Serpent charming (Hastings' Dictionary)

It is said in Jer 8" ' I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you ' ; and in Ps 58* 'they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth his ear, which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.' The refer- ence here is clearly not to any species as distin- guished from other serpents, but to indivi<lual9 not amenable to a general law.

It need not be taken literally, as it may be that any snake, pro- perly charmed, would be subject to the mj'sterious fascination of the cunning masters of the art. The object being to show the extreme malignity of the wicked, a case beyond the range of experience is invoked to point the moral. Were it a normal thing for a pethcn not to be capable of being charmed, the comparison would lose its force. An uncharmable serpent is a monstrosity. The stop- pin" of the ears is clearly wilful.

To attempt to explain this literally by the fable of the snake applying one ear to the ground, and stopping tha other with its taU (Rabbi Solomon), is childish. The snake has no external ear to stop, and no tympanic cavity. The only tenable explanation is that the moral monsters, so graiihically de- scribed by the psalmist, are comparable to such an exception ' as a (not (he) deaf adder,' etc.

The art of charming serpents is a very ancient one, and has been brought to a high state of per- fection in Egypt and India. The apparatus is very simple. It consists of a shrill pipe or gang of pipes, and a basket or bags in which the snakes already trained are kept. These are of various species, some highly venomous, others harmless. Tha former have their fangs extracted, or else th« lower jaw sewn to the upper ^vith silk thread or silver wire.

When the piper has played a shrill • On the supposed mythological allusions in JoV 20" and Is 271 see the Camm. ad loc, and Ounkel, Schopfung u. Chaot, esp. p. 40 1. SERUG SEKVAKT, SLAVE, SLAVEKY 461 air, the snakes crawl out of the basket or bag, and, coiling the tail end of their bodies, erect their heads, and sway backwards and forwards. The charmer winds some of them around his body or arms or legs.

Mishaps sometimes occur to the charmer witli serpents which have not yet had their fangs extracteil. Lane [Mud. Egyptians, 401) tells of a charmer who had a venomous snake brought to him from the desert. He put it in a basket, and kept it several days to weaken it. He then put his hand into the basket to withdraw it in order to extract its fangs, when the snake bit him on the thumb. His arm swelled and turned black, and in a few hours he died.

Some serpent charmers pretend to have the faculty of discovering serpents in a house or ruin, or in tlie rocks or fields, and luring them by their music, so that they can catch them.

Doubtless in nianj- cases the snake is introduced into the place by the charmer or his confederates ; yet it is undeniable that, in broad dayliglit and surrounded bj- keen-eyed spectators, he does cause serpents to emerge from their holes or dens, and so fascinates them by the music that they become subject to his will. Sometimes he grasps a serpent by the nape of its neck, and bites pieces out of its head and neck. G. E. Post.

SERUG (y^, lepofrx)- — Son of Eeu and father of Nabor, Gn U^-', -^, Lk 3^. Etlinologically the name is tliat of Saruj, a district and citj' north of I,laran (see Dilhu. Gen. adloc. and the authorities quoted there).