Chapter XX: Three Witnesses 281 (4)

Indra here says, “I eat no living creature,” which shows a moral advance. Perhaps his conversion may have been in some measure due to the teaching of Buddha. It is instructive to compare the Mahábhárata legend with an early Buddhist version cited by M. Focaux from the _Dsang-loung_,[35] a version all the more significant because the hero of it, Sivi, was traditionally the son of Usinára and had already appeared in the fourth book of Mahábhárata as tried in the same way with his father, and with the same results. Sivi had become a popular type of self-sacrifice. According to the Buddhist legend, Indra, perceiving that his divine existence was drawing to a close, confided to Visvakarman[36] his grief at not seeing in the world any man who would become a Buddha. Visvakarman declared King Sivi such a man. The falcon and pigeon test is then applied. But the Buddhist Sivi does not, like his Brahman prototype, offer to compensate the falcon with the flesh of other animals. He agrees to give his own flesh. The gods descend and weep tears of emotion at seeing the king as a skeleton outweighing the dove which all of his flesh could not equal. Nor is the Buddhist saint caught up to heaven. He is offered the empire and throne of Indra himself, but refuses it; he desires only to be a Buddha. Sivi’s body is restored to greater beauty than before, and he becomes the Buddha amid universal joy.

Other versions show the legend further detached from brahmanic ideas, and resting more completely upon Buddha’s compassionateness to all creatures. Of this description is one in the “Sermons” by Asphagosha, for the translation of which I am indebted to Professor Beal. Sakra (a name of Indra) tempted by a heretic to believe that the teaching of Buddha was false, and that men followed it from motives of self-interest, sought for a perfect man who was practising austerities solely for the sake of becoming a Buddha. Finding one, Sivaka Raja, he agreed with Visvakarman to tempt him. All happens as in the old legend, except that Sivaka rests his refusal not upon the law of Manu, nor upon the sanctity of asylum, but upon his love of all living things. To this his mercifulness the falcon appeals, reminding him of its own young, and Sivaka calls for a knife and cuts off a piece of his flesh, not caring whether it is more or less than the body of the dove. He then faints. All living creatures raise lamentations, and the deities, much affected, heal the wound.

The influence of Buddhism is traceable in the modifications of the original legend, which show the sacrifice not accepted as it was in the case of Vishnu, and to some extent in that of Usinára, whose earthly life terminates. With Buddha the principle of remission supersedes that of sacrifice. His argument against the Brahmanic sacrifice of life was strong. When they pointed to these predatory laws of nature in proof of their faith that the gods approved the infliction of pain and death, he asked them why they did not sacrifice their own children; why they did not offer to the gods the most valuable lives. The fact was that they were outgrowing direct human sacrifices--preserving self-mortifications--and animals were slain in commutation of costlier offerings. This moral revolution is traceable in the gradual constitution of Vishnu as a Saviour. There is a later legend that Vishnu approached Sivi in the form of a Brahman in want of food, but would accept none except the flesh of Sivi’s son Vrihad-Garbha. The king killed and cooked his son and placed the food before the Brahman, who then bade him eat it himself. Sivi prepared to do so, when Vishnu stayed his hand, revealed himself, restored the son to life, and vanished. This legend belongs to a transitional period. Its outcome is found in several Hindu folk-tales, one of which has been told by the charming story-teller, Mr. W. R. S. Ralston. The king of a country is dying, and a poor man is informed of the fact by a disguised “fate.” He asks if there is no way to save the king’s life, and is told there is but one way; if a child should be sacrificed, with its own consent, that would save the king. The man returns home and proposes to his wife to slay their beautiful little boy. She consents; the boy having also consented, the knife is about to descend on the child, when the fates appear, announcing that they only wished to try his loyalty to his king, who had already recovered.

We may feel pretty certain that originally that king was a deity, though not so certain that the knife was arrested without killing anything at all. In several popular fables we find the story preserved essentially in the old sacrificial form, to teach the rewards of self-sacrifice, though, in order to escape the scandal of a human sacrifice, the self-devotion is ascribed to animals. Thus, in the _Panchatantra_, a pigeon roasts itself to save a famished bird-catcher, who had just captured his mate; and the bird-catcher presently seeing its radiant form rising to heaven, spends his life consuming his flesh in the fire of devotion, in order that he also may ascend there.

In the Hebrew story corresponding to that of Vishnu and Sivi, the Hindu Abraham, we may see that where a god is concerned the actual sacrifice cannot be omitted. That may do in the case of a dying king or hungry hawk, but not for a deity. In the case of Abraham and Isaac the demand is not remitted but commuted. The ram is accepted instead of Isaac. But even so much concession could hardly be recognized by the Hebrew priesthood as an allowable variation from a direct demand of Jahve, and so the command is said to have been given by Elohim, its modification by Jahve. The cautious transformation is somewhat in the spirit of the disguises of the Aryan deities, who may partially revoke as gods the orders they gave as hawks. It would indicate a more advanced idea if we found Jahve remitting a claim of his own instead of one made by the Elohim.

It is worthy of a remark that in some regions where this change of names in the story of Abraham’s sacrifice is overlooked or unknown by Semitic religionists, there has sprung up a tradition that the sacrifice was completed, and the patriarch’s son miraculously restored to life. Thus, in another branch of the Jewish religion we find Mohammed flinching at the Biblical story. He does not like to admit that Allah altered his word and purpose except for a serious consideration, so he says, “We ransomed him with a noble victim.” The Moslems believe that Isaac was not then born, and that it was Ishmael across whose throat Abraham actually drew the knife, which was miraculously kept from killing the lad, according to some, but others say resulted in a death and resurrection.

In the year 1879 the highly educated State of Massachusetts was thrilled with horror by the tidings that a man named Freeman had offered up his beautiful and only child, Edith Freeman, as a sacrifice to God. It occurred in the historical town of Pocasset. A thousand years ago the Northmen who first discovered America wintered there, and possibly they there offered human sacrifices to their god Odin--that is, if they got hold of one or two red men; for there has been a notable tendency among men in such cases to prefer other victims than themselves for their gods. Since that first landing of white men in America the religion of Odin had yielded to that of Christ; Pocasset and all New England had been converted to Christianity; the Bible had found its way into every home. Yet this well-to-do citizen, Mr. Freeman, and his wife, had learned in Sunday School about Abraham’s touching proof of his faith. They had pondered the lesson until they heard the voice of Abraham’s God summoning them to a similar sacrifice, and they committed a deed which probably would have shocked even those rude Vikings who wintered at Pocasset a thousand years before. So much might the worship of a pitiless primitive deity arrest the civilisation of a household in the land of Channing and Parker. They prayed over the little girl, then the knife was plunged into her heart. Little Edith is now in her grave. The God of Abraham and Isaac got his pound of flesh this time. The devout priest of that horrible altar has just passed from his prison to an asylum. To the many who have visited him he puts questions hard to be answered. “Do you believe the Bible or not?” he says. “If you do, and have read the account of Abraham, why should you deny that God could require a man to sacrifice his child? He so required of me. I _did_ hope and believe that he would stay my hand before the blow fell. When he did not I still believed he would raise my child to life. But that is his own affair. I have given that which I loved most to God because He commanded me.” The American people waited to see whether a Christian community which trains up children to admire the faith of Abraham would hang them when they grow up to imitate that faith so impressed upon them. The embarrassing dilemma was escaped after eight months, by getting Freeman into an asylum for the insane, without trial. A rather mean way of confessing that theocratic piety is republican insanity!

I observed, soon after the occurrence of this tragedy, a picture of it in the _Police News_ exposed in the shop windows of London. The designer had placed a crucifix near the little victim’s head. It is probable that Freeman and his wife never saw a crucifix in their lives; they belong to the hardest, baldest dogmatic Protestantism. The rude artist perhaps placed the crucifix in his picture because the Abrahamic sacrifice was supposed to be typical of a holier one--a sacrifice in which a Son was offered up to satisfy the fatal law of a Father. In the human sacrifice symbolised by that crucifix culminated all these sacrifices of which mention has been made; and there was embodied that principle which has maintained through the ages that though to forgive may be human, to avenge is divine.

Let us return now to Shylock and the Merchant whose life is forfeit. Shylock is a primæval Jew; he represents the law, the letter and rigour of it. He is Indra tearing Vishnu’s breast; Elohim demanding Isaac’s death; the First Person exacting the Second Person’s atoning blood. His bond, his oath registered in heaven, its sanction by Venetian law, are by him identified with eternal justice. It is the irrevocable “thing spoken,” _fatum_, weird, or word. Portia is exact in telling him that he represents that “justice” in whose course, “none of us should see salvation.” The Jew personates his ancient god precisely. Nor is there wanting a certain majesty in his position. There is nothing mean about Shylock now, whatever there may have been at first. He has been called avaricious. But, as we have already seen (XII.), the wealth of the Jews was the main factor in their survival. There is, indeed, an illustration of this in the only version of the Bond legend which makes any pretension to be considered historical. A Jew named Cenéda forfeited a pound of his flesh to a Christian merchant, on a wager; the case was brought before the Pope, Sixtus V., who decided that the Christian must pay two thousand scudi to his treasury for attempting manslaughter, and the Jew pay in an equal sum for having hazarded his life, that being a taxable property belonging to the Pope. Balzac tells us of a mediæval seneschal in France who declared the Jews to be the best taxgatherers in his region. It was his custom to let them gain money as bees collect honey: then he would swoop down on their hive and take it all away. The Jews were driven by oppressive statutes to the dealings in money which brought opprobrium upon them; and in hating Antonio because he lent money without interest, and so lowered the rate of usance in Venice, Shylock was hating him for undermining the existence of his tribe. Shylock scorns thrice his principal. For now he has been summoned by his own woes, the taking away of his daughter and his property, including that ring mourned because given by his lost Leah--artfully contrasted with the surrender by the Christian lovers of the rings they had vowed never to part with--to stand forth as an avenger of the ages of wrong heaped upon his race. That is an Elohistic moment for Shylock, and ducats become dross in its presence. When the full tidings of his woes and wrongs are told him he cries, “The curse never fell upon our nation till now: I never felt it till now.” Thenceforth we may see in Shylock the impersonation of the divine avenger of a divinely chosen people, and the majesty of his law confronting an Edomite world.

On the other hand stands Antonio, representing rather feebly, until he too is summoned from being a mere rich merchant to become a shorn victim, the opposite principle. He stands for the Christ, the Forgiver, the Sufferer. In the course of its travels the legend had combined with one told by Hyginus. The patriot Moros having conspired to rid his country of its tyrant, falls into the hands of that tyrant, Dionysius of Sicily, who orders him to be crucified. But Moros is allowed a respite and absence of three days to visit his sister, his friend Selenuntius having agreed to become his hostage. On his way back, Moros is impeded by a swollen river, and when he reaches the place of execution finds his friend on the point of being nailed to the cross. The two friends now insist each on being crucified for the other, at which sight Dionysius is so affected that he releases both, resolves to be a more humane king, and asks the friends to take him as “the third in their bond of friendship.” It is remarkable that this legend (which suggested to Schiller his ballad _Die Bürgschaft_, the Suretyship) should have been a popular one at the beginning of the Christian era, introducing as it does an exactor of vicarious suffering--that too by a cross--and ending with the tyrant becoming one in a trinity of friendship.

Shakespeare has brought this vicarious feature into a prominence it never had in any version he could ever have seen, and his art, creating as it must in organic consistency, has dramatised the psychological history of mankind.

Antonio, the merchant called on to suffer, is the man who gained nothing at all from the bond. He has incurred the danger and penalty in order that his rather worthless friend Bassanio may get the money necessary to secure a rich marriage which shall free him from his debts. It is the just suffering for the unjust. Antonio is the man who gives, hoping for nothing again; in low simplicity he lends out money gratis; and, when Shylock agrees to lend the three thousand ducats, the merchant says, “This Hebrew will turn Christian; he grows kind.” At the trial, Antonio speaks like the predestined victim:

I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for death.

And, when the trial is over, Antonio is the only man who offers to relax his hold on the Jew’s property. He gives up his own half, and takes the other only to give it away to Shylock’s daughter and her husband.

To be kind Antonio calls Christian; but it was not that spirit which finally brought Shylock into the same fold with his judges. His life is spared on condition of his becoming a Christian. Professor Morley and other critics say that was harsh. But Shylock is no longer a genuine Jew, and Shakespeare properly relieves that race of his connection. The Jews had indeed, in primitive ages, begun with the eye-for-an-eye principle, but fiery trials had long taught them patience under injury. Shylock, reminding Antonio, when he asks help, of his outrages, says:

Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.

So had it been for many ages, and the Jew had relegated the principle of vengeance to his fossil theology, practically becoming the patient victim; while, on the other hand, Christianity, reaching the throne, had antiquated Christ’s principle of mercy, and was dealing out the rigours of the Judaic law which Israel had outgrown by suffering. Shylock had grandly asserted the humanity of the Jew, in the first words of that kind ever heard in Europe; but he had gone on to assert his _Christianized_ nature. “If we are like you in the rest, we will be like you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? revenge; if a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute.” But when Shylock thus repairs back to the old eye-for-an-eye spirit, when he draws from the armoury of the ancient law the old weapon of retaliation, it is only to find that the sacrificial knife grown rusty for a Jew is bright and keen enough in Christian hands. In pressing to practise the blood-atonement and vicarious principle he enters upon Christian ground, and Shakspeare rightly baptizes him a Christian.

We may naturally question whether Shakspeare meant this irony. Did he intend any subtle hit when he made these Christians claim as a co-religionist, ripe for baptism, a man who had just attempted to take a fellow-man’s life? That cannot be affirmed; but it is notable that there should be in the play another passage liable to that construction. Shylock’s enemies have just converted his daughter Jessica into a good Christian; and the first sign of the work of grace in her heart is the facility with which she steals and squanders her father’s money. Shakspeare does not fail to connect with this pious robbery the Christian customs of the time towards Jews. When the robbery and elopement have been planned, the Jew’s Christian servant, Lancelot, says to Jessica:

There will come a Christian by
Will be worth a Jewess’ eye.

That seems to be a play upon the then familiar phrase “worth a Jew’s eye”--a Jew having often to pay an enormous sum in order to avoid having his eye put out. With that Christian usage the poet apparently connects the robbery of Shylock’s treasure. So by adopting the Christian usage of the time, by saying to Antonio what King John said to the Jews--“Your money or your flesh”--Shylock had given evidence of a change of heart, and his right place was in the Christian fold.

But among all these representative figures of the Venetian court-room, transformations from the flying doves and pursuing hawks, bound victims and exacting deities of ancient mythology, there is one who possesses a significance yet to be considered. That is Portia. Who is this gentle woman in judicial costume? She is that human heart which in every age, amid hard dogmatic systems and priestly intolerance, has steadily appealed against the whole vindictive system--whether Jewish or Christian--and, even while outwardly conforming, managed to rescue human love and virtue from it. With his wonted yet ever-marvellous felicity, Shakspeare has made the genius of this human sentiment slipping through the technicalities of priest-made law a woman. In the mythology of dooms and spells it is often that by the seed of the woman they are broken: the Prince must remain a Bear till Beauty shall offer to be his bride; the Flying Dutchman shall find repose if a maiden shall voluntarily share his sorrow. It is, indeed the woman-soul which has silently veiled the rude hereditary gods and laws of barbarism--the pitiless ones--with a host of gentle saints and intercessors, until the heartless systems have been left to theologians. Inside the frowning buttresses of dogmatic theology the heart of woman has built up for the home a religion of sympathy and charity.

Portia does not argue against the technique of the law. She agrees to call the old system justice--so much the worse for justice. In the outcome she shows that this so-called justice is no justice at all. And when she has shown that the letter of “justice” kills, and warned Shylock that he can be saved from the fatal principle he has raised only by the spirit that gives life, she is out of the case, save for a last effort to save him from the blind law he has invoked. The Jew now sues before a Christian Shylock. And Portia--like Mary, and all sweet interceding spirits that ever softened stern gods in human hope--turns from the judicial Jahves of the bench to the one forgiving spirit there. “What mercy can you render him, Antonio?” The Christian Gratiano interposes, “A halter gratis: nothing else, for God’s sake.” A natural appeal for the victim-loving God; but the forgiving Christ is heard, however faintly, above the Christian, and Antonio forgives his part of Shylock’s penalty.

“Vengeance is mine,” says the deity derived by fear from the remorseless course of sun and star, ebb and flow, frost and fire. Forgiveness is the attribute of man. We may reverse Portia’s statement, and say that, instead of Mercy dropping as the gentle rain from heaven, it is projected into heaven from compassionate human hearts beneath. And heavenly power doth then show likest man’s when mercy seasons the vengeance of nature. From the wild forces above not only droppeth gentle rain, but thunder and lightning, famine and pestilence; it is man with his lightning-rod, his sympathy, his healing art, who turns them from their path and interposes a shield from their fury. When, as the two walked together in the night, Leigh Hunt looked up to the heaven of stars, and said, “God, the Beautiful,” Carlyle looked, and said, “God, the Terrible.” It was the ancient worshipper of the Laws of Nature beside Abou ben Adhem, who loving not the Lord, yet loved his fellow men, and sees a human sweetness in the stars. All religions, beginning with trembling sacrifices to elemental powers personified--powers that never forgive--end with the worship of an ideal man, the human lover and Saviour. That evolution is invariable. Criticism may find this or that particular deified man limited and imperfect, and may discard him. It may take refuge in pure theism, as it is called. But it amounts to the same thing. What it worships is still a man--an invisible, vast man, but still a man. To worship eternal love, supreme wisdom, ideal moral perfection, is still to worship man, for we know such attributes only in man. Therefore the Shylock-principle is non-human nature, hard natural law moving remorselessly on its path from cause to effect; the Portia-principle, the quality of Mercy, means the purely human religion, which, albeit for a time using the terms of ancient nature-worship and alloyed with its spirit, must be steadily detached from these, and on the ruins of every sacrificial altar and dogma build the temple whose only services shall be man’s service to man.

XIV.

THE WANDERING JEW IN FOLK-LORE.

In the East and South, beneath climes that suggest an ideal paradise of repose or idle felicity, the undying saints were represented as dwelling in enchanted islands far from the toiling world, or slumbering in secret grottoes, while those whose immortality was a doom were compelled to roam restlessly over the earth. But when these myths had migrated into the active regions of Europe they were steadily transformed. It was felt to be hardly a satisfactory distribution of parts for the saintly immortals to be sleeping or enjoying themselves with fairies while the evil ones were so busy careering through earth and air. So, gradually the saintly sleepers awake. The Seven Sleepers sally forth as the Seven Champions of Christendom. Joseph of Arimathea cannot lie down in his sacred sepulchre which he had given for the body of Jesus, and becomes a holy wanderer. St. James emerges from the rock which had closed around his body like soft wax, and leads Spain against the Moors. St. John does not rest in his grotto at Ephesus, but makes pilgrimages, on one of which he asks alms of Edward the Confessor, near Westminster Abbey, who gives to the mendicant a gold ring, afterwards sent him from the East, with the saint’s benediction. St. Peter goes abroad also. When the first Abbot of Westminster is about to be ordained in the Abbey, St. Peter appears in the night, crosses the Thames in a boat, himself ordains the Abbot, and leaves a wondrous fish to convince the Archbishop next day that the consecration has been performed, rendering the future Deans of Westminster responsible to Peter alone, and able to preach what heresies they like, without episcopal interference. Popular superstition is sometimes good-hearted, and liberated even the sorcerer Merlin from his prison of air, as appears in the lines of Southey:

“In his crystal ark
Whither sail’d Merlin with his band of bards,
Old Merlin, master of the mystic lore;
Belike his crystal ark, instinct with life,
Obedient to the mighty Master, reached
The land of the Departed.”[37]

But while Merlin thus finds freedom again ending in repose, Arthur comes forth from his subterranean palace to lead the hunt, or from his Avalon to wing his way in form of a raven.

Thus the doomed Wandering Jew, under whatever name, finally found himself wandering in good company. This opens the way for human compassion to proffer those little mitigations of divine remorselessness which, as they gradually appear in folk-lore, are such severe, because unconscious, satires upon the deity of theology. The sentence of the deity, or of the sadly deified Jesus, once uttered cannot be revoked; but the human heart is no such victim of its own egotism or passionate impulse. Thus, Kuhn (2, 32) mentions the belief in Westphalia that the Jew may obtain a night’s repose if there be left in a field two harrows with the teeth downward. If one wishes to do the god-like thing he must leave the teeth of his harrow upward; then the Jew must wander on. In some other regions of Germany (Wüttke, 759) the Jew can find rest at any place where two oaks grow together in such a way as to form a cross. In Oldenburg it is said he can rest from the middle of May to the end of July, which is also the time when the Wild Huntsman may find repose. An old Metz picture shows the Jew with Wodan’s flying hair and mantle, but with a kindly countenance. It is only in a recent instance that anything diabolical has been associated with him pictorially, this being in a Lorraine engraving of 1842, where he has the hat and feather of Fra Diavolo.

There is a tone of pity in the old verses which spread abroad the fable in Flanders, and has thence gone through many lands as _The Wandering Jew’s Complaint_, though with many variations. I find them quoted in Mr. Hoffman’s book, referred to elsewhere. The burgesses of Brabant address the Wanderer:

“We used to think your story
Was but an idle dream;
But when thus wan and hoary
And broken down you seem,
The sight can not deceive
And we the tale believe.

“Are you that man of sorrow
Of whom our authors write--
Grief comes with every morrow,
And wretchedness at night;
Oh, let us know are you
Isaac, the Wandering Jew?

“Then he replied, ‘Believe me,
I suffer bitter woe;
Incessant travels grieve me--
No rest’s for me below;
A respite I have never,
But onward MARCH forever!

“’Twas by my rash behaviour
I wrought this fearful scathe:
As Christ our Lord and Saviour
Was passing to the grave,
His mild request I spurned,
His gentle pleading scorned.

“A secret force expelled me
That instant from my home,
And since the Doom hath held me
Unceasingly to roam--
But neither day nor night
Must check my onward flight.

“I have no home to hide me,
No wealth can I display;
Yet Unknown Powers provide me
Five farthings every day;
This always is my store,
’Tis never less nor more.’”

I may here mention an extremely important work, _Histoire de l’Imagerie Populaire, par Champfleury_ (Paris: Dentu, 1869), which contains a number of pictures taken from the old ballads and folk-books concerning the Wandering Jew. The early pictures represent the Jew as a man of noble form, and generally of a handsome and melancholy countenance. The only picture in the volume which betrays anti-Jewish feeling is a modern one from Sweden (where the Wandering Jew is still believed in), which represents him in semi-caricature, carrying top-boots at his back. In most of the pictures the boots worn constitute a prominent feature. This work of Champfleury is of value beyond its pictorial representations, on account of the curiosities which the author has discovered concerning the adventures of the legend among rustic populations. The author does not give us his authority for saying that the Wandering Jew appeared in some of the mediæval miracle-plays, but he shows that he was introduced into a French ballet, _Mariage de Pierre de Provence et de la belle Maguelonne, dancé par son Altesse Royale dans la Ville de Tours, le 21, en son Hostel_, and at Paris in 1638. There may also be found in this work the Breton ballad of the Wandering Jew, consisting of 180 verses, sung at country fairs, to the popular air _Güerz, Santez Anna_. This ballad is very ancient, and much more interesting than that in _Percy’s Reliques_. The Wanderer calls himself Boudedeo, and tells of the many countries he has visited. He has always five sous in his pocket, and is never disturbed by sickness or hunger. The ballad ends,

“Chrétiens, priez Dieu pour le malheureux Boudedeo!”

Champfleury describes a Wissembourg picture which shows a beggar raising his hat to the Wanderer and the latter drops his five sous into the beggar’s cap. This incident tells much of the popular sympathy felt for persons believed to be the doomed man, and is remembered by Béranger in his poem:

“Plus d’un pauvre vient implorer
Le denier que je puis répandre,
Qui n’a pas le temps de serrer
La main qu’au passant j’aime à tendre.”

Champfleury remarks that, in popular belief, it was always for inhumanity that Ahasuerus was punished; and the meaning of this Wissembourg picture is that as he was punished for lack of charity, he is saved by his charity. The picture shows a citizen giving the Wanderer a glass of beer. It is all a lesson of humanity, but is pictured on a background of such inhumanity on the part of Christ, that Ahasuerus, giving away his sous, seems to have taken the place in human sympathy of the Jew who cursed him.

Dr. Coremans, in his _Bulletin de la Commission royale d’histoire de Belgique_ (X., No. 1) says that most of the Belgian villages have their legend of the passage of the Wandering Jew through them, and that there is a general notion that he rejuvenates old women.

The Man in the Moon with his thornbush--if, as some think, he represents the doom of a Jew, who picked up fire-wood on the Sabbath, doomed to go on picking up sticks forever, and be bayed at by Gabriel’s hounds--might typify the shrivelling up in English folk-lore of the great myths of earthly immortals, including Ahasuerus.

Mr. William Henderson gives the following example from the North-country: “An old woman of the North Riding once asked a friend of mine whether it was wrong to wash on Good Friday. ‘I used to do so,’ she said, ‘and thought no harm of it, till once, when I was hanging out my clothes, a young woman passed by (a dressmaker she was, and a Methodist); and she reproved me, and told me this story. While our Lord Jesus was being led to Calvary, they took him past a woman who was washing, and the woman “blirted” the thing she was washing in his face; on which he said, “Cursed be everyone who hereafter shall wash on this day!” And never again,’ added the old woman, ‘have I washed on Good Friday.’ Now it is said in Cleveland that clothes washed and hung out to dry on Good Friday will become spotted with blood; but the Methodist girl’s wild legend reminds me more of one which a relation of mine elicited from a poor Devonshire shoemaker. She was remonstrating with him for his indolence and want of spirit, when he astonished her by replying, ‘Don’t ’ee be hard on me. We shoemakers are a poor slobbering race, and so have been ever since the curse that Jesus Christ laid on us.’ ‘And what was that?’ she asked. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘when they were carrying him to the cross, they passed a shoemaker’s bench, and the man looked up and spat at him; and the Lord turned and said, “A poor slobbering fellow shalt thou be, and all shoemakers after thee, for what thou hast done to me.”’”[38]

Such, by the blessing of Protestantism, is the outcome of the great legends of Veronica and Ahasuerus! Tithonus, outliving his time, is changed to a grasshopper. Another instance of the chirpings to which great myths are reduced may be heard from our above-mentioned “Seven Whistlers,” of which ingenious use is made by the authoress of “That Lass o’ Lowrie.” Mr. James Pearson contributed to “Notes and Queries” (September 30, 1871) the following: “One evening, a few years ago, when crossing one of our Lancashire moors, in company with an intelligent old man, we were suddenly startled by the whistling overhead of a covey of plovers. My companion remarked that when a boy the old people considered such a circumstance a bad omen, ‘as the person who heard _the Wandering Jews_’--as he called the plovers--‘was sure to be overtaken with some ill luck.’ On questioning my friend on the name given to the birds, he said, ‘There is a tradition that they contain the souls of those Jews who assisted at the crucifixion, and in consequence were doomed to float in the air forever.’ When we arrived at the foot of the moor, a coach, by which I had hoped to complete my journey, had already left its station thereby causing me to finish the distance on foot. The old man reminded me of the omen.”

This superstition is connected with the Gabriel-hounds, believed in Yorkshire to be human-headed dogs, or sky-yelpers, as Wordsworth calls them. That poet tells of an aged peasant--

“With ample sovereignity of eye and ear;
Rich were his walks with supernatural cheer;
He the seven birds hath seen that never part,
Seen the Seven Whistlers on their nightly rounds,
And counted them! And oftentimes will start,
For overhead are sweeping Gabriel’s hounds,
Doomed with their impious lord the flying hart
To chase for ever on aërial grounds.”

I may quote here part of the interesting account of superstitions concerning the Wandering Jew contributed to “Notes and Queries” (vol. xii. p. 503) by Mr. V. T. Sternberg. “Sometimes, during the cold winter nights, the lonely cottager will be awoke by a plaintive demand for ‘Water, good Christian! water, for the love of God!’ And if he looks out, he will see a venerable old man in antique raiment, with grey flowing beard and a tall staff, who beseeches his charity with the most earnest gesture. Woe to the churl who refuses him water or shelter! My old nurse, who was a Warwickshire woman, and, as Sir Walter Scott said of his grandmother, ‘a most _awfu’ leer_,’ knew a man who boldly cried out, ‘All very fine, Mr. Ferguson, but you can’t lodge here!’ And it was decidedly the worst thing he ever did in his life, for his best mare fell dead lame, and corn went down I am afraid to say how much per quarter. If, on the contrary, you treat him well, and refrain from indelicate inquiries respecting his age--on which point he is very touchy--his visit is sure to bring good luck. Perhaps, years afterwards, when you are on your death-bed, he may happen to be passing, and if he should, you are safe; for three knocks with his staff will make you hale, and he never forgets any kindnesses. Many stories are current of his wonderful cures, but there is one to be found in Peck’s _History of Stamford_ which possesses the rare merit of being written by the patient himself. Upon Whitsunday, in the year of our Lord 1658, ‘about six of the clock, just after evensong,’ one, Samuel Wallis, of Stamford, who had been long wasted with a lingering consumption, was sitting by the fire, reading in that delectable book called _Abraham’s Suit for Sodom_. He heard a knock at the door, and, as his nurse was absent, he crawled to open it himself. What he saw there Samuel shall say in his own style: ‘I beheld a proper, tall, grave old man. Thus he said, “Friend, I pray thee, give an old pilgrim a cup of small beere?” And I said, “Sir, I pray you, come in and welcome.” And he said, “I am no sir, therefore call me not sir; but come in I must, for I cannot pass by thy doore.” After finishing the beere, “Friend,” he said, “thou art not well?” I said, “No, truly, sir, I have not been well this many years.” He said, “What is thy disease?” I said, “A deep consumption, sir; our doctors say, past cure: for truly, I am a very poor man, and not able to follow doctor’s counsel.” “Then,” said he, “I will tell thee what thou shalt do; and, by the help and power of Almighty God above, thou shalt be well. Tomorrow, when thou risest up, go into thy garden, and get there two leaves of red sage and one of bloodworte, and put them into a cup of thy small beere. Drink as often as need require, and when the cup is empty, fill it again, and put in fresh leaves every fourth day, and thou shalt see, through our Lord’s great goodness and mercy, before twelve dayes shall be past, thy disease shall be cured and thy body altered.”’ After this simple prescription, Wallis pressed him to eat. But he said, ‘No, friend, I will not eat; the Lord Jesus is sufficient for me. Very seldom doe I drinke any beere neither, but that which comes from the rocke. So, friend, the Lord God be with thee.’ So saying, he departed, and was never more heard of; but the patient got well within the given time, and for many a long day there was war hot and fierce among the divines of Stamford, as to whether the stranger was an angel or a devil. His dress had been minutely described by honest Sam. His coat was purple, and buttoned down to the waist; ‘his britches of the same couler, all new to see to;’ his stockings were very white, but whether linen or jersey, deponent knoweth not; his beard and head were white, and he had a white stick in his hand. The day was rainy from morning to night, ‘but he had not one spot of dirt upon his clothes.’ Aubrey gives an almost exactly similar relation, the scene of which he places in the Staffordshire moorlands. He there appears in a purple shag gown, and prescribes balm-leaves.”

Brand mentions having seen one of these ‘impostors’ going about Newcastle-on-Tyne, followed by a crowd, and murmuring to himself “Poor Jack all alone!” Probably Brand did not hear the phrase rightly, since the cry of the Wanderer was “Poor Joe all alone!” There was a crossing-sweeper near St. Paul’s Churchyard, who murmured the same, of whom there is an engraving in the British Museum. A picture of the Newcastle man was made for the Musgraves of Eden Hall, which has beneath it “Poor Joe all alone!” My friend Mr. W. B. Scott, who once resided at Newcastle, writes that he remembers hearing of him. “He seemed to have left an impression of a somewhat respectful kind, but from what cause I never heard; probably he had a history of a melancholy kind, and had been left alone by some calamity.”

This, so far as I can learn, was the last appearance in the world of any man pretending to be the Wandering Jew, if indeed he did so pretend, and the honour was not thrust upon him by the superstitious crowd. There had been advantages enough in earlier times to entice Ahasuerus, or “the famous Joseph,” to make his appearance. He came as a “witness” for Christ; he was generally a pious Christian; a tradition tells of his gambling in Naples, but, as the people there invoke their saints for luck in gambling, the exception is not considerable. Jurisconsult Louvet heard him preaching to street crowds in a French province like a revivalist friar. But in England common sense gradually chilled the Wandering Jew. When it was found that he was not above receiving sixpences to support his imperishable existence the public lost interest in him.

A question addressed by me a few weeks ago to the _Newcastle Weekly Chronicle_ elicited the following answer:

“It is quite true that a man who was known as ‘The Wandering Jew’
lived in Newcastle during the latter part of last century. He left
a son, who I believe has lived in Hull the greater part of this
century, and who is now a very old man indeed, keeping a small
public-house named the Cricketers’ Arms. He is very eccentric, is
known as ‘Topper, the Newcastle Fossil,’ and attracts a deal of
attention on account of his appearance and the condition of his
house. He is a very peculiar-looking man, with features of a decided
Jewish cast. His clothes appear to be as old as himself. He has never
been known to be clean: and old people in Hull do not remember the
counter or floor of his house to have been washed. He is supposed to
be emulating ‘Dirty Dick’ of London in this respect.

“GEORGE COOPER.”

_Hull._

This may be regarded as the epitaph upon an ancient dream which branched into a vast and various mythology, and, in its time, bore for millions their hopes of a renovated earth, and their visions of resurrection from the sleep of death!

XV.

THE NEW AHASUERUS IN GERMANY.

Having, as a figure of popular faith, gathered to him all related elements of mould and decay, and found fit extinction in the Newcastle “fossil” just mentioned, Ahasuerus rises for new wanderings as a poetic ideal.

The Germans were the first to deal seriously with our legend, and their literature of the Wandering Jew is indicated in this chapter. The subject attracted the unhappy DANIEL FRIEDRICH SCHUBART during his imprisonment. Carlyle, in the notes to his _Life of Schiller_, says the idea of making old _Joannes a temporibus_, the ‘Wandering,’ or, as Schubart’s countrymen denominate him, the ‘Eternal Jew,’ into a novel hero was a mighty favourite with him. “In this antique cordwainer, as on a raft at anchor in the stream of time, he would survey the changes and wonders of two thousand years: the Roman and the Arab were to figure there, the Crusader and the Circumnavigator, the Eremite and the Thebaid, and the Pope of Rome. Joannes himself, the Man existing out of Time and Space--Joannes, the unresting and undying--was to be a deeply tragic personage. Schubart warmed himself with this idea, and talked about it in his cups, to the astonishment of simple souls. He even wrote a certain rhapsody connected with it, which is published in his poems. But here he rested; and the project of the Wandering Jew, which Goethe likewise meditated in his youth, is still unexecuted. Goethe turned to other objects, and poor Schubart was surprised by death in the midst of his schemes, on the 10th of October, 1791.” But the project, as we shall see, is not unexecuted.

Schubart’s _Rhapsody_ appeared in his “Poems, Frankfort, 1787.”[39] His Ahasuerus has retired into the wild solitudes of Mount Carmel. There he is seen, with frantic laughter, casting away the dry skulls of his relatives, which break to pieces, crying, “That is my father! Those are my wives! these my children! They could die, but I--outcast--cannot die!” And again, “Jerusalem fell; I crushed the babe, I rushed into the flames, cursed the Roman!--Rome fell, whole nations perished, and--I remained!” He tries to kill himself in different ways, but in vain. He feels pain acutely, but has to endure every variety of it, even to the agonies of the moment of death, without this moment ever arriving. The snake bites him, the dragon tortures, the burning forest blisters him. He says to himself, “Under my feet the mine exploded and threw me high into the air; senseless I fell down, and found myself roasted amidst blood, and brains, and bones.” He is obliged to carry on a corpse-like body, infirm, smelling of the grave; and through thousands of years he must see, like a yawning monster, an everlasting sameness. The rhapsody brings the Wanderer to a peaceful end. Ahasuerus throws himself down from the top of Carmel into the abyss, “and night covers his bushy eyelids. An angel carries him into a recess in the rocks. ‘There mayest thou sleep now,’ says the angel; ‘sleep, Ahasuerus, sleep soundly! God’s anger does not last for ever.’”

In 1807 appeared the ballad of _The Eternal Jew_, by ALOYS SCHREIBER. The torture of this Ahasuerus consists in his not being able to enjoy life and nature, open to all other men, on account of his restlessness. He cannot drink the water of the fountain, he cannot rest in the shade of a tree, he cannot break a flower to enjoy its smell, for which he longs; he must start, he must wander. In this he differs from Schubart’s Ahasuerus, who had long been weary of life. Being continually obliged to renounce everything, he at last becomes timid, shy; he flies all men and hurries on heedlessly. Finally he observes a crucifix by the wayside; about to rush on, an impulse brings him to his knees, imploring the Crucified for forgiveness. Christ answers him from the cross, “Whoever has failed may repent; and none who loves and believes in me shall need to shun my countenance.” The Wanderer is found dead, kneeling before the cross.

WILHELM MÜLLER, in his _Wanderlieder_ (published in his works, 1830) has a poem on “The Eternal Jew,” which pictures the desolation and loneliness that torture a life satiated to disgust, longing for rest and death. It is pervaded by melancholy. “Although I have seen everything I am never allowed to rest!” All around him has an end: the river in the ocean, the eagle on the Alps, the cloud in the falling rain, and also “to the tired wanderer a certain limit has been fixed. What, does he complain of his day’s misery?--before night death will have taken him home.” The end of the poem is a wish of the poor Wanderer that those who have finished their earthly pilgrimage might, ere they go to sleep for ever, ask of God one hour’s rest for him.

NIKOLAUS LENAU has treated the subject in a similar manner. The scenery of his poem, _Ahasuerus, the Eternal Jew_, is a lonely heath. In a distant meadow shepherds are seen surrounding and weeping over the corpse of a beloved youth. Whilst they are thus standing a Wanderer passes that way: his hair is grey, his countenance pale, cold, deeply wrinkled; his beard long and white, his fiery eyes in dark sockets. He walks on to the bier, and calls out, with mingled mockery and mournfulness, “Suppress your ungrateful tears; his rest is good; oh yes, his rest is good! Though fools like you complain, his heart is still; while mine beats on by night and day, in restless longing to find its sabbath in the grave!” The Wanderer utters the philosophy of Schopenhauer, explaining that the earth is only the lie of Paradise, that it is always the same old delusion of Time--all flowering to its destruction: a philosophy which terminates in a marriage with Madness, personified in Lenau himself.

Meanwhile, says the poem, the shepherds cover the coffin. Suddenly the stranger gets sight of the crucifix on the lid of the coffin. He is frightened, and tears come to his eyes. Now the Lenau-Schopenhauer turns out to be Ahasuerus. He tells the story of his life in the usual form of the myth. He tells the different kinds of death he had vainly sought. Then he wanders on, on--on; above his head you hear the whizzing of the birds; a long shadow walks behind him; the shepherds tremble and make the sign of the cross.

Although ADALBERT VON CHAMISSO was by birth French, his life and culture were German; his mixed origin is shown in his subjective poem, the “New Ahasuerus” (1836), where the Wanderer is simply a lover whose mistress has married another! This rejected lover compares himself to Ahasuerus, who cannot die or rest until the Day of Judgment, while the faithless lady represents the fallen city of Jerusalem. Ahasuerus says, “Time stands still before me; the age of man is as one moment, and the moments ages. Every hundred years I come once more to Jerusalem, mourning over its cold ashes, trying to put the ruins in their old place again, but nobody takes notice of me; evermore I come to the same thing--a grave!” Ahasuerus is “the son of sorrow turned into stone.”

The poem of A. W. SCHLEGEL, “The Eternal Jew,” follows the old myth, with nothing new. His Ahasuerus, on account of his unbelief, wanders through the world as a solace for all those who are miserable, until the reappearance of Christ releases him.

JULIUS MOSEN is the first who treated the subject in a fuller and more independent way. His “Ahasuerus” (1838) is an epic. In the notes it is stated that the myth belongs to the poet’s earliest recollections, the supposed Wandering Jew having passed through his birthplace, and that a shepherd had spoken to him. The poem carries this idea out with poetical realism. Mosen’s idea of the myth is human nature imprisoned by an earthly existence. Ahasuerus symbolises the spirit of Tradition embodied in an individual being, who, at first in unconscious obstinacy, but at length deliberately, opposes himself to the God of Christendom. Mosen gives his Ahasuerus from the first a human trait. His deceased wife has left him two beautiful children, Eve and Reuben. A young Roman prince, living at Jerusalem, likes these children, and he wishes to take them with him to Rome. He applies to Pilate, who orders Ahasuerus to part with the children. The father in his desperation implores the assistance of Jesus, the new prophet. He will believe in him and his new doctrine, if he can save his children. Jesus will not grant such private wishes, but goes on to prophesy the fall of Jerusalem. Upon this Ahasuerus tears his clothes into pieces, and in pain and wrath accuses Jesus of falsehood and imposture: “Thou art our God? And yet to save thou hast no power! If man or God, thou hast deceived the people!” When the Roman prince comes to fetch the children, Ahasuerus has slain them. In his despair he becomes more and more a disbeliever. What, he asks himself, did Israel commit to become so wretched? “Through its piety it has been led to misery. Why, then, does man crowd after this haughty God? I will cast off his memory; death to this Nazarene, to God, to everything!” In this excitement Ahasuerus scornfully forbids Jesus to rest at his door when he asks that favour. Jesus pronounces his sentence in these words, “Thou shalt live without rest thy immortality upon earth!”

The Archangel Michael appears and gives Ahasuerus a hope that mercy may be obtained at three different times of trial. The trials follow. Ahasuerus has married again and has once more two children, Eve and Reuben. Rome declares war against Judea, Titus surrounds Jerusalem; Ahasuerus is full of resentment against God, who declines to help, and in his anger sets the temple on fire. During the conflagration, with his children at his side, he enters the flames, which do not touch him. Eve’s lover, Matthias, who has become a Christian, for that reason rejected by Ahasuerus, serves in the Roman army and comes rushing through the flames to save his beloved. Ahasuerus bids him welcome as a suitor, and pushes him into the flames. His children shriek with terror, and Ahasuerus throws them both after him, crying, “Here, heartless God! now thou canst rejoice!”