![]() Powers attributed A hand of glory holding a candle, from the 18th century grimoire Petit AlbertĪccording to old European beliefs, a candle made of the fat from a malefactor who died on the gallows, lighted, and placed (as if in a candlestick) in the Hand of Glory, which comes from the same man as the fat in the candle, would render motionless all persons to whom it was presented. Cockayne in turn is quoting Pseudo-Apuleius, in a translation of a Saxon manuscript of his Herbarium. 245, that the mandrake "shineth by night altogether like a lamp"". ![]() Skeat writes, "The identification of the hand of glory with the mandrake is clinched by the statement in Cockayne's Leechdoms, i. The concept inspired short stories and poems in the 19th century.Įtymologist Walter Skeat reports that, while folklore has long attributed mystical powers to a dead man's hand, the specific phrase Hand of Glory is in fact a folk etymology: it derives from the French main de gloire, a corruption of mandragore, which is to say mandrake. The process for preparing the hand and the candle are described in 18th-century documents, with certain steps disputed due to difficulty in properly translating phrases from that era. The candle so made, lighted, and placed (as if in a candlestick) in the Hand of Glory would have rendered motionless all persons to whom it was presented. Old European beliefs attribute great powers to a Hand of Glory combined with a candle made from fat from the corpse of the same malefactor who died on the gallows. A hand of glory on display at Whitby MuseumĪ Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand of a hanged man, often specified as being the left ( Latin: sinister) hand, or, if the person was hanged for murder, the hand that "did the deed." For other uses, see Hand of Glory (disambiguation).
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