The Magician's Own Book: The Whole Art of Conjuring

That there has been "Jugglery" in all ages of the world, the pages of history abundantly prove. The ancient religions of the heathen were mixed up with an extensive system of legerdemain, and were, more or less, tissues of trickery. Sleight of hand, tricks of the tongue by which the word was kept to the ear, but broken to the hope, and various miraculous deceptions, were the means by which the priests of Egypt, Greece, and Rome used to subjugate mankind. Happy ought we to be, in living in an age when humbug of every kind is sure to meet exposure by the daylight beams of truth.

The Eastern nations, from the earliest times, possessed, besides these religious jugglers, others who made a livelihood by going from place to place, and performing various tricks and feats by which the judgement was bewildered and the reason bamboozled; and even now the performers of the East infinitely exceed those of the West. In the Norman times the juggler was termed jongleur, or joculator, and united in one the minstrel, astrologer, and merry-andrew. In the fourteenth century, he seems to have become more entirely a performer of tricks and feats, and bore the name of Tregetour. The tregetours were adepts at every kind of sleight of hand, and by the assistance of machinery of various kinds, deceived the eyes of the spectators, and produced such illusions as were usually supposed to be the effect of enchantment, for which reason they were frequently ranked with sorcerers, magicians, and witches. Chaucer, who no doubt had frequently an opportunity of seeing the tricks exhibited by the tregetours of his time, says, "There I sawe playenge jogelours, magyciens, trageteours, phetonysses, charmeresses, old witches, and sorceresses;" and the old poet goes on to say to them, "Sometimes they will bring on the similitude of a grim lion, or make flowers spring up as in a meadow; sometimes they cause a vine to flourish, bearing white and red grapes, or show a castle built with stone, and when they please, they cause the whole to disappear:"