serpent charming

A fascination exercised over a serpent by simple music. Many itinerant showmen make a living in the East by exhibiting their powers over venomous snakes. The practice has come down from remote antiquity, and is alluded to in Psalm lviii. 4, 5, and Jer. viii. 17. In most cases the cobra ( Naja tripudians ) is the serpent charmed, and the poison-fangs are generaily extracted; if this is not done, the performer holds a cloth in one hand which he allows the serpent to strike, and so exhaust the supply of venom. IMG:content-1242.png:[blocks in formation] serpent-race, s. 3633 Compar. Relig .: A race which at one time probably had a serpent as a totem, and so came to attribute their descent to a serpent. [OPHIOGENE; see extract.] "The Sanskrit name of the snake, 'någa,' becomes also the accepted designation of its adorers, and thus mythological interpretation has to reduce to reasonable sense legends of serpent - races , who turn out to be simply serpent-worshipers."-Tylor: Prim . Cult . (ed. 1873), ii. 240.