Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1854-11-09

Jews in Basle were shut up in wooden build
r ing and therein smothered and burnt alive. The
same fate happened to the Jews at Freyburg.'
, In acquiescence with the popular idea wells had
been bricked over and buckets removed If,
therefore, in any town, man tose TO plead for
the unhappy children of Israel sthe populace
asked why it was if they were not guilty, that
the authorities had covered up the wells But
there was not wanting other evidence poison
bags, which Christians had thrownAhere, were
found in springs. AT Spires, the 9ws with
drew into their houses and, settingfife to them,
burnt themselves and all they has with their
own hands. At Strasburg, two thousand Jews
were burnt alive in their own burial-ground-
those who, in frantic terror broke their bonds
and fed, being pursued and murdered in the
street. Only in Lithuania this afflicted people
found place of safety. There they were pro-
tccted by King Casimir the Great, who loved
JEWS Esther. and the Lithuanian Jews still
form large body of men who hare lived in
much secluson, and retained many Of the man
ncrs of the middle ages.
1t was among people weakened physically and
mentally by the desperate Affections and emo
tions that there arose certain dancing manias,
which formed a fresh disease, affecting both the
body and the mind The same generation that
had seen the terrors of the black death, saw,
some twenty years afterwards, men and women
dancing in ring: shrieking, and calling wild
y on st. John the Baptist; and at last, as if
seized with an epileptic fit, tumbing on the
ground, where they desired to be trodden upon
and kicked, and were most cheerfully and freely
trodden upon and kicked by the bystanders
Their wild ways infected others with diseased
bodies and minds, and the disease called St.
John 5 dance, which was supposed to be form
OF demonacal possessions, spread over the
Netherlands. The St. Johns dancers were
exercised and made wonderful confessions Is
they had not put themselves under the patron
age OF st. John Ito whose festival pagan ritef
and dances had been transferred by the Ger
mans) they would have been racked and burnt
Their nnmber increased SO fast that men were
afraid of them; they communicated to each
other morbid fancios; such as furious hatred
OF the red color, with the bulls desire to tear
every rcd cloth to rags. and detestation of
pointed s'.ocs, against which and other matters
OF fashion, the priests had dccamcd often from
their pulpits. The St. Johns dancers became
so numerous and SO violent that, in Liege, tho
authorities werc inundated and, in defence
to the prejudices of the dancers, an ordinance
was issued to the effect that no one should wear
any but squaretocd shoes. This madness ap-
pcarcd also at Metz, and Cologne, and extended
through the cities Of the Rhine.
similar lunacy broke out some time after
wards at Strasburg, where the dancers were
cared for by the town council, and conducted
to the chapel of st. Vitus, q youthful saint,
martyred in the time of Dioceton. For this
saint, because little was known of him, legend
could be made suited to the emergency, in
evidence that he, and he alone, was able to cure
the dancing plague. The plague, however,
spread; and, Us the physicians regarded it as a
purely spiritual question, it was left to the care
!, OF the Church, and even century later, on
st. Nituss day, women went to the chanel of
st. Vitus to dance off the fever that had accu-
mulated in them during the past twelve month
f But at that time the lunacy was near its end
for need not say that it had little in common
with the disease known as St. Vitus's dance by
the physicians of the present day, In its first
years it attacked violently people of all ranks,
especially those leading sedcntary lives, and i'm
PEELED them to dance even to death sometimes, to
dash their brains out against walls, Or to plunge
into rivers
Every one has heard of::a madness Of this kind
, that arose in Apulia, among people who had
been, or tancicd that they had been, bitten by a
a ground spider, called the tarantula Those who
were bitten were said to have become melan-
choly, very open to the influence of music, given
D to wild joyous fits Of dancing or to miserable
fits of weeping, morbid longings, and fatal par
oxyims either of laughter or of Sobs At the
close of the 18th century the fear of this mala-
, dy had spread beyond Apulia. The poison Of
the tarantula, it was believed, could only be
: worked off by those in whom it begot violent
: energy of dancing-it passed out then with the
& persplration; but if any fingered in the blood
: the disorder became chronic or intermittent
f and the afflicted person would become liable to
n suffering and melancholy, which, whenever il
}. reached certain height, would be relieved by
o dancing. The tarantati, or persons bitten by
: the tarantula, had various whims and they also
d had violent preferences for and antipathies tc
a colors. Most Of them were wild in love Of red
s many were excited by green objects, and 80 on
q They could only dance to music, and to music o
d certain tunes which were called tarantollas anC
It one man tarantella would not always suit an
d other. Some needed aquick tune, Others mel
ancholy measure, Others a suggestions of greer
n fields in the musicas well as in the words that al
ts ways went whit. Nearly aal tarantati required
,s some reference to water, were mad i'll longing fo
n the sea, and would be ecstatio at the sight o
=, water in q pan. Some even woa'd dance with
l., cup of water in their hands, or plunge their head
after dancing in a tub Of water, set for them AN,
. ri trimmed with rushes.
- In theb cginning of the seventeenth century
~ the cure of tarantati was attempted on gran
scale. Bands of musicians went through tn
~ villages, playing tarantelas; and the wome
n were SO especially interested in this way of bring
n, ing relief to tho afflicted that the period of tai
: antella-playing was called "the womens littl
~ carnival" The good creatures saved up thei
Cd spare money to pay for the dances, and deserte
their household dutcs to nssist at them. Or