Pepys and a parlor trick

I heard of this “levitation” parlor trick long ago, but had no idea that it went back 300 years or more.

This evening with Mr. Brisband, speaking of enchantments and spells; I telling him some of my charms, he told me this of his own knowledge, at Bordeaux in France. The words these —

Voicy un corps mort
Royde come un baston
Froid comme marbre
Leger come un esprit
Levons te au nom de Jesus Christ.

He saw four little girls, very young ones, all kneeling, each of them, upon one knee; and one begun the first line, whispering in the eare of the next, and the second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and she to the first. Then the first begun the second line, and so round quite through, and, putting each one finger only to a boy that lay flat upon his back on the ground, as if he was dead; at the end of the words, they did with their four fingers raise this boy as high as they could reach, and he being there, and wondering at it (as also being afeared to see it, for they would have had him to have bore a part in saying the words, in the roome of one of the little girls that was so young that they could hardly make her learn to repeat the words), did, for fear there might be some sleight used in it by the boy, or that the boy might be light, call the cook of the house, a very lusty fellow, as Sir G. Carteret’s cook, who is very big, and they did raise him in just the same manner. This is one of the strangest things I ever heard, but he tells it me of his own knowledge, and I do heartily believe it to be true. I enquired of him whether they were Protestant or Catholic girls; and he told me they were Protestant, which made it the more strange to me. July 31, 1665