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The Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand of a man who has been hanged, often specified as being the left (Latin: ''sinister'') hand, or, if the man were hanged for murder, the hand that "did the deed." 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. 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. 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 concept inspired short stories and poems in the 19th century. The term itself derives from the French main de gloire, a corruption of mandragore, the genus of plants commonly called mandrake. Whitby Museum in North Yorkshire, England possesses a Hand of Glory. ==History of the term== Etymologist 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. Skeat writes, "The identification of the ''hand of glory'' with the ''mandrake'' is clinched by the statement in Cockayne's Leechdoms, i. 245, that the mandrake "shineth by night altogether like a lamp". Cockayne in turn is quoting ''Pseudo-Apuleius'', in a translation of a Saxon manuscript of his ''Herbarium''.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hand of Glory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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