Page:Popular medicine, customs and superstitions of the Rio Grande, John G. Bourke, 1894.pdf/14

132 That stone—it lives! but to iron it owes its life, And by the unbending bar it is fed; Iron is its nourishment, its stimulus, its banquet; It renews through iron its exhausted strength This rude aliment animates its members And long preserves a latent vigor. The iron absent, the magnet languishes. Sadly numbed with hunger, it succumbs, And thirst dries up its opened veins.

Mars, with blood-stained lance chastising cities— Venus, who resolves the miseries of mortals by her tender gifts, Have in common the sanctuary of a golden temple. The divinities have not the same image; Mars appears in the glistening iron, The Loving Stone represents the Cyprian goddess. The priest with the accustomed rites celebrates their union. The torches light the dance, myrtle crowns the temple gate, The nuptial purple veils the lover's couch; Then appears a prodigy unheard of: Venus of her own force ravishes her spouse. Recalling the bonds of which the gods were witnesses, Her voluptuous breathing attracts the limbs of Mars; Around the helmet of the god her arms are clasped, And with live chains she holds him captive.

A secret ardor consumes the lode-stone Whose blandishments the hardened steel cannot resist.

Quoted in "The Life of Columbus," Aaron Goodrich, New York, Appleton & Co., 1874, pp. 40, 41, and 42.

It is scarcely necessary to point out the identity of sentiment between the words of the classic writer and those expressed by the nineteenth century "curandera" of the Mexican frontier; each believed that the magnet was alive; that the iron was its food, and although the ritual described by the Roman was not to be imitated by the Mexican, that was because all ancient religious practices are now, as they have for centuries been, under the ban of the Christian tian [sic] Church.

Leland becomes a great help in the consideration of the above. He tells us, first, that the magnet is used in Italian incantations. "Roman Etruscan Remains," Charles G. Leland, New York, Scribners, 1891, page 264. The magnet had to be baptized on Friday, which is the great day of the witches.

Witches who are happy on Friday.

Idem, page 309, quoting a Tuscan incantation.

Witches great and small, Meet to consider What they must be doing On Friday and Tuesday.

Idem, page 203.