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n The Old Testament writers were inordinately fond ofnwandering. There are people wandering about all over the place. After Cainnslays Abel, he wanders off to the east of Eden, until he comes to the Land ofnNod where he eventually builds a city called Enoch, after his son, borne to himnby his sister, Awan (if Adam and Eve were the only man and woman created bynGod, there was bound to be some unsavoury jiggery-pokery going on at some stagenin the proceedings). The majority of the book of Exodus is taken up withnassorted wanderings (as you might expect, given its name). King David does hisnown fair share of wandering hither and thither. And so on, and so on. If therenis a wilderness to be found, it’s an even money bet that there will be somebodynwandering off into it.
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| A Jew wandering |
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nGiven that Christian traditions form a sizeable slice ofnWestern civilisation, it is no surprise that legends of wanderers also featurenprominently in it. Joseph of Arimathea gave up his sepulchre for the body ofnJesus and so had no resting place, thus he wandered, coming at last tonGlastonbury. St James emerged from the rock that had encased his martyred bodynand wandered in Spain, where he led the Spanish against the Moorish invaders.nSt John did not rest in his tomb at Ephesus, he made pilgrimages instead,nwandering to England where King Edward the Confessor gave him a golden ring. StnPeter also wandered to England, where he presented the first abbot ofnWestminster with a miraculous fish. The Wandering Jew was in good company andnnot alone in his wanderings.
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| The Wandering Jew |
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nIt is unusual, in the light of the usual Europeannanti-Semitic sentiments, that the Wandering Jew is usually well received and innmany cases it is very unlucky to treat him badly. The general feeling appearsnto be that the poor man has already suffered enough with the terrible fatencursed upon him and deserves to be treated with sympathy and charity. In annarticle in Notes and Queries (December 29th 1855), it isnrelated how, on a cold winter’s night, a cry might be heard in the darkness,
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n“Water,ngood Christian! Water for the love of God.”n
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nLooking out, you would see annold, bearded ancient and you would be wise to supply him with a drink. Henremembers kindnesses and will often return to pay back the deed when your neednis at its greatest.
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| Gustave Dore – The Wandering Jew |
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nA story from 1658 tells how an old man, Samuel Wallis ofnStamford, who was suffering from a deep consumption and beyond the help ofndoctors, was reading one evening when he heard a knock on the door. Answering,nhe met a tall, bearded ancient who said,
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n“Friend, I pray thee, give an oldnpilgrim a cup of small beere.”n
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nThe man was invited in and given a drink andnwhen finished he said to Wallis that he seemed to him to be ill. Wallisnexplained his ailment and the ancient man told him which herbs he needed tonpick and how to prepare them and that, if done, would cure him after twelvendays. Wallis followed the instructions and recovered and went on to live fornmany more years. He had been visited, he said, the Wandering Jew.
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| Green Plover |
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nAnother storynfrom Notes and Queries (September 30th 1871) tells how antraveller met an old man on a Lancashire moor, who told him that a covey ofnplovers flying overhead were ‘the whistlers or the wandering Jews’.nPressed for information, the man said that the plovers held the souls of thosenJews who had assisted at the crucifixion and were doomed to fly forever,nbringing bad luck to any that heard them. When the traveller returned to thenroad he found that he had missed the coach back to his lodgings and faced anwalk of many miles; the old man was quick to remind him of the fate of thosenwho heard the whistlers, (I have written more about this here).
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nIn 1799,nWilliam Godwin published St Leon, his second Gothic novel (a kind soulnreally ought to have advised him to call it a day after his first attempt), innwhich a feeble, emaciated and pale old stranger imparts the secret of eternalnyouth and bestows the philosopher’s stone to the eponymous anti-hero. It may benthat St Leon played a small part in inspiring Godwin’s daughter’s novel Frankensteinnand this daughter, Mary, was later to marry Percy Bysshe Shelley, one ofnwhose early works was a four-canto effort called The Wandering Jew, (thenleast said about which, the better).
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| George Croly – Tarry Thou Till I Come |
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nIn 1828, the Wandering Jew wanders intonGeorge Croly’s Tarry Thou Till I Come, or Salathiel, the Wandering Jew,na truly awful doorstep of a book that attempts to place the Passion in annhistorically accurate setting and fails miserably as the enthusiastic zeal ofnthe author to proselytise at every available opportunity collapses in a flurrynof superfluous exclamation marks. It really is one of those dreadful, mawkishnnineteenth century triple-deckers that shoehorns a moral into every incident, anmessage into every monologue and a metaphor into every other blessed thing – it’snlike the very worst of Thought for the Day with added schmaltz stirrednin with the bendiest bough broken off the sentimentality bush.
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| Eugene Sue – The Wandering Jew – 1846 |
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nAnd the horrorndoesn’t stop there, as the French got their paws in the pudding when Eugène Suengave the world his Le Juif Errant (The Wandering Jew) betweenn1844 and 1845, in a modest ten volumes that some idiot or other saw fit tontranslate into English in a three-volume edition of 1846. Just to give you somenidea, Sue was also responsible for Les Mystères de Peuple, parts ofnwhich were plagiarised by Maurice Joly as The Dialogue in Hell BetweennMachiavelli and Montesquieu elements of which were, in turn, plagiarised bynthe authors of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
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nAlthough proved tonbe a forgery in the 1920s, Hitler and his cronies eagerly seized upon the Protocolsnas a justification for their genocide of the Jews (and anyone else theynimagined didn’t deserve to continue living). And we all know what happenednnext.
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