the enchanter-king Mohareb, when he would lull to sleep Zohak, the giant keeper of the caves of Babylon—
Thus he said,
And from his wallet drew a human hand,
Shrivelled, and dry, and black.
And fitting, as he spake,
A taper in his hold,
Pursued: “A murderer on the stake had died;
I drove the vulture from his limbs and lopt
The hand that did the murder, and drew up
The tendon-strings to close its grasp.
And in the sun and wind
Parched it, nine weeks exposed.
The taper .... but not here the place to impart,
Nor hast thou undergone the rites
That fit thee to partake the mystery.
Look! it burns clear, but with the air around
Its dead ingredients mingle deathiness.
This when the keeper of the cave shall feel,
Maugre the doom of heaven,
The salutary spell
Shall lull his penal agony to sleep,
And leave the passage free;[1]
while Grose gives a full account of it, as used by French housebreakers, in a translation from the French of Les Secrets du Petit Albert (A.D. 1750), alleging that its use was to stupefy those to whom it was presented, and to render them motionless, so that they could not stir any more than if they were dead. There is one instance on record of its use in Ireland: “On the night of the 3rd instant (January 1831), some Irish thieves attempted to commit a robbery on the estate of Mr. Naper, of Loughcrew, county Meath. They entered the house, armed with a dead man’s hand with a lighted candle in it, believing in the superstitious notion that a candle placed in a dead man’s hand will not be seen by any but those by whom it is used; and also that if a candle in a dead hand be introduced into a house it will prevent those who may be asleep from awaking. The inmates, however, were alarmed, and the robbers fled, leaving the hand behind them.”
- ↑ Thalaba the Destroyer, book v.
