Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/704

 674 JEW in allusion to St John, who was believed to &quot; tarry &quot; until the coming of Christ. Joseph was perhaps caught from the legend of Joseph of Arimathsea, who was said to have wandered into Britain in the year 63, when his flowering staff indicated the spot where Glastonbury abbey should be built. The Turkish Spy in Paris gives his name as Michob Ader; Libavius (Praxis Alchymise) as Butadaeus. In Brussels he was called Isaac Laquedem, a name believed by Griisse to be the French la combined with kedem, Heb. for &quot;aforetime.&quot; Mr Karl Blind has suggested that his name in Germany, Ahasuerus, may have been formed out of a corruption of As-Vidar, &quot; god Vidar,&quot; the Teutonic deity who was to survive the destruction of the world and conquer the wolf Fenris by thrusting his foot covered with an enormous shoe down the monster s throat (Gentleman s Magazine, July 1880). This ingenious suggestion would account for the transformation of the wanderer between 1228, when the Armenian bishop described him as Pilate s doorkeeper, and 1547, when he claims to have been a shoemaker. For a long time there were kept at Bern and also at Ulm enormous pairs of shoes said to have been left by the Wandering Jew on his visits to those places. The legend of the Wandering Jew seems clearly related to a class of myths, found in every part of the world, in which certain saints or heroes are represented as having never died. Many of these myths, as those of King Arthur, Charlemagne, Barbarossa, Tell, are no doubt ethnically connected ; but the corresponding myths found among the Incas, and among various American tribes, may lead us to seek for a common root of them all in human nature, in the unwillingness of men to believe that their heroes can be really dead. In a primitive race, which had not yet conceived the idea of animistic immortality, the notion of a continued existence in happy isles, valleys, or grottoes, would naturally arise. The earliest instance of this earthly immortality would appear to be that of the Persian Yima, king of the Golden Age, who, in the Zend-Avesta, &quot;gathers around him men and animals in flocks, and fills the earth with them, and after the evils of winter had come over his territories leads a select number of the beings of the good creation to a secluded spot, where they enjoy uninterrupted happiness&quot; (Haug s -Essays, &c., p. 277). In a corresponding phase of development the Semitic races ascribed a similar terres trial immortality to Enoch, Elijah, and some others. The Arabs have very particular accounts of the secret abodes of these ; and there are indications that in Eastern folklore Moses was believed to be sleeping in his unknown sepulchre. By the action of religious dualism on this belief there arose evil counterparts of the immortal heroes, who instead of dwelling in blissful retreats were doomed to wander without finding even the repose of the grave. Of this class Cain was the most conspicuous, and the Bedouin still feels his presence in the feverish desert-winds (Cain-winds), as the Picardy peasant says of a destructive gale, C&quot;est lejuif errant qui passe. Esau, Ishmael, and others have been evil wanderers in the superstitions of various localities ; but there is one tradition of high antiquity which would appear to have especially prepared the way for our legend. It is related by G. Weil (The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud, p. 127) that, according to this tradition, the golden calf was made by Al Sarniri. Moses was about to put this man to death when Allah declared he should be banished. &quot; Ever since that time he (Samiri) roams like a wild beast throughout the world ; every one shuns him, and purifies the ground on which his feet have stood ; and he himself, whenever he approaches men, exclaims, Touch me not!&quot; There also arose a belief that this monster dwelt with his progeny on a rocky island in the Arabian Gulf, from which emanated the plague (Sale, xx.). These traditions were inherited by the folklore of Christendom. The mantle of Enoch and Elijah, and other saintly sleepers, fell upon the seven supposed to be slumber ing in a cave near Ephesus, near to the slumbering St John, belief in whose earthly immortality is mentioned in the New Testament (John xxi. 23). On the other hand, the mantle of Cain and other evil wanderers would seem to have fallen on JS r ero, who for some time after his death was believed by friend and foe to be still living. At a later period, after Rome had been Christianized, the idea of a perpetual enemy of the Messiah was temporarily detached from any one man and personified as Antichrist, a restless invisible spirit appointed by the adversary to resist the rival kingdom. This more abstract conception was prolific of evil wanderers. When, in course of the diffusion of Christianity throughout Europe, its missionaries came in contact with popular beliefs in deities which in many cases had been developed from traditional heroes and warriors, such as Odin, Waldemar, Vidar, these imaginary potentates were degraded into phantoms, demons ; the brand of Cain was set on their names by solemn anathema, and thenceforth all regions of space had their doomed wanderers, the Wild Huntsman in the air, the Flying Dutchman on the sea, and various forest- phantasms like the Gros Yeneur of Fontainebleau and Diedrich of Bern on the earth. The Jewish race, however, was the one race which did not yield to Christianity ; its special identification with Antichrist was therefore inevit able. Many superstitions affecting them had long been accumulating. There was a belief that the seven whistlers plovers or sometimes wild geese were Jews that had been transformed because they had assisted in the cruci fixion of Christ, and to see or hear those birds was regarded as ominous of disaster. The Witch Sabbaths were so called because the Jews were supposed to assemble at them. Their wealth was believed to be obtained from Satan. There was also a belief that they carried about plagues. This idea may partly have been derived from the tradition of Samiri and his island, already mentioned, but possibly derived some confirmation from the actual results of crowding the Jews into the confined and neglected quarters of cities, in disregard of sanitary laws. From innumerable sources like these gathered the cloud of fanaticism which sent its thunderbolts upon the Jewish people. The legend of the Wandering Jew, when it was pieced together, represented precisely the popular belief that this race, having betrayed its supernatural mission, had received a supernatural doom. The legendary figure was invested with the fatal associations of most of the demons which Christianity had degraded. He passed in the storm, presided at orgies, diffused diseases, instigated revolutions, burned cities. He was not only associated with European demons but with those of the Jewish race also. There was a wild fable about Judas, that he had fulfilled a fearful dream of his mother before his birth, living, despite her throwing him into the sea, to &quot;kill his father and sell his God,&quot; which reappears in our legend. Judas was said to have become page to Pilate, as Carta- philus was his doorkeeper. Death refused to touch Judas until his doom had been fulfilled, as it spared the Wandering Jew. In the familiar legend of the discovery of the True Cross, the Jew who, after torture, points out its place of concealment to Helena is named Judas ; and M. Magnin has plausibly suggested that the story of the &quot;Wandering Jew grew up in connexion with the True Cross legend. As Cain was a prototype of Judas, so was Judas of such doomed wanderers as Malchus in Italy and Ahasuerus in Germany. M. Gaston Paris believes the legend of