That the conjuring the moon with a mirror is very ancient indeed appears from the legend drawn from classic sources, which is thus set forth in “A Pleasant Comedie called Summer’s Last Will and Testament. Written by Thomas Nash. London, 1600”: “In laying thus the blame upon the Moone Thou imitat’st subtill Pythagoras, Who what he would the People should beleeve, The same he wrote with blood upon a Glasse, And turned it opposite ’gainst the New Moone, Whose Beames, reflecting on it with full force, Shew’d all those lines to them that stood behinde, Most pleynly writ in circle of the Moone, And then he said: ‘Not I, but the newe Moone Fair Cynthia persuades you this and that.’” In the “Clouds” of Aristophanes the same idea is made into a jest, in which Strepsiades thus addresses Socrates: “_Strepsiades_. If I were to buy a Thessalian witch, and then draw down the moon by night, and then shut her up in a round helmet-case _like a mirror_, and then keep watching her— _Socrates_. What good would that do you, then? _Strepsiades_. What! If the moon were not to rise any more anywhere, I should not pay the interest. _Socrates_. Because what? _Strepsiades_. Because the money is lent on interest.” {262} These instances could be multiplied. What I have given are enough to show the antiquity of the conjuration; and I also venture to declare that any Italian scholar who is familiar with these formulas of sorcery will admit that, making all due allowance for transmission among peasants, the language, or words, or turns of expression in this incantation denote great antiquity. The next paper or tradition on the subject of Cain, which, as every phrase in it indicates, was taken down from an old dame who at first slowly recalled forgotten sentences, will be to many more interesting, and to all much more amusing than the first. It once happened that an old gypsy in England began to tell me the story of the ghostly baker of Stonehenge and the seven loaves, but, suddenly pausing, he said: “What’s the use of telling that to _you_ who have _read_ it all in the Bible?” There is, however, this trifling difference, that I am not sure that my Italian witch friends knew that Cain and Abel are in the Bible at all. The Red Indian doctor, whose knowledge of the Old Testament was limited to its being good to cure neuralgia, was far beyond the _contadini_ as regards familiarity with “the efficacy of the Scripture.” This is the witch-tale as written word by word: ABELE E CHAINO. “They were two brothers. Abel greatly loved Cain, but Cain did not love so much the brother Abel. “Cain had no great will to work. “Abel, however, on the contrary, was greatly disposed (_si ingegnava_) to labour, because he had found it profitable. He was industrious in all, and at last became a grazier (_mercante di manzi_).