was to act on the passions,
to excite awe and fear and curiosity in the parties; and next by a
sort of slight of hand, and by changes too rapid to be followed by an
unpractised eye, to produce phenomena, wholly unanticipated, and that
could not be accounted for. Superstition was further an essential
ingredient; and this is never perfect, but where the superior and more
active party regards himself as something more than human, and the
party acted upon beholds in the other an object of religious reverence,
or tingles with apprehension of he knows not what of fearful and
calamitous. The state of the party acted on, and indeed of either, is
never complete, till the senses are confounded, what is imagined is so
powerful as in a manner to exclude what is real, in a word, till, as
the poet expresses it, "function is smothered in surmise, and nothing
is, but what is not."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25