“Ma vienne omai che già tiene ’l confine D’ambedue gli emisperi, e tocca l’onda Sotto Sibilia, Caino e le spine E gia iernotte fu la Luna tonda.” “But now he comes who doth the borders hold Of the two hemispheres, and drive the waves Under the sibyl, Cain, with many thorns. And yesternight the moon was round and full; Take care that it may never do thee harm At any time when in the gloomy wood.” This twentieth canto is devoted to the sorcerers in hell, and ends with allusion to the full moon, the sibyl, and Cain, as allied to witchcraft, prediction, and sin. When the moon is full it is also “high tides” with the witches, now as of yore: “Full moon, high sea, Great man shalt thou be: Red dawning, cloudy sky, Bloody death shalt thou die.” Dante again mentions Cain in the moon, in the _Paradiso_, ii. 50: “Ma ditemi, che con li segni lui Dio questo corpo, che laggiuso in terra Fan di _Cain_ favoleggiare altrui?” “But tell me now what are the gloomy marks Upon this body, which down there on earth Make people tell so many tales of Cain?” To which Beatrice replies by a mysterious physical explanation of the phenomenon, advising him to take three _mirrors_ and observe how the moon is reflected from one to the other, and that in this manner the _formal principio_, or first creative power, passes from light to darkness. The reader will here remember that with the witches the _mirror_ is specially devoted to conjuring Cain. It is worth noting that a _spechietto_, or small looking-glass, was specially (Barretti) “a little mirror placed at the bottom of a jewel casket.” I would now note that the _thorns_ which Cain carries signify, not only in modern Italian, but in old Roman sorcery, the sting of hatred and of jealousy. It is a most apparent and natural simile, and is found from the crown of thorns on Christ to the Voodoo sorcery in Western America. Miss Mary Owen knew a black girl in Missouri who, as a proof of being Christianised, threw away the thorn which she kept as a fetish to injure an enemy. But in early times the thorn was universally known as symbolical of sin, just as Cain was regarded as the first real sinner. Therefore the two were united. Menzel tells us in his _Christliche Symbolik_ (Part I. p. 206) that it is a legend that “there were no thorns before the Fall; they first grew with sin, therefore thorns are a symbol of the sorrow or pain which came from sin.” Of all of which there is a mass of old German myths and legends, which I spare the reader, for I have endeavoured in this comment to avoid useless myth-mongering in order to clearly set forth the connection between Cain, his thorns, and the moon.