XXVI. THE WILD HUNTSMAN…

XXVI. THE WILD HUNTSMAN

The Wild Hunt--Euphemisms--Schimmelreiter--Odinwald--Pied Piper--Lyeshy--Waldemar's Hunt--Palne Hunter--King Abel's Hunt --Lords of Glorup--Le Grand Veneur--Robert le Diable--Arthur-- Hugo--Herne--Tregeagle--Der Freischütz--Elijah's chariot--Mahan Bali--Déhak--Nimrod--Nimrod's defiance of Jehovah--His Tower-- Robber Knights--The Devil in Leipzig--Olaf hunting pagans-- Hunting-horns--Raven--Boar--Hounds--Horse--Dapplegrimm--Sleipnir --Horseflesh--The mare Chetiya--Stags--St. Hubert--The White Lady --Myths of Mother Rose--Wodan hunting St. Walpurga--Friar Eckhardt.

The most important remnant of the Odin myth is the universal legend of the Wild Huntsman. The following variants are given by Wuttke. [184] In Central and South Germany the Wild Hunt is commonly called Wütenden Heere, i.e., Wodan's army or chase--called in the Middle Ages, Wuotanges Heer. The hunter, generally supposed to be abroad during the twelve nights after Christmas, is variously called Wand, Waul, Wodejäger, Helljäger, Nightjäger, Hackelberg, Hackelberend (man in armour), Fro Gode, Banditterich, Jenner. The most common belief is that he is the spectre of a wicked lord or king who sacrilegiously enjoyed the chase on Sundays and other holy days, and who is condemned to expiate his sin by hunting till the day of doom. He wears a broad-brimmed hat; is followed by dogs and other animals, fiery, and often three-legged; and in his spectral train are the souls of unbaptized children, huntsmen who have trodden down grain, witches, and others--these being mounted on horses, goats, and cocks, and sometimes headless, or with their entrails dragging behind them. They rush with a fearful noise through the air, which resounds with the cracking of whips, neighing of horses, barking of dogs, and cries of ghostly huntsmen. The unlucky wight encountered is caught up into the air, where his neck is wrung, or he is dropped from a great height. In some regions, it is said, such must hunt until relieved, but are not slain. The huntsman is a Nemesis on poachers or trespassers in woods and forests. Sometimes the spectres have combats with each other over battlefields. Their track is marked with bits of horseflesh, human corpses, legs with shoes on. In some regions, it is said, the huntsmen carry battle-axes, and cut down all who come in their way. When the hunt is passing all dogs on earth become still and quiet. In most regions there is some haunted gorge, hill, or castle in which the train disappears.

In Thuringia, it is said that, when the fearful noises of the spectral hunt come very near, they change to ravishing music. In the same euphemistic spirit some of the prognostications it brings are not evil: generally, indeed, the apparition portends war, pestilence, and famine, but frequently it announces a fruitful year. If, in passing a house, one of the train dips his finger in the yeast, the staff of life will never be wanting in that house. Whoever sees the chase will live long, say the Bohemians; but he must not hail it, lest flesh and bones rain upon him.

In most regions, however, there is thought to be great danger in proximity to the hunt. The perils are guarded against by prostration on the earth face downward, praying meanwhile; by standing on a white cloth (Bertha's linen), or wrapping the same around the head; by putting the head between the spokes of a wheel; by placing palm leaves on a table. The hunt may be observed securely from the cross-roads, which it shuns, or by standing on a stump marked with three crosses--as is often done by woodcutters in South Germany.

Wodan also appears in the Schimmelreiter--headless rider on a white horse, in Swabia called Bachreiter or Junker Jäkele. This apparition sometimes drives a carriage drawn by four white (or black) horses, usually headless. He is the terrible forest spectre Hoimann, a giant in broad-brimmed hat, with moss and lichen for beard; he rides a headless white horse through the air, and his wailing cry, 'Hoi, hoi!' means that his reign is ended. He is the bugbear of children.

In the Odinwald are the Riesenäule and Riesenaltar, with mystic marks declaring them relics of a temple of Odin. Near Erbach is Castle Rodenstein, the very fortress of the Wild Jäger, to which he passes with his horrid train from the ruins of Schnellert. The village of Reichelsheim has on file the affidavits of the people who heard him just before the battles of Leipzig and Waterloo. Their theory is that if the Jäger returns swiftly to Schnellert all will go well for Germany; but if he tarry at Rodenstein 'tis an omen of evil. He was reported near Frankfort in 1832; but it is notable that no mention of him was made during the late Franco-German war.

A somewhat later and rationalised variant relates that the wild huntsman was Hackelberg, the Lord of Rodenstein, whose tomb--really a Druidical stone--is shown at the castle, and said to be guarded by hell-hounds. Hackelberg is of old his Brunswick name. It was the Hackelberg Hill that opened to receive the children, which the Pied Piper of Hamelin charmed away with his flute from that old town, because the corporation would not pay him what they had promised for ridding them of rats. It is easy to trace this Pied Piper, who has become so familiar through Mr. Robert Browning's charming poem, to the Odin of more blessed memory, who says in the Havamal, 'I know a song by which I soften and enchant my enemies, and render their weapons of no effect.'

This latter aspect of Odin, his command over vermin, connects him with the Slavonic Lyeshy, or forest-demon of the Russias. The ancient thunder-god of Russia, Perun, who rides in his storm-chariot through the sky, has in the more christianised districts dropped his mantle on Ilya (Elias); while in the greater number of Slavonic districts he has held his original physical characters so remarkably that it has been necessary to include him among demons. In Slavonian Folklore the familiar myth of the wild huntsman is distributed--Vladimir the Great fulfils one part of it by still holding high revel in the halls of Kief, but he is no huntsman; Perun courses noisily through the air, but he is rather benevolent than otherwise; the diabolical characteristics of the superstition have fallen to the evil huntsmen (Lyeshies), who keep the wild creatures as their flocks, the same as shepherds their herds, and whom every huntsman must propitiate. The Lyeshy is gigantic, wears a sheepskin, has one eye without eyebrow or eyelash, horns, feet of a goat, is covered with green hair, and his finger-nails are claws. He is special protector of the bears and wolves.

In Denmark the same myth appears as King Volmer's Hunt. Waldemar was so passionately fond of the chase that he said if the Lord would only let him hunt for ever near Gurre (his castle in the north of Seeland), he would not envy him his paradise. For this blasphemous wish he is condemned to hunt between Burre and Gurre for ever. His cavalcade is much like that already described. Volmer rides a snow-white charger, preceded by a pack of coal-black hounds, and he carries his head under his left arm. On St. John the women open gates for him. It is believed that he is allowed brief repose at one and another of his old seats, and it is said spectral servants are sometimes seen preparing the ruined castle at Vordingborg for him, or at Waldemar's Tower. A sceptical peasant resolved to pass the night in this tower. At midnight the King entered, and, thanking him for looking after his tower, gave him a gold piece which burned through his hand and fell to the ground as a coal. On the other hand, Waldemar sometimes makes peasants hold his dogs, and afterwards throws them coals which turn out to be gold pieces.

The Palnatoke or Palne Hunter appears mostly in the island of Fuen. Every New Year's night he supplies himself with three horse-shoes from some smithy, and the smith takes care that he may find them ready for use on his anvil, as he always leaves three gold pieces in their stead. If the shoes are not ready for him, he carries the anvil off. In one instance he left an anvil on the top of a church tower, and it caused the smith great trouble to get it down again.

King Abel was interred after his death in St. Peter's Church in Sleswig, but the fratricide could find no peace in his grave. His ghost walked about in the night and disturbed the monks in their devotions. The body was finally removed from the church, and sunk in a foul bog near Gottorp. To keep him down effectively, a pointed stake was drove through his body. The spot is still called Königsgrabe. Notwithstanding this, he appears seated on a coal-black charger, followed by a pack of black hounds with eyes and tongues of fire. The gates are heard slamming and opening, and the shrieks and yells are such that they appal the stoutest hearts.

At the ancient capital of Fuen, Odense, said to have been built by Odin, the myth has been reduced to a spectral Christmas-night equipage, which issues from St. Canute's Church and passes to the ancient manor-house of Glorup. It is a splendid carriage, drawn by six black horses with fiery tongues, and in it are seated the Lords of Glorup, famous for their cruelty to peasants, and now not able to rest in the church where they were interred. It is of evil omen to witness the spectacle: a man who watched for it was struck blind.

In France Le Grand Veneur bears various names; he is King Arthur, Saint Hubert, Hugo. His alleged appearances within historic times have been so strongly attested that various attempts have been made to give them rational explanations. Thus Charles VI. of France, when going to war in Bretagne, is said to have been met by such a spectre in the Forest of Mans, and became insane; he believed himself to have been the victim of sorcery, as did many of his subjects. It has been said that the King was met by a disguised emissary of the Duc de Bretagne. More particular accounts are given of the apparition of the Wild Huntsman to Henry IV. when he was hunting with the Comte de Soissons in the Forest of Fontainebleau, an event commemorated by 'La Croix du Grand Veneur.' According to Matthieu, [185] both the King and the Count heard the cries of the hunt, and when the Count went to discover their origin, the terrible dark figure stood forth and cried, 'You wish to see me, then behold!' This incident has been explained variously, as a project of assassination, or as the jest of two fellows who, in 1596, were amusing Paris by their skill in imitating all the sounds of a hunt. But such phantoms had too long hunted through the imagination of the French peasantry for any explanation to be required. Robert le Diable, wandering in Normandy till judgment-day, and King Arthur, at an early date domesticated in France as a spectral huntsman (the figure most popularly identified at the time with the phantom seen by Henry IV.), are sufficient explanations. The ruins of Arthur's Castle near Huelgoat, Finistère, were long believed to hide enormous treasures, guarded by demons, who appear sometimes as fiery lights (ignes fatuui), owls, buzzards, and ravens--one of the latter being the form in which Arthur comes from his happy Vale of Avallon, when he would vary its repose with a hunt. [186]

A sufficiently curious interchange of such superstitions is represented in the following extract from Surtees:--'Sir Anthon Bek, busshop of Dureme in the tyme of King Eduarde, the son of King Henry, was the maist prowd and masterfull busshop in all England, and it was com'only said that he was the prowdest lord of Christienty. It chaunced that emong other lewd persons, this sir Anthon entertained at his court one Hugh de Pountchardon, that for his evill deeds and manifold robberies had been driven out of the Inglische courte, and had come from the southe to seek a little bread, and to live by staylinge. And to this Hughe, whom also he imployed to good purpose in the warr of Scotland, the busshop gave the land of Thikley, since of him called Thikley-Puntchardon, and also made him his chiefe huntsman. And after, this blake Hughe died afore the busshop; and efter that the busshop chasid the wild hart in Galtres forest, and sodainly ther met with him Hugh de Pontchardon, that was afore deid, on a wythe horse; and the said Hughe loked earnestly on the busshop, and the busshop said unto him, 'Hughe, what makethe thee here?' and he spake never word, but lifte up his cloke, and then he showed sir Anton his ribbes set with bones, and nothing more; and none other of the varlets saw him but the busshop only; and ye said Hughe went his way, and sir Anton toke corage, and cheered the dogges; and shortly efter he was made Patriarque of Hierusalem, and he same nothing no moe; and this Hugh is him that the silly people in Galtres doe call le Gros Veneur, and he was seen twice efter that by simple folk, afore yat the forest was felled in the tyme of Henry, father of King Henry yat now ys.'

Upon this uncanny fellow fell the spectral mantle of Hugo Capet; elsewhere as is probable, worn by nocturnal protestant assemblies--Huguenots.

The legend of the Wild Huntsman tinges many old English stories. Herne, the Hunter, may be identified with him, and the demons, with ghostly and headless wish-hounds, who still hunt evil-doers over Dartmoor on stormy nights, are his relations. The withered look of horses grazing on Penzance Common was once explained by their being ridden by demons, and the fire-breathing horse has found its way by many weird routes to the service of the Exciseman in the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' or that of Earl Garrett, who rides round the Curragh of Kildare on a steed whose inch-thick silver shoes must wear as thin as a cat's ear, ere he fights the English and reigns over Ireland. The Teutonic myth appears very plainly in the story of Tregeagle. This man, traced to an old Cornish family, is said to have been one of the wickedest men that ever lived; but though he had disposed of his soul to the Devil, the evil one was baulked by the potency of St. Petroc. This, however, was on condition of Tregeagle's labouring at the impossible task of clearing the sand from Porthcurnow Cove, at which work he may still be heard groaning when wind and wave are high. Whenever he tries to snatch a moment's rest, the demon is at liberty to pursue him, and they may be heard on stormy nights in hot pursuit of the poor creature, whose bull-like roar passed into the Cornish proverb, 'to roar like Tregeagle.'

On a pleasant Sunday evening in July 1868, I witnessed 'Der Freischütz' in the newly-opened opera-house at Leipzig. Never elsewhere have I seen such completeness and splendour in the weird effects of the infernal scene in the Wolf's Glen. The 'White Lady' started forth at every step of Rodolph's descent to the glen, warning him back. Zamiel, instead of the fiery garb he once wore as Samaël, was arrayed in raiment black as night; and when the magic bullet was moulded, the stage swarmed with huge reptiles, fiery serpents crawled on the ground, a dragon-drawn chariot, with wheels of fire, driven by a skeleton, passed through the air; and the wild huntsman's chase, composed of animals real to the eye and uttering their distinguishable cries, hurried past. The animals represented were the horse, hound, boar, stag, chamois, raven, bat, owl, and they rushed amid the wild blast of horns.

I could but marvel at the yet more strange and weird history of the human imagination through which had flitted, from the varied regions of a primitive world, the shapes combined in this apotheosis of diablerie. Probably if Elijah in his fire-chariot, preached about in the neighbouring church that morning, and this wild huntsman careering in the opera, had looked closely at each other and at their own history, they might have found a common ancestor in the mythical Mahan Bali of India, the king whose austerities raised in power till he excited the jealousy of the gods, until Vishnu crushed him with his heel into the infernal regions, where he still exercises sovereignty, and is permitted to issue forth for an annual career (at the Onam festival), as described in Southey's 'Curse of Kehama.' And they might probably both claim mythological relationship with Yami, lord of death, who, as Jami, began in Persia the career of all warriors that never died, but sometimes sleep till a magic horn shall awaken them, sometimes dwell, like Jami himself and King Arthur, in happy isles, and in other cases issue forth at certain periods for the chase or for war--like Odin and Waldemar--with an infernal train.

But how did these mighty princes and warriors become demon huntsmen?

In the Persian 'Desatir' it is related that the animals contested the superiority of man, the two orders of beings being represented by their respective sages, and the last animal to speak opposed the claim of his opponent that man attained elevation to the nature of angels, with the remark, 'In his putting to death of animals and similar acts man resembleth the beasts of prey, and not angels.'

The prophet of the world then said, 'We deem it sinful to kill harmless, but right to slay ravenous, animals. Were all ravenous animals to enter into a compact not to kill harmless animals, we would abstain from slaying them, and hold them dear as ourselves.'

Upon this the wolf made a treaty with the ram, and the lion became friend of the stag. No tyranny was left in the world, till man (Dehak) broke the treaty and began to kill animals. In consequence of this, none observed the treaty except the harmless animals. [187]

This fable, from the Aryan side, may be regarded as showing the reason of the evil repute which gathered around the name of Dehak or Zohak. The eating of animal food was among our Aryan ancestors probably the provisional commissariat of a people migrating from their original habitat. The animals slain for food had all their original consecration, and even the ferocious were largely invested with awe. The woodcutters of Bengal invoke Kalrayu--an archer tiger-mounted--to protect them against the wild beasts he (a form of Siva) is supposed to exterminate; but while the exterminator of the most dangerous animals may, albeit without warrant in the Shastr, be respected in India, the huntsman is generally of evil repute. The gentle Krishna was said to have been slain by an arrow from the bow of Ungudu, a huntsman, who left the body to rot under a tree where it fell, the bones being the sacred relics for which the image of Jugernath at Orissa was constructed. [188]

It is not known at what period the notion of transmigration arose, but that must have made him appear cannibalistic who first hunted and devoured animals. Such was the Persian Zohak (or Dehak). His Babylonian form, Nimrod, represented also the character of Esau, as huntsman; that is, the primitive enemy of the farmer, and of the commerce in grains; the preserver of wildness, and consequently of all those primitive aboriginal idolatries which linger in the heaths (whence heathen) and country villages (whence pagans) long after they have passed away from the centres of civilisation. Hunting is essentially barbarous. The willingness of some huntsmen even now, when this serious occupation of an early period has become a sport, to sacrifice not only animal life to their pleasure, but also the interests of labour and agriculture, renders it very easy for us to understand the transformation of Nimrod into a demon. In the Hebrew and Arabian legends concerning Nimrod, that 'mighty hunter' is shown as related to the wild elements and their worshipper. When Abraham, having broken the images of his father, was brought by Terah before Nimrod, the King said, 'Let us worship the fire!'

'Rather the water that quenches the fire,' said Abraham.

'Well, the water.'

'Rather the cloud that carries the water.'

'Well, the cloud.'

'Rather the wind that scatters the cloud.'

'Well, the wind.'

'Rather man, for he withstands the wind.'

'Thou art a babbler,' said Nimrod. 'I worship the fire and will cast thee into it.'

When Abraham was cast into the fiery furnace by Nimrod, and on the seventh day after was found sitting amid the roses of a garden, the mighty hunter--hater of gardens--resolved on a daring hunt for Abraham's God himself. He built a tower five thousand cubits high, but finding heaven still far away, he attached a car to two half-starved eagles, and by holding meat above them they flew upward, until Nimrod heard a voice saying, 'Godless man, whither goest thou?' The audacious man shot an arrow in the direction of the voice; the arrow returned to him stained with blood, and Nimrod believed that he had wounded Abraham's God.

He who hunted the universe was destroyed by one of the weakest of animated beings--a fly. In the aspiring fly which attacked Nimrod's lip, and then nose, and finally devoured his brain, the Moslem and Hebrew doctors saw the fittest end of one whose adventurous spirit had not stopped to attack animals, man, Abraham, and Allah himself.

But though, in one sense, destroyed, Nimrod, say various myths, may be heard tumbling and groaning about the base of his tower of Babel, where the confusion of tongues took place; and it might be added, that they have, like the groan, a meaning irrespective of race or language. Dehak and Nimrod have had their brothers in every race, which has ever reached anything that may be called civilisation. It was the barbaric Baron and the Robber Knight of the Middle Ages, living by the hunt, who, before conversion, made for the Faithful Eckhardts of the Church the chief impediment; they might then strike down the monk, whose apparition has always been the legendary warning of the Demon's approach. When the Eckhardts had baptized these knights, they had already been transformed to the Devils which people the forests of Germany, France, and England with their terrible spectres. The wild fables of the East, telling of fell Demons coursing through the air, whispered to the people at one ear, and the equally wild deeds of the Robber Knights at the other. The Church had given the people one name for all such phantasms--Devil--and it was a name representative of the feelings of both priest and peasant, so long as the Robber Knights were their common enemy. Jesus had to be a good deal modified before he could become the model of this Teutonic Esau. It is after the tradition of his old relation to huntsmen that the Devil has been so especially connected in folklore with soldiers. In the 'Annals of Leipzig,' kept in Auerbach's Cellar, famous for the flight of Mephisto and Faust from its window on a wine-cask, I found two other instances in which the Devil was reported as having appeared in that town. In one case (1604), the fiend had tempted one Jeremy of Strasburg, a marksman, to commit suicide, but that not succeeding, had desired him to go with him to the neighbouring castle and enjoy some fruit. The marksman was saved by help of a Dean. In 1633, during a period of excessive cold and snow, the Devil induced a soldier to blaspheme. The marksman and the soldier were, indeed, the usual victims of the Wild Huntsmen's temptations; and it was for such that the unfailing magic bullets were moulded in return for their impawned souls.

How King Olaf--whose name lingers among us in 'Tooley Street,' so famous for its Three Tailors! [189]--spread the Gospel through the North after his baptism in England is well known. Whatever other hunt may have been phantasmal, it was not Olaf's hunt of the heathen. To put a pan of live coals under the belly of one, to force an adder down the throat of another, to offer all men the alternatives of being baptized or burnt, were the arguments which this apostle applied with such energy that at last--but not until many brave martyrdoms--the chief people were convinced. Olaf encountered Odin as if he had been a living foe, and what is more, believed in the genuine existence of his former God. Once, as Olaf and his friends believed, Odin appeared to this devastator of his altars as a one-eyed man in broad-brimmed hat, delighting the King in his hours of relaxation with that enchanting conversation for which he was so famous. But he (Odin) tried secretly to induce the cook to prepare for his royal master some fine meat which he had poisoned. But Olaf said, 'Odin shall not deceive us,' and ordered the tempting viand to be thrown away. Odin was god of the barbarian Junkers, and the people rejoiced that he was driven into holes and corners; his rites remained mainly among huntsmen, and had to be kept very secret. In the Gulathings Lagen of Norway it is ordered: 'Let the king and bishop, with all possible care, search after those who exercise pagan rites, who use magic arts, who adore the genii of particular places, of tombs, or rivers, and who, after the manner of devils in travelling, are transported from place to place through the air.'

Under such very actual curses as these, the once sacred animals of Odin, and all the associations of the hunt, were diabolised. Even the hunting-horn was regarded as having something præternatural about it. The howling blast when Odin consulteth Mimir's head [190] was heard again in the Pied Piper's flute, and passed southward to blend its note with the horn of Roland at Roncesvalles,--which brought help from distances beyond the reach of any honest horn, and even with the pipe of Pan.

That the Edda described Odin as mounted on a mysterious horse, as cherishing two wolves for pets, having a roasted boar for the daily pièce de résistance of his table, and with a raven on either shoulder, whispering to him the secret affairs of the earth, was enough to settle the reputation of those animals in the creed of christian priests. The Raven was, indeed, from of old endowed with the holy awfulness of the christian dove, in the Norse Mythology. To this day no Swede will kill a raven. The superstition concerning it was strong enough to transmit even to Voltaire an involuntary shudder at its croak. Odin was believed to have given the Raven the colour of the night that it might the better spy out the deeds of darkness. Its 'natural theology' is, no doubt, given correctly by Robert Browning's Caliban, who, when his speculations are interrupted by a thunderstorm, supposes his soliloquy has been conveyed by the raven he sees flying to his god Setebos. In many parts of Germany ravens are believed to hold souls of the damned. If a raven's heart be secured it procures an unerring shot.

From an early date the Boar became an ensign of the prowess of the gods, by which its head passed to be the device of so many barbaric clans and ancient families in the Northern world. In Vedic Mythology we find Indra taking the shape of a Wild Boar, also killing a demon Boar, and giving Tritas the strength by which a similar monster is slain. [191] According to another fable, while Brahma and Vishnu are quarrelling as to which is the first-born, Siva interferes and cries, 'I am the first-born; nevertheless I will recognise as my superior him who is able to see the summit of my head or the sole of my feet.' Vishnu, transforming himself to a Boar, pierced the ground, penetrated to the infernal regions, and then saw the feet of Siva, who on his return saluted him as first-born of the gods. De Gubernatis regards this fable as making the Boar emblem of the hidden Moon. [192] He is hunted by the Sun. He guards the treasure of the demons which Indra gains by slaying him. In Sicilian story, Zafarana, by throwing three hog's bristles on embers, renews her husband's youth. In Esthonian legend, a prince, by eating pork, acquires the faculty of understanding the language of birds,--which may mean leading on the spring with its songs of birds. But whether these particular interpretations be true or not, there is no doubt that the Boar, at an early period, became emblematic of the wild forces of nature, and from being hunted by King Odin on earth passed to be his favourite food in Valhalla, and a prominent figure in his spectral hunt.

Enough has already been said of the Dog in several chapters of this work to render it but natural that this animal should take his place in any diabolical train. It was not as a 'hell-hound,' or descendant of the guardians of Orcus, that he entered the spectral procession of Odin, but as man's first animal assistant in the work of obtaining a living from nature. It is the faithful friend of man who is demoralised in Waldemar's Lystig, the spectre-hound of Peel Castle, the Manthe Doog of the Isle of Man, the sky-dogs (Cwn wybir or aunwy) of Wales, and Roscommon dog of Ireland.

Of the Goat, the Dog, and some other diabolised animals, enough has been said in previous pages. The nocturnal animals would be as naturally caught up into the Wild Huntsman's train as belated peasants. But it is necessary to dwell a little on the relations of the Horse to this Wild Hunt. It was the Horse that made the primitive king among men.

'The Horse,' says Dasent, 'was a sacred animal among the Teutonic tribes from the first moment of their appearance in history; and Tacitus has related how, in the shade of those woods and groves which served them for temples, white horses were fed at the public cost, whose backs no mortal crossed, whose neighings and snortings were carefully watched as auguries and omens, and who were thought to be conscious of divine mysteries. In Persia, too, the classical reader will remember how the neighing of a horse decided the choice for the crown. Here in England, at any rate, we have only to think of Hengist and Horsa, the twin heroes of the Anglo-Saxon migration--as the legend ran--heroes whose name meant horse, and of the Vale of the White Horse, in Berks, where the sacred form still gleams along the down, to be reminded of the sacredness of the horse to our forefathers. The Eddas are filled with the names of famous horses, and the Sagas contain many stories of good steeds, in whom their owners trusted and believed as sacred to this or that particular god. Such a horse is Dapplegrimm in the Norse tales, who saves his master out of all his perils, and brings him to all fortune, and is another example of that mysterious connection with the higher powers which animals in all ages have been supposed to possess.'

It was believed that no warrior could approach Valhalla except on horseback, and the steed was generally buried with his master. The Scandinavian knight was accustomed to swear 'by the shoulder of a horse and the edge of a sword.' Odin (the god) was believed to have always near him the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, whose sire was the wonderful Svaldilfari, who by night drew the enormous stones for the fortress defending Valhalla from the frost-giants. On Sleipnir the deity rode to the realm of Hela, when he evoked the spirit of the deceased prophetess, Vala, with Runic incantations, to learn Baldur's fate. This is the theme of the Veytamsvida, paraphrased by Gray in his ode beginning--

Up rose the king of men with speed, And saddled straight his coal-black steed

The steed, however, was not black, but grey. Sleipnir was the foal of a magically-created mare. The demon-mare (Mara) holds a prominent place in Scandinavian superstition, besetting sleepers. In the Ynglinga Saga, Vanland awakes from sleep, crying, 'Mara is treading on me!' His men hasten to help him, but when they take hold of his head Mara treads on his legs, and when they hold his legs she tramples on his head; and so, says Thiodolf--

Trampled to death, to Skyta's shore The corpse his faithful followers bore; And there they burnt, with heavy hearts, The good chief, killed by witchcraft's arts.

All this is, of course, the origin of the common superstition of the nightmare. The horse-shoe used against witches is from the same region. We may learn here also the reason why hippophagy has been so long unknown among us. Odin's boar has left his head on our Christmas tables, but Olaf managed to rob us of the horse-flesh once eaten in honour of that god. In the eleventh century he proclaimed the eating of horse-flesh a test of paganism, as baptism was of Christianity, and punished it with death, except in Iceland, where it was permitted by an express stipulation on their embracing Christianity. To these facts it may be added that originally the horse's head was lifted, as the horse-shoe is now, for a charm against witches. When Wittekind fought twenty years against Charlemagne, the ensign borne by his Saxon followers was a horse's head raised on a pole. A white horse on a yellow ground is to-day the Hanoverian banner, its origin being undoubtedly Odinistic.

The christian edict against the eating of horse-flesh had probably a stronger motive than sentimental opposition to paganism. A Roman emperor had held the stirrup for a christian pontiff to mount, and something of the same kind occurred in the North. The Horse, which had been a fire-breathing devil under Odin, became a steed of the Sun under the baptized noble and the bishop. Henceforth we read of coal-black and snow-white horses, as these are mounted in the interest of the old religion or the new.

It is very curious to observe how far and wide has gone religious competition for possession of that living tower of strength--the Horse. In ancient Ceylon we find the Buddhist immigrants winning over the steed on which the aborigines were fortified. It was a white horse, of course, that became their symbol of triumph. The old record says--

'A certain yakkhini (demoness) named Chetiya, having the form and countenance of a mare, dwelt near the marsh of Tumbariungona. A certain person in the prince's (Pandukabhayo) retinue having seen this beautiful (creature), white with red legs, announced the circumstance to the prince. The prince set out with a rope to secure her. She seeing him approach from behind, losing her presence of mind from fear, under the influence of his imposing appearance, fled without (being able to exert the power she possessed of) rendering herself invisible. He gave chase to the fugitive. She, persevering in her flight, made the circuit of the marsh seven times. She made three more circuits of the marsh, and then plunged into the river at the Kachchhaka ferry. He did the same, and (in the river) seized her by the tail, and (at the same time grasped) the leaf of a palmira tree which the stream was carrying down. By his supernatural good fortune this (leaf) became an enormous sword. Exclaiming, 'I put thee to death!' he flourished the sword over her. 'Lord!' replied she to him, 'subduing this kingdom for thee, I will confer it on thee: spare me my life.' Seizing her by the throat, and with the point of the sword boring her nostril, he secured her with his rope: she (instantly) became tractable. Conducting her to the Dhumarakkho mountain, he obtained a great accession of warlike power by making her his battle-steed.' [193] The wonderful victories won by the prince, aided by this magical mare, are related, and the tale ends with his setting up 'within the royal palace itself the mare-faced yakkhini,' and providing for her annually 'demon offerings.'

Equally ambiguous with the Horse in this zoologic diablerie is the Stag. In the Heraklean legends we find that hero's son, Telephon, nursed by a hind in the woods; and on the other hand, his third 'labour' was the capture of Artemis' gold-antlered stag, which brought on him her wrath (it being 'her majesty's favourite stag'). We have again the story of Actæon pursuing the stag too far and suffering the fate he had prepared for it; and a reminiscence of it in the 'Pentamerone,' when the demon Huoreo allures Canneloro into the wood by taking the form of a beautiful hind. These complex legends are reflected in Northern folklore also. Count Otto I. of Altmark, while out hunting, slept under an oak and dreamed that he was furiously attacked by a stag, which disappeared when he called on the name of God. The Count built a monastery, which still stands, with the oak's stump built into its altar. On the other hand, beside the altar of a neighbouring church hang two large horns of a stag said to have brought a lost child home on its back. Thus in the old town of Steindal meet these contrary characters of the mystical stag, of which it is not difficult to see that the evil one results from its misfortune in being at once the huntsman's victim and scapegoat. [194]

In the legend of St. Hubert we have the sign of Christ--risen from his tomb among the rich Christians to share for a little the crucifixion of their first missionaries in the North--to the huntsmen of Europe. Hubert pursues the stag till it turns to face him, and behold, between its antlers, the cross! It is a fable conceived in the spirit of him who said to fishermen, 'Come with me and I will make you fishers of men.' The effect was much the same in both cases. Hubert kneels before the stag, and becomes a saint, as the fishermen left their nets and became apostles. But, as the proverb says, when the saint's day is over, farewell the saint. The fishermen's successors caught men with iron hooks in their jaws; the successors of Hubert hunted men and women so lustily that they never paused long enough to see whether there might not be a cross on their forehead also.

It was something, however, that the cross which Constantine could only see in the sky could be seen by any eye on the forehead of a harmless animal; and this not only because it marked the rising in christian hearts of pity for the animals, but because what was done to the flying stag was done to the peasant who could not fly, and more terribly. The vision of Hubert came straight from the pagan heart of Western and Northern Europe. In the Bible, from Genesis to Apocalypse, no word is found clearly inculcating any duty to the animals. So little, indeed, could the christians interpret the beautiful tales of folklore concerning kindly beasts, out of which came the legend of Hubert, that Hubert was made patron of huntsmen; and while, by a popular development, Wodan was degraded to a devil, the baptized sportsman rescued his chief occupation by ascribing its most dashing legends to St. Martin and their inspiration to the Archangel Michael.

It is now necessary to consider the light which the German heart cast across the dark shadows of Wodan. This is to be discovered in the myth of the White Lady. We have already seen, in the confessions of the witches of Elfdale, in Sweden, that when they were gathering before their formidable Devil, a certain White Spirit warned them back. The children said she tried to keep them from entering the Devil's Church at Blockula. This may not be worth much as a 'confession,' but it sufficiently reports the theories prevailing in the popular mind of Elfdale at that time. It is not doubtful now that this White Lady and that Devil she opposed were, in pre-christian time, Wodan and his wife Frigga. The humble people who had gladly given up the terrible huntsman and warrior to be degraded into a Devil, and with him the barbaric Nimrods who worshipped him, did not agree to a similar surrender of their dear household goddess, known to them as Frigga, Holda, Bertha, Mother Rose,--under all her epithets the Madonna of the North, interceding between them and the hard king of Valhalla, ages before they ever heard of a jealous Jehovah and a tender interceding Mary.

Dr. Wuttke has collected many variants of the myths of Frigga, some of which bear witness to the efforts of the Church to degrade her also into a fiend. She is seen washing white clothes at fountains, milking cows, spinning flax with a distaff, or combing her flaxen hair. She was believed to be the divine ancestress of the human race; many of the oldest families claimed descent from her, and believed that this Ahnenfrau announced to them good fortune, or, by her wailing, any misfortune coming to their families. She brought evil only to those who spoke evil of her. If any one shoots at her the ball enters his own heart. She appears to poor wandering folk, especially children, and guides them to spots where they find heaps of gold covered with the flower called 'Forget-me-not'--because her gentle voice is heard requesting, as the only compensation, that the flowers shall be replaced when the gold is removed. The primroses are sacred to her, and often are the keys (thence called 'key-blossoms') which unlock her treasures. The smallest tribute she repays,--even a pebble consecrated to her. Every child ascending the Burgeiser Alp places a stone on a certain heap of such, with the words, 'Here I offer to the wild maidens.' These are Bertha's kindly fairies. (When Frederika Bremer was with a picnic on the Hudson heights, which Washington Irving had peopled with the Spirits he had brought from the Rhine, she preferred to pour out her champagne as a libation to the 'good spirits' of Germany and America.) The beautiful White Lady wears a golden chain, and glittering keys at her belt; she appears at mid-day or in strong moonlight. In regions where priestly influence is strong she is said to be half-black, half-white, and to appear sometimes as a serpent. She often helps the weary farmer to stack his corn, and sorely-tasked Cinderellas in their toil.

In pre-christian time this amiable goddess--called oftenest Bertha (shining) and Mother Rose--was related to Wodan as the spring and summer to the storms of winter, in which the Wild Huntsman's procession no doubt originated. The Northman's experience of seed-time and harvest was expressed in the myth of this sweet Rose hidden through the winter's blight to rise again in summer. This myth has many familiar variants, such as Aschenputtel and Sleeping Beauty; but it was more particularly connected with the later legends of the White Lady, as victim of the Wild Huntsman, by the stories of transformed princesses delivered by youths. Rescue of the enchanted princess is usually effected by three kisses, but she is compelled to appear before the deliverer in some hideous aspect--as toad or serpent; so that he is repelled or loses courage. This is the rose hid under the ugliness of winter.

When the storm-god Wodan was banished from nature altogether and identified with the imported, and naturally inconceivable, Satan, he was no more regarded as Frigga's rough lord, but as her remorseless foe. She was popularly revered as St. Walpurga, the original May Queen, and it was believed that happy and industrious children might sometimes see her on May-day with long flowing flaxen hair, fine shoes, distaff in hand, and a golden crown on her head. But for the nine nights after May-day she was relentlessly pursued by the Wild Huntsman and his mounted train. There is a picture by G. Watts of the hunted lady of Bocaccio's tale, now in the Cosmopolitan Club of London, which vividly reproduces the weird impressiveness of this myth. The White Lady tries to hide from her pursuer in standing corn, or gets herself bound up in a sheaf. The Wild Huntsman's wrath extends to all her retinue,--moss maidens of the wood, or Holtzweibeln. The same belief characterises Waldemar's hunt. It is a common legend in Denmark that King Volmer rode up to some peasants, busy at harvest on Sobjerg Hill, and, in reply to his question whether they had seen any game, one of the men said--'Something rustled just now in yonder standing corn.' The King rushed off, and presently a shot was heard. The King reappeared with a mermaid lying across his horse, and said as he passed, 'I have chased her a hundred years, and have her at last.' He then rode into the hill. In this way Frigga and her little people, hunted with the wild creatures, awakened sympathy for them.

The holy friar. Eckhardt (who may be taken as a myth and type of the Church ad hoc) gained his legendary fame by being supposed to go in advance of the Wild Huntsman and warn villagers of his approach; but as time went on and a compromise was effected between the hunting Barons and the Church, on the basis that the sports and cruelties should be paid for with indulgence-fees, Eckhardt had to turn his attention rather to the White Lady. She was declared a Wild Huntress, but the epithet slipped to other shoulders. The priests identified her ultimately with Freija, or Frau Venus; and Eckhardt was the holy hermit who warned young men against her sorceries in Venusberg and elsewhere. But Eckhardt never prevailed against the popular love of Mother Rose as he had against her pursuer; he only increased the attractions of 'Frau Venus' beyond her deserts. In the end it was as much as the Church could do to secure for Mary the mantle of her elder sister's sanctity. Even then the earlier faith was not eradicated. After the altars of Mary had fallen, Frigga had vitality enough to hold her own as the White Witch who broke the Dark One's spells. It was chiefly this helpful Mother-goddess to whom the wretched were appealing when they were burnt for witchcraft.

At Urselberg, Wurtemberg, there is a deep hole called the 'Nightmaidens' Retreat,' in which are piled the innumerable stones that have been cast therein by persons desiring good luck on journeys. These stones correspond to the bones of the 11,000 Virgins in St. Ursula's Church at Cologne. The White Lady was sainted under her name of Ursel (the glowing one), otherwise Horsel. Horselberg, near Eisenach, became her haunt as Venus, the temptress of Tannhaüsers; Urselberg became her retreat as the good fairy mother; but the attractions of herself and her moss-maidens, which the Church wished to borrow, were taken on a long voyage to Rome, and there transmuted to St. Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins. These Saints of Cologne encountered their ancient mythical pursuers--the Wild Huntsman's train--in those barbarian Huns who are said to have slaughtered them all because they would not break their vows of chastity. The legend is but a variant of Wodan's hunt after the White Lady and her maidens. When it is remembered that before her transformation by Christianity Ursula was the Huntsman's own wife, Frigga, a quaint incident appears in the last meeting between the two. After Wodan had been transformed to the Devil, he is said to have made out the architectural plan for Cologne Cathedral, and offered it to the architect in return for a bond for his soul; but, having weakly allowed him to get possession of the document before the bond was signed, the architect drew from under his gown a bone of St. Ursula, from which the Devil fled in great terror. It was bone of his bone; but after so many mythological vicissitudes Wodan and his Horsel could hardly be expected to recognise each other at this chance meeting in Cologne.

XXVII. LE BON DIABLE

The Devil repainted--Satan a divine agent--St. Orain's heresy--Primitive universalism--Father Sinistrari--Salvation of demons--Mediæval sects--Aquinas--His prayer for Satan--Popular antipathies--The Devil's gratitude--Devil defending innocence--Devil against idle lords--The wicked ale-wife--Pious offenders punished--Anachronistic Devils--Devils turn to poems--Devil's good advice--Devil sticks to his word--His love of justice--Charlemagne and the Serpent--Merlin--His prison of Air--Mephistopheles in Heaven.

The phrase which heads this chapter is a favourite one in France. It may have had a euphemistic origin, for the giants dreaded by primitive Europeans were too formidable to be lightly spoken of. But within most of the period concerning which we have definite knowledge such phrases would more generally have expressed the half-contemptuous pity with which these huge beings with weak intellects were regarded. The Devil imported with Christianity was made over, as we have seen, into the image of the Dummeteufel, or stupid good-natured giant, and he is represented in many legends which show him giving his gifts and services for payments of which he is constantly cheated. Le Bon Diable in France is somewhat of this character, and is often taken as the sign of tradesmen who wish to represent themselves as lavishing their goods recklessly for inadequate compensation. But the large accession of demons and devils from the East through Jewish and Moslem channels, of a character far from stupid, gave a new sense to that phrase and corresponding ones. There is no doubt that a very distinct reaction in favour of the Devil arose in Europe, and one expressive of very interesting facts and forces. The pleasant names given him by the masses would alone indicate this,--Monsieur De Scelestat, Lord Voland, Blümlin (floweret), Federspiel (gay-plumed), Maitre Bernard, Maitre Parsin (Parisian).

The Devil is not so black as he's painted. This proverb concerning the long-outlawed Evil One has a respectable antiquity, and the feeling underlying it has by no means been limited to the vulgar. Even the devout George Herbert wrote--

We paint the Devil black, yet he Hath some good in him all agree.

Robert Burns naively appeals to Old Nick's better nature--

But fare ye weel, auld Nickie-ben! O wad ye tak a thought an' men'! Ye aiblins might--I dinna ken-- Still ha'e a stake; I'm wae to think upon yon den, E'en for your sake!

It is hard to destroy the natural sentiments of the human heart. However much they may be overlaid by the transient exigencies of a creed, their indestructible nature is pretty certain to reveal itself. The most orthodox supporters of divine cruelty in their own theology will cry out against it in another. The saint who is quite satisfied that the everlasting torture of Satan or Judas is justice, will look upon the doom of Prometheus as a sign of heathen heartlessness; and the burning of one widow for a few moments on her husband's pyre will stimulate merciful missionary ardour among millions of christians whose creed passes the same poor victim to endless torture, and half the human race with her.

It is doubtful whether the general theological conception of the functions of Satan is consistent with the belief that he is in a state of suffering. As an agent of divine punishment he is a part of the divine government; and it is even probable that had it not been for the necessity of keeping up his office, theology itself would have found some means of releasing him and his subordinates from hell, and ultimately of restoring them to heaven and virtue. [195]

It is a legend of the island Iona that when St. Columba attempted to build a church there, the Devil--i.e., the same Druid magicians who tried to prevent his landing there by tempests--threw down the stones as often as they were piled up. An oracle declared that the church could arise only after some holy man had been buried alive at the spot, and the saint's friend Orain offered himself for the purpose. After Orain had been buried, and the wall was rising securely, St. Columba was seized with a strong desire to look upon the face of his poor friend once more. The wall was pulled down, the body dug up; but instead of Orain being found dead, he sat up and told the assembled christians around him that he had been to the other world, and discovered that they were in error about various things,--especially about Hell, which really did not exist at all. Outraged by this heresy the christians immediately covered up Orain again in good earnest.

The resurrection of this primitive universalist of the seventh century, and his burial again, may be regarded as typifying a dream of the ultimate restoration of the universe to the divine sway which has often given signs of life through christian history, though many times buried. The germ of it is even in Paul's hope that at last 'God may be all in all' (1 Cor. xv. 28). In Luke x. 17, also, it was related that the seventy whom Jesus had sent out among the idol-worshipping Gentiles 'returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.' These ideas are recalled in various legends, such as that elsewhere related of the Satyr who came to St. Anthony to ask his prayers for the salvation of his demonic tribe. On the strength of Anthony's courteous treatment of that Satyr, the famous Consulteur of the Inquisition, Father Sinistrari (seventeenth century), rested much of his argument that demons were included in the atonement wrought by Christ and might attain final beatitude. The Father affirmed that this was implied in Christ's words, 'Other sheep I have which are not of this flock: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd' [196] (John x. 16). That these words were generally supposed to refer to the inclusion of the Gentile world was not accepted by Sinistrari as impairing his argument, but the contrary. He maintained with great ingenuity that the salvation of the Gentiles logically includes the salvation of their inspiring demons, and that there would not be one fold if these aerial beings, whose existence all authorities attested, were excluded. He even intimates, though more timidly, that their father, Satan himself, as a participator in the sin of Adam and sharer of his curse, may be included in the general provision of the deity for the entire and absolute removal of the curse throughout nature.

Sinistrari's book was placed on the 'Index Expurgatorius' at Rome in 1709, 'donec corrigatur,' eight years after the author's death; it was republished, 'correctus,' 1753. But the fact that such sentiments had occupied many devout minds in the Church, and that they had reached the dignity of a consistent and scholarly statement in theology, was proved. The opinion grew out of deeper roots than New Testament phrases or the Anthony fables. The Church had been for ages engaged in the vast task of converting the Gentile world; in the course of that task it had succeeded only by successive surrenders of the impossible principles with which it had started. The Prince of this World had been baptized afresh with every European throne ascended by the Church. Asmodeus had triumphed in the sacramental inclusion of marriage; St. Francis d'Assisi, preaching to the animals, represented innumerable pious myths which had been impossible under the old belief in a universal curse resting upon nature. The evolution of this tendency may be traced through the entire history of the Church in such sects as the Paulicians, Cathari, Bogomiles, and others, who, though they again and again formulated anew the principle of an eternal Dualism, as often revealed some further stage in the progressive advance of the christianised mind towards a normal relation with nature. Thus the Cathari maintained that only those beings who were created by the evil principle would remain unrecovered; those who were created by God, but seduced by the Adversary, would be saved after sufficient expiation. The fallen angels, they believed, were passing through earthly, in some cases animal, bodies to the true Church and to heaven. Such views as these were not those of the learned, but of the dissenting sects, and they prepared ignorant minds in many countries for that revival of confidence in their banished deities which made the cult of Witchcraft.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the 'Angelical Doctor,' in his famous work 'Summa Theologiæ,' maintains that in the Resurrection the bodies of the redeemed will rise with all their senses and organs, including those of sex, active and refined. The authentic affirmation of that doctrine in the thirteenth century was of a significance far beyond the comprehension of the Church. Aquinas confused the lines between flesh and spirit, especially by admitting sex into heaven. The Devil could not be far behind. The true interpretation of his doctrine is to be found in the legend that Aquinas passed a night in prayer for the salvation and restoration of the Devil. This legend is the subject of a modern poem so fraught with the spirit of the mediæval heart, pining in its dogmatic prison, that I cannot forbear quoting it here:--

All day Aquinas sat alone; Compressed he sat and spoke no word, As still as any man of stone, In streets where never voice is heard; With massive front and air antique He sat, did neither move or speak, For thought like his seemed words too weak.

The shadows brown about him lay; From sunrise till the sun went out, Had sat alone that man of grey, That marble man, hard crampt by doubt; Some kingly problem had he found, Some new belief not wholly sound, Some hope that overleapt all bound.

All day Aquinas sat alone, No answer to his question came, And now he rose with hollow groan, And eyes that seemed half love, half flame. On the bare floor he flung him down, Pale marble face, half smile, half frown, Brown shadow else, mid shadows brown.

'O God,' he said, 'it cannot be, Thy Morning-star, with endless moan, Should lift his fading orbs to thee, And thou be happy on thy throne. It were not kind, nay, Father, nay, It were not just, O God, I say, Pray for thy Lost One, Jesus, pray!

'How can thy kingdom ever come, While the fair angels howl below? All holy voices would be dumb, All loving eyes would fill with woe, To think the lordliest Peer of Heaven, The starry leader of the Seven, Would never, never, be forgiven.

'Pray for thy Lost One, Jesus, pray! O Word that made thine angel speak! Lord! let thy pitying tears have way; Dear God! not man alone is weak. What is created still must fall, And fairest still we frailest call; Will not Christ's blood avail for all?

'Pray for thy Lost One, Jesus, pray! O Father! think upon thy child; Turn from thy own bright world away, And look upon that dungeon wild. O God! O Jesus! see how dark That den of woe! O Saviour! mark How angels weep, how groan! Hark, hark!

'He will not, will not do it more, Restore him to his throne again; Oh, open wide that dismal door Which presses on the souls in pain. So men and angels all will say, 'Our God is good.' Oh, day by day, Pray for thy Lost One, Jesus, pray!'

All night Aquinas knelt alone, Alone with black and dreadful Night, Until before his pleading moan The darkness ebbed away in light. Then rose the saint, and 'God,' said he, 'If darkness change to light with thee, The Devil may yet an angel be.' [197]

While this might be the feeling of devout philosophers whose minds were beginning to form a conception of a Cosmos in which the idea of a perpetual empire of Evil could find no place, the humble and oppressed masses, as we have seen in the chapter on Witchcraft, were familiarising their minds with the powers and glories of a Satan in antagonism to the deities and saints of the Church. It was not a penitent devil supplicating for pardon whom they desired, but the veritable Prince of the World, to whom as well as to themselves their Christian oppressors were odious. They invested the Powers which the priests pronounced infernal with those humanly just and genial qualities that had been discarded by ecclesiastical ambition. The legends which must be interpreted in this sense are very numerous, and a few of the most characteristic must suffice us here. The habit of attributing every mishap to the Devil was rebuked in many legends. One of these related that when a party were driving over a rough road the waggon broke down and one of the company exclaimed, 'This is a bit of the Devil's work!' A gentleman present said, 'It is a bit of corporation work. I don't believe in saddling the Devil with all the bad roads and bad axles.' Some time after, when this second speaker was riding over the same road alone, an old gentleman in black met him, and having thanked him for his defence of the Devil, presented him with a casket of splendid jewels. Very numerous are legends of the Devil's apparition to assist poor architects and mechanics unable to complete their contracts, even carving beautiful church pillars and the like for them, and this sometimes without receiving any recompense. The Devil's apparition in defence of accused innocence is a well-known feature of European folklore. On one occasion a soldier, having stopped at a certain inn, confided to the innkeeper some money he had for safe-keeping, and when he was about to leave the innkeeper denied having received the deposit. The soldier battered down the door, and the neighbours of the innkeeper, a prominent man in the town, put him in prison, where he lay in prospect of suffering death for an attempted burglary. The poor soldier, being a stranger without means, was unable to obtain counsel to defend him. When the parties appeared before the magistrate, a smart young lawyer, with blue hat and white feathers, unknown in the town, volunteered to defend the soldier, and related the whole story with such effect that the innkeeper in his excitement cried, 'Devil take me if I have the money!' Instantly the smart lawyer spread his wings, and, seizing the innkeeper, disappeared with him through the roof of the court-room. The innkeeper's wife, struck with horror, restored the money. In an Altmark version of this story the Devil visits the prisoner during the previous night and asks for his soul as fee, but the soldier refuses, saying he had rather die. Despite this the Devil intervened. It was an old-time custom in Denmark for courts to sit with an open window, in order that the Devil might more easily fly away with the perjurer.

Always a democrat, the Devil is said in many stories to have interfered in favour of the peasant or serf against the noble. On one occasion he relieved a certain district of all its arrogant and idle noblemen by gathering them up in a sack and flying away with them; but unhappily, as he was passing over the town of Friesack, his sack came in collision with the church steeple, and through the hole so torn a large number of noble lords fell into the town--which thence derived its name--and there they remained to be patrons of the steeple and burthens on the people.

The Devil was universally regarded as a Nemesis on all publicans and ale-wives who adulterated the beer they dealt out to the people, or gave short measures. At Reetz, in Altmark, the legend of an ale-wife with whom he flew away is connected with a stone on which they are said to have rested, and the villagers see thereon prints of the Devil's hoof and the woman's feet. This was a favourite theme of old English legends. The accompanying Figure (23), one of the misereres in Ludlow parish church, Shropshire, represents the end of a wicked ale-wife. A devil on one side reads the long list of her shortcomings, and on the other side hell-mouth is receiving other sinners. A devil with bagpipe welcomes her arrival. She carries with her only her fraudulent measure and the fashionable head-dress paid for out of its wicked gains.

In a marionette performance which I witnessed at Tours, the accusations brought against the tradesmen who cheated the people were such as to make one wish that the services of some equally strict devil could be secured by the authorities of all cities, to detect adulterators and dealers in false weights and measures. The same retributive agency, in the popular interest, was ascribed to the Devil in his attitude towards misers. There being no law which could reach men whose hoarded wealth brought no good to themselves or others, such were deemed proper cases for the interposition of the Devil. There is a significant contrast between the legends favoured by the Church and those of popular origin. The former, made prominent in frescoes, often show how, at the weighing of souls, the sinner is saved by a saint or angel, or by some instance of service to the Church being placed in the scale against the otherwise heavier record of evil deeds. A characteristic legend is that which is the subject of the frescoes in the portico of St. Lorenzo Church at Rome (thirteenth century). St. Lawrence sees four devils passing his hermitage, and learns from them that they are going for the soul of Henry II. In the next scene, when the wicked Count is weighed, the scroll of his evil deeds far outweighs that of his good actions, until the Saint casts into the scale a chalice which the prince had once given to his church. For that one act Henry's soul ascends to paradise amid the mortification of the Devils. Though Charles Martel saved Europe from Saracen sway, he once utilised episcopal revenues for relief of the state; consequently a synod declares him damned, a saint sees him in hell, a sulphurous dragon issues from his grave. On the other hand, the popular idea of the fate of distinguished sinners may be found hid under misereres, where kings sometimes appear in Hell, and in the early picture-books which contained a half-christianised folklore.

It has been observed that the early nature-deities, reflecting the evil and good of nature, in part through the progress of human thought and ideality, and through new ethnical rivalries, were degraded into demons. They then represented the pains, obstructions, and fears in nature. We have seen that as these apparent external evils were vanquished or better understood, the demons passed to the inward nature, and represented a new series of pains, obstructions, and fears. But these, too, were in part vanquished, or better understood. Still more, they so changed their forms that the ancient demons-turned-devils were no longer sufficiently expressive to represent them. Thus we find that the Jews, mohammedans, and christians did not find their several special antagonists impressively represented by either Satan, Iblis, or Beelzebub. Each, therefore, personified its foe in accordance with later experiences--an Opponent called Armillus, Aldajjail, Antichrist (all meaning the same thing), in whom all other devils were merged.

As to their spirit; but as to their forms they shrank in size and importance, and did duty in small ways. We have seen how great dragons were engaged in frightening boys who fished on Sundays, or oppressive squires; how Satan presided over wine-casks, or was adapted to the punishment of profanity; how hosts of once tremendous fiends turned into the grotesque little forms which Callot, truly copying the popular notions around him, painted as motley imps disturbing monks at their prayers. Such diminutions of the devils correspond to a parallel process among the gods and goddesses, by which they were changed to 'little people' or fairies. In both cases the transformation is an expression of popular disbelief in their reality.

But revivals took place. The fact of evil is permanent; and whenever the old chains of fear, after long rusting, finally break, there follows an insurrection against the social and moral order which alarms the learned and the pious. These see again the instigations of evil powers, and it takes form in the imagination of a Dante, a Luther, a Milton. But when these new portraits of the Devil are painted, it is with so much contemporary colouring that they do not answer to the traditional devils preserved in folklore. Dante's Worm does not resemble the serpent of fable, nor does Milton's Satan answer to the feathered clown of Miracle Plays. Thus, behind the actual evils which beset any time, there stands an array of grand diabolical names, detached from present perils, on which the popular fancy may work without really involving any theory of Absolute Evil at all. Were starry Lucifer to be restored to his heavenly sphere, he would be one great brand plucked from the burning, but the burning might still go on. Theology itself had filled the world with other devils by diabolising all the gods and goddesses of rival religions, and the compassionate heart was thus left free to select such forms or fair names as preserved some remnant of ancient majesty around them, or some ray from their once divine halo, and pray or hope for their pardon and salvation. Fallen foes, no longer able to harm, can hardly fail to awaken pity and clemency.

With the picture of Dives and Lazarus presented elsewhere (vol. i. p. 281) may be instructively compared the accompanying scene of a rich man's death-bed (Fig. 24), taken from 'Ars Moriendi,' one of the early block-books. This picture is very remarkable from the suggestion it contains of an opposition between a devil on the dying man's right and the hideous dragon on his left. While the dragon holds up a scroll, bidding him think of his treasure (Yntende thesauro), the Devil suggests provision for his friends (Provideas amicis). This devil seems to be a representative of the rich man's relatives who stand near, and appears to be supported by his ugly superior, who points towards hell as the penalty of not making such provision as is suggested. There would appear to be in this picture a vague distinction between the mere bestial fiend who tempts, and the ugly but good-natured devil who punishes, and whom rich sinners cannot escape by bequests to churches.

One of the most notable signs of the appearance of 'the good Devil' was the universal belief that he invariably stuck to his word. In all European folklore there is no instance of his having broken a promise. In this respect his reputation stands far higher than that of the christians, seeing that it was a boast of the saints that, following the example of their godhead, who outwitted Satan in the bargain for man's redemption, they were continually cheating the Devil by technical quibbles. There is a significant saying found among Prussian and Danish peasants, that you may obtain a thing by calling on Jesus, but if you would be sure of it you must call on the Devil! The two parties were judged by their representatives.

One of the earliest legendary compacts with the Devil was that made by St. Theophilus in the sixth century; when he became alarmed and penitent, the Virgin Mary managed to trick Satan out of the fatal bond. The 'Golden Legend' of Jacobus de Voragine tells why Satan was under the necessity of demanding in every case a bond signed with blood. 'The christians,' said Satan, 'are cheats; they make all sorts of promises so long as they want me, and then leave me in the lurch, and reconcile themselves with Christ so soon as, by my help, they have got what they want.'

Even apart from the consideration of possessing the soul, the ancient office of Satan as legal prosecutor of souls transmitted, to the latest forms into which he was modified, this character for justice. Many mediæval stories report his gratitude whenever he is treated with justice, though some of these are disguised by connection with other demonic forms. Such is the case with the following romance concerning Charlemagne.

When Charlemagne dwelt at Zurich, in the house commonly called 'Zum Loch,' he had a column erected to which a bell was attached by a rope. Any one that demanded justice could ring this bell when the king was at his meals. It happened one day that the bell sounded, but when the servants went to look no one was there. It continued ringing, so the Emperor commanded them to go again and find out the cause. They now remarked that an enormous serpent approached the rope and pulled it. Terrified, they brought the news to the Emperor, who immediately rose in order to administer justice to beast as well as man. After the reptile had respectfully inclined before the emperor, it led him to the banks of the river and showed him, sitting upon its nest and eggs, an enormous toad. Charlemagne having examined the case decided thus:--The toad was condemned to be burnt and justice shown to the serpent. The verdict was no sooner given than it was accomplished. A few days after the snake returned to court, bowed low to the King, crept upon the table, took the cover from a gold goblet standing there, dropped into it a precious stone, bowed again and crept away. On the spot where the serpent's nest had been, Charlemagne built a church called 'Wasserkelch.' The stone he gave to his much-loved spouse. This stone possessed the power of making the owner especially loved by the Emperor, so that when absent from his queen he mourned and longed for her. She, well aware that if it came into other hands the Emperor would soon forget her, put it under her tongue in the hour of death. The queen was buried with the stone, but Charlemagne could not separate himself from the body, so had it exhumed, and for eighteen years carried it about with him wherever he went. In the meantime, a courtier who had heard of the secret virtue of the stone, searched the corpse, and at last found the stone hidden under the tongue, and took it away and concealed it on his own person. Immediately the Emperor's love for his wife turned to the courtier, whom he now scarcely permitted out of his sight. At Cologne the courtier in a fit of anger threw the stone into a hot spring, and since then no one has succeeded in finding it. The love the Emperor had for the knight ceased, but he felt himself wonderfully attracted to the place where the stone lay hidden. On this spot he founded Aix-la-Chapelle, his subsequent favourite place of residence.

It is not wonderful that the tradition should arise at Aix, founded by the human hero of this romance, that the plan of its cathedral was supplied by the Devil; but it is characteristic there should be associated with this legend an example of how he who as a serpent was awarded justice by Charlemagne was cheated by the priests of Aix. The Devil gave the design on condition that he was to have the first who entered the completed cathedral, and a wolf was goaded into the structure in fulfilment of the contract!

In the ancient myth and romaunt of 'Merlin' may be found the mediæval witness to the diabolised religion of Britain. The emasculated saints of the South-east could not satisfy the vigorous race in the North-west, and when its gods were outlawed as devils they brought the chief of them back, as it were, had him duly baptized and set about his old work in the form of Merlin! Here, side by side with the ascetic Jesus, brought by Gatien and Augustin, was a Northern Christ, son of an Arch-incubus, born of a Virgin, baptized in the shrunken Jordan of a font, performing miracles, summoning dragons to his aid, overcoming Death and Hell in his way, brought before his Pilate but confounding him, throning and dethroning kings, and leading forth, on the Day of Pentecost, an army whose knights are inspired by Guenever's kisses in place of flaming tongues. How Merlin 'went about doing good,' after the Northman's ideal of such work; how he saved the life of his unwedded mother by proving that her child (himself) was begotten by a devil without her knowledge; how, as a child, he exposed at once the pretension of the magistrate to high birth and the laxity of his lady and his parson; how he humiliated the priestly astrologers of Vortigern, and prophesied the destruction of that usurper just as it came to pass; how he served Uther during his seven years' reign, and by enabling him to assume the shape of the Duke of Cornwall and so enjoy the embraces of the Duchess Igerna, secured the birth of Arthur and hope of the Sangréal; [198] how he defended Arthur's legitimacy of birth and assisted him in causing illegitimate births; and how at last he was bound by his own spells, wielded by Vivien, in a prison of air where he now remains;--this was the great mediæval gospel of a baptized christian Antichrist which superseded the imported kingdom not of this world.

Merlin was the Good Devil, but baptism was a fatal Vivien-spell to him. He still dwells in all the air which is breathed by Anglo-Saxon men,--an ever-expanding prison! Whether the Briton is transplanted in America, India, or Africa, he still carries with him the Sermon on the Mount as inspired by his baptized Prince of the Air, and his gospel of the day is, 'If thine enemy hunger, starve him; if he thirst, give him fire; if he hate you, heap melted lead on his head!' Such remains the soul of the greatest race, under the fatal spell of a creed that its barbarism needs only baptism to be made holiness and virtue.

In the reign of George II., when Lord Bute and a Princess of easy virtue were preying on England, and fanatical preachers were directing their donkeys to heaven beside the conflagration of John Bull's house, the eye of Hogarth at least (as is shown in our Figure 25, from his 'Raree Show') was able to see what the baptized Merlin had become in his realm of Air. The other worldly-Devil is serpent-legged Hypocrisy. The Nineteenth Century has replaced Merlin by Mephistopheles, the Devil who, despite a cloven foot, steps firmly on earth, and means the power that wit and culture can bring against the baptized giant Force. Him the gods fear not, even look upon with satisfaction. In the 'Prologue in Heaven,' of Goethe's 'Faust,' the Lord is even more gracious to Mephistopheles than the Jehovah of Job was to Satan. 'The like of thee have never moved my hate,' he says--

Man's active nature, flagging, seeks too soon the level; Unqualified repose he learns to crave; Whence, willingly, the comrade him I gave, Who works, excites, and must create, as Devil.

This is but a more modern expression of the rabbinical fable, already noted, that when the first man was formed there were beside him two Spirits,--one on the right that remained quiescent, another on the left who ever moved restlessly up and down. When the first sin was committed, he of the left was changed to a devil. But he still meant the progressive, inquiring nature of man. 'The Spirit I, that evermore denies,' says the Mephistopheles of Goethe. How shall man learn truth if he know not the Spirit that denies? How shall he advance if he know not the Spirit of discontent? This restless spirit gains through his ignorance a cloven hoof,--a divided movement, sometimes right, sometimes wrong. From his selfishness it acquires a double tongue. But both hoof and serpent-tongue are beneath the evolutional power of experience; they shall be humanised to the foot that marches firmly on earth, and the tongue that speaks truth; and, the baptismal spell broken, Merlin shall descend, bringing to man's aid all his sharp-eyed dragons transformed to beautiful Arts.

XXVIII. ANIMALISM

Celsus on Satan--Ferocities of inward nature--The Devil of Lust--Celibacy--Blue Beards--Shudendozi--A lady in distress--Bahirawa--The Black Prince--Madana Yaksenyo--Fair fascinators--Devil of Jealousy--Eve's jealousy--Noah's wife--How Satan entered the Ark--Shipwrights' Dirge--The Second Fall--The Drunken curse--Solomon's Fall--Cellar Devils--Gluttony--The Vatican haunted--Avarice--Animalised Devils--Man-shaped Animals.

'The christians,' said Celsus, 'dream of some antagonist to God--a devil, whom they call Satanas, who thwarted God when he wished to benefit mankind. The Son of God suffered death from Satanas, but they tell us we are to defy him, and to bear the worst he can do; Satanas will come again and work miracles, and pretend to be God, but we are not to believe him. The Greeks tell of a war among the gods; army against army, one led by Saturn, and one by Ophincus; of challenges and battles; the vanquished falling into the ocean, the victors reigning in heaven. In the Mysteries we have the rebellion of the Titans, and the fables of Typhon, and Horus, and Osiris. The story of the Devil plotting against man is stranger than either of these. The Son of God is injured by the Devil, and charges us to fight against him at our peril. Why not punish the Devil instead of threatening poor wretches whom he deceives?' [199]

The christians comprehended as little as their critic that story they brought, stranger than all the legends of besieged deities, of a Devil plotting against man. Yet a little historic perspective makes the situation simple: the gods had taken refuge in man, therefore the attack was transferred to man.

Priestly legends might describe the gods as victorious over the Titans, the wild forces of nature, but the people, to their sorrow, knew better; the priests, in dealing with the people, showed that they also knew the victory to be on the other side. A careful writer remarks:--'When these (Greek) divinities are in any case appealed to with unusual seriousness, their nature-character reappears.... When Poseidon hesitates to defer to the positive commands of Zeus (Il. xix. 259), Iris reminds him that there are the Erinnyes to be reckoned with (Il. xv. 204), and he gives in at once. [200] The Erinnyes represent the steady supremacy of the laws and forces of nature over all personifications of them. Under uniform experience man had come to recognise his own moral autocracy in his world. He looked for incarnations, and it was a hope born of an atheistic view of external nature. This was the case not only with the evolution of Greek religion, but in that of every religion.

When man's hope was thus turned to rest upon man, he found that all the Titans had followed him. Ophincus (Ophion) had passed through Ophiomorphus to be a Man of Sin; and this not in one, but by corresponding forms in every line of religious development. The ferocities of outward nature appeared with all their force in man, and renewed their power with the fine armoury of his intelligence. He must here contend with tempests of passion, stony selfishness, and the whole animal creation nestling in heart and brain, prowling still, though on two feet. The theory of evolution is hardly a century old as science, but it is an ancient doctrine of Religion. The fables of Pilpay and Æsop represent an early recognition of 'survivals.' Recurrence to original types was recognised as a mystical phenomenon in legends of the bandit turned wolf, and other transformations. One of the oldest doctrines of Eschatology is represented in the accompanying picture (Fig. 26), from Thebes, of two dog-headed apes ferrying over to Hades a gluttonous soul that has been weighed before Osiris, and assigned his appropriate form.

The devils of Lust are so innumerable that several volumes would be required to enumerate the legends and superstitions connected with them. But, fortunately for my reader and myself, these, more than any other class of phantoms, are very slight modifications of the same form. The innumerable phallic deities, the incubi and succubæ, are monotonous as the waves of the ocean, which might fairly typify the vast, restless, and stormy expanse of sexual nature to which they belong.

In 'The Golden Legend' there is a pleasant tale of a gentleman who, having fallen into poverty, went into solitude, and was there approached by a chevalier in black, mounted on a fine horse. This knight having inquired the reason of the other's sadness, promised him that, if he would return home, he would find at a certain place vast sums of gold; but this was on condition that he should bring his beautiful wife to that solitary spot in exactly a year's time. The gentleman, having lived in greater splendour than ever during the year, asked his wife to ride out with him on the appointed day. She was very pious, and having prayed to the Virgin, accompanied her husband to the spot. There the gentleman in black met them, but only to tremble. 'Perfidious man!' he cried, 'is it thus you repay my benefits? I asked you to bring your wife, and you have brought me the Mother of God, who will send me back to hell!' The Devil having vanished, the gentleman fell on his knees before the Virgin. He returned home to find his wife sleeping quietly.

Were we to follow this finely-mounted gentleman in black, we should be carried by no uncertain steps back to those sons of God who took unto themselves wives of the daughters of men, as told in Genesis; and if we followed the Virgin, we should, by less certain but yet probable steps, discover her prototype in Eve before her fall, virginal as she was meant to remain so far as man was concerned. In the chapters relating to the Eden myth and its personages, I have fully given my reasons for believing that the story of Eve, the natural childlessness of Sarah, and the immaculate conception by Mary, denote, as sea-rocks sometimes mark the former outline of a coast, a primitive theory of celibacy in connection with that of a divine or Holy Family. It need only be added here that this impossible ideal in its practical development was effectual in restraining the sexual passions of mankind. Although the reckless proclamation of the wild nature-gods (Elohim), 'Be fruitful and multiply,' has been accepted by christian bibliolators as the command of Jehovah, and philanthropists are even punished for suggesting means of withstanding the effects of nuptial licentiousness, yet they are farther from even the letter of the Bible than those protestant celibates, the American Shakers, who discard the sexual relation altogether. The theory of the Shakers that the functions of sex 'belong to a state of nature, and are inconsistent with a state of grace,' as one of their members in Ohio stated it to me, coincides closely with the rabbinical theory that Adam and Eve, by their sin, fell to the lowest of seven earthly spheres, and thus came within the influence of the incubi and succubæ, by their union with whom the world was filled with the demonic races, or Gentiles.

It is probable that the fencing-off of Eden, the founding of the Abrahamic household and family, and the command against adultery, were defined against that system of rape--or marriage by capture--which prevailed among the 'sons of Elohim,' who saw the 'daughters of men that they were fair,' and followed the law of their eyes. The older rabbins were careful to preserve the distinction between the Bene Elohim and the Ischim, and it ultimately amounted to that between Jews and Gentiles.

The suspicion of a devil lurking behind female beauty thus begins. The devils love beauty, and the beauties love admiration. These are perils in the constitution of the family. But there are other legends which report the frequency with which woman was an unwilling victim of the lustful Anakim or other powerful lords. Throughout the world are found legends of beautiful virgins sacrificed to powerful demons or deities. These are sometimes so realistic as to suggest the possibility that the fair captives of savage chieftains may indeed have been sometimes victims of their Ogre's voracity as well as his lust. At any rate, cruelty and lust are nearly related. The Blue Beard myth opens out horrible possibilities.

One of the best-known legends in Japan is that concerning the fiend Shudendozi, who derives his name from the two characteristics of possessing the face of a child and being a heavy drinker. The child-face is so emphasised in the stories that one may suspect either that his fair victims were enticed to his stronghold by his air of innocence, or else that there is some hint as to maternal longings in the fable.

At the beginning of the eleventh century, when Ichijo II. was Emperor, lived the hero Yorimitsa. In those days the people of Kiyoto were troubled by an evil spirit which abode near the Rasho Gate. One night, when merry with his companions, Ichijo said, 'Who dare go and defy the demon of the Rasho Gate, and set up a token that he has been there?' 'That dare I,' answered Tsuma, who, having donned his mail, rode out in the bleak night to the Rasho Gate. Having written his name on the gate, returning, his horse shivers with fear, and a huge hand coming out of the gate seized the knight's helmet. He struggled in vain. He then cuts off the demon's arm, and the demon flies howling. Tsuma takes the demon's arm home, and locks it in a box. One night the demon, having the shape of Tsuma's aunt, came and said, 'I pray you show me the arm of the fiend.' 'I will show it to no man, and yet to thee will I show it,' replied he. When the box is opened a black cloud enshrouds the aunt, and the demon disappears with the arm. Thereafter he is more troublesome than ever. The demon carried off the fairest virgins of Kiyoto, ravished and ate them, no beauty being left in the city. The Emperor commands Yorimitsa to destroy him. The hero, with four trusty knights and a great captain, went to the hidden places of the mountains. They fell in with an old man, who invited them into his dwelling, and gave them wine to drink; and when they were going he presented them with wine. This old man was a mountain-god. As they proceeded they met a beautiful lady washing blood from garments in a valley, weeping bitterly. In reply to their inquiries she said the demon had carried her off and kept her to wash his clothes, meaning when weary of her to eat her. 'I pray your lordships to help me!' The six heroes bid her lead them to the ogre's cave. One hundred devils mounted guard before it. The woman first went in and told him they had come. The ogre called them in, meaning to eat them. Then they saw Shudendozi, a monster with the face of a little child. They offered him wine, which flew to his head: he becomes merry and sleeps, and his head is cut off. The head leaps up and tries to bite Yorimitsa, but he had on two helmets. When all the devils are slain, he brings the head of Shudendozi to the Emperor. In a similar story of the same country the lustful ogre by no means possesses Shudendozi's winning visage, as may be seen by the popular representation of him (Fig. 27), with a knight's hand grasping his throat.

A Singhalese demon of like class is Bahirawa, who takes his name from the hill of the same name, towering over Kandy, in which he is supposed to reside. The legend runs that the astrologers told a king whose queen was afflicted by successive miscarriages, that she would never be delivered of a healthy child unless a virgin was sacrificed annually on the top of this hill. This being done, several children were borne to him. When his queen was advanced in years the king discontinued this observance, and consequently many diseases fell upon the royal family and the city, after which the annual sacrifice was resumed, and continued until 1815, when the English occupied Kandy. The method of the sacrifice was to bind a young girl to a stake on the top of the hill with jungle-creepers. Beside her, on an altar, were placed boiled rice and flowers; incantations were uttered, and the girl left, to be generally found dead of fright in the morning. An old woman, who in early years had undergone this ordeal, survived, and her safety no doubt co-operated with English authority to diminish the popular fear of Bahirawa, but still few natives would be found courageous enough to ascend the hill at night.

One of the lustful demons of Ceylon is Calu Cumara, that is, the Black Prince. He is supposed to have seven different apparitions,--prince of fire, of flowers, of groves, of graves, of eye-ointments, of the smooth body, and of sexuality. The Saga says he was a Buddhist priest, who by exceeding asceticism and accumulated merits had gained the power to fly, but passion for a beautiful woman caused him to fall. By disappointment in the love for which he had parted with so much his heart was broken, and he became a demon. In this condition he is for ever tortured by the passion of lustful desire, the only satisfaction of which he can obtain being to afflict young and fair women with illness. He is a very dainty demon, and can be soothed if great care is taken in the offerings made to him, which consist of rice of finest quality, plantains, sugar-cane, oranges, cocoa-nuts, and cakes. He is of dark-blue complexion and his raiment black.

In Singhalese demonolatry there are seven female demons of lust, popularly called the Madana Yaksenyo. These sisters are--Cama (lust); Cini (fire); Mohanee (ignorance); Rutti (pleasure); Cala (maturity); Mal (flowers); Puspa (perfumes). They are the abettors of seduction, and are invoked in the preparation of philtres. [201]

'It were well,' said Jason to Medea, 'that the female race should not exist; then would there not have been any evil among men.' [202] The same sentiment is in Milton--

Oh why did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven With spirits masculine, create at last This novelty on earth, this fair defect Of nature, and not fill the world at once With men, as angels, without feminine? [203]

Many traditions preceded this ungallant creed, some of which have been referred to in our chapters on Lilith and Eve. Corresponding to these are the stories related by Herodotus of the overthrow of the kingdom of the Heraclidæ and freedom of the Greeks, through the revenge of the Queen, 'the most beautiful of women,' upon her husband Candaules for having contrived that Gyges should see her naked. Candaules having been slain by Gyges at the instigation of the Queen, and married her, the Fates decreed that their crime should be punished on their fifth descendant. The overthrow was by Cyrus, and it was associated with another woman, Mandane, daughter of the tyrant Astyages, mother of Cyrus, who is thus, as the Madonna, to bruise the head of the serpent who had crept into the Greek Paradise. [204] The Greeks of Pontus also ascribed the origin of the Scythian race, the scourge of all nations, to a serpent-woman, who, having stolen away the mares which Herakles had captured from Gergon, refused to restore them except on condition of having children by him. From the union of Herakles with this 'half virgin, half viper,' sprang three sons, of whom the youngest was Scythes.

Not only are feminine seductiveness and liability to seduction represented in the legends of female demons and devils, but quite as much the jealousy of that sex. If the former were weaknesses which might overthrow kingdoms, the latter was a species of animalism which could devastate the home and society. Although jealousy is sometimes regarded as venial, if not indeed a sign of true love, it is an outcome of the animal nature. The Japanese have shown a true observation of nature in portraying their female Oni (devil) of jealousy (Fig. 28) with sharp erect horns and bristling hair. The raising 'of the ornamental plumes by many birds during their courtship,' mentioned by Mr. Darwin, is the more pleasing aspect of that emotion which, blending with fear and rage, puffs out the lizard's throat, ruffles the cock's neck, and raises the hair of the insane. [205]

An ancient legend mingles jealousy with the myth of Eden at every step. Rabbi Jarchi says that the serpent was jealous of Adam's connubial felicity, and a passage in Josephus shows that this was an ancient opinion. The jealousy of Adam's second wife felt by his first (Lilith) was by many said to be the cause of her conspiracy with the serpent. The most beautiful mediæval picture of her that I have seen was in an illuminated Bible in Strasburg, in which, with all her wealth of golden hair and her beauty, Lilith holds her mouth, with a small rosy apple in it, towards Adam. Eve seems to snatch it. Then there is an old story that when Eve had eaten the apple she saw the angel of death, and urged Adam to eat the fruit also, in order that he might not become a widower.

It is remarkable that there should have sprung up a legend that Satan made his second attack upon the race formed by Jehovah, and his plan for perpetuating it on earth by means of a flirtation with Noah's wife, and also by awakening her jealousy. The older legend concerning Noah's wife is that mentioned by Tabari, which merely states that she ridiculed the predictions of a deluge by her husband. So much might have been suggested by the silence of the Bible concerning her. The Moslem tradition that the Devil managed to get into the ark is also ancient. He caught hold of the ass's tail just as it was about to enter. The ass came on slowly, and Noah, becoming impatient, exclaimed, 'You cursed one, come in quick!' When Noah, seeing the Devil in the ark, asked by what right he was there, the other said, 'By your order; you said, "Accursed one, come in;" I am the accursed one!' This story, which seems contrived to show that one may not be such an ass as he looks, was superseded by the legend which represents Satan as having been brought into the ark concealed under Noria's (or Noraita's) dress.

The most remarkable legend of this kind is that found in the Eastern Church, and which is shown in various mediæval designs in Russia. Satan is shown, in an early sixteenth century picture belonging to Count Uvarof (Fig. 29), offering Noah's wife a bunch of khmel (hops) with which to brew kvas and make Noah drunk; for the story was that Noah did not tell his wife that a deluge was coming, knowing that she could not keep a secret. In the old version of the legend given by Buslaef, 'after apocryphal tradition used by heretics,' Satan always addresses Noah's wife as Eve, which indicates a theory. It was meant to be considered as a second edition of the attack on the divine plan begun in Eden, and revived in the temptation of Sara. Satan not only taught this new Eve how to make kvas but also vodka (brandy); and when he had awakened her jealousy about Noah's frequent absence, he bade her substitute the brandy for the beer when her husband, as usual, asked for the latter. When Noah was thus in his cups she asked him where he went, and why he kept late hours. He revealed his secret to his Eve, who disclosed it to Satan. The tempter appears to have seduced her from Noah, and persuaded her to be dilatory when entering the ark. When all the animals had gone in, and all the rest of her family, Eve said, 'I have forgotten my pots and pans,' and went to fetch them; next she said, 'I have forgotten my spoons and forks,' and returned for them. All of this had been arranged by Satan in order to make Noah curse; and he had just slipped under Eve's skirt when he had the satisfaction of hearing the intended Adam of a baptized world cry to his wife, 'Accursed one, come in!' Since Jehovah himself could not prevent the carrying out of a patriarch's curse, Satan was thus enabled to enter the ark, save himself from being drowned, and bring mischief into the human world once more.

This is substantially the same legend as that of the mediæval Morality called 'Noah's Ark, or the Shipwright's Ancient Play or Dirge.' The Devil says to Noah's wife:--

Yes, hold thee still le dame, And I shall tell thee how; I swear thee by my crooked snout, All that thy husband goes about Is little to thy profit. Yet shall I tell thee how Thou shalt meet all his will; Do as I shall bid thee now, Thou shalt meet every deal. Have here a drink full good That is made of a mightful main, Be he hath drunken a drink of this, No longer shall he learn: Believe, believe, my own dear dame, I may no longer bide; To ship when thou shalt sayre, I shall be by thy side.

There are some intimations in the Slavonic version which look as if it might have belonged to some Paulician or other half-gnostic theory that the temptation of Noraita (Eve II.), and her alienation from her husband, were meant to prevent the repopulation of the Earth. [206]

The next attempt of the Devil, as agent of the Elohistic creation, to ruin the race of man, introduces us to another form of animalism which has had a large expression in Devil-lore. It is related in rabbinical mythology that when, as is recorded in Gen. ix. 20, Noah was planting a vineyard, the Devil (Asmodeus) came and proposed to join him in the work. This having been agreed to, this evil partner brought in succession a sheep, a lion, and a hog, and sacrificed them on the spot. The result was that the wine when drunk first gave the drinker the quality of a sheep, then that of a lion, and finally that of a hog. [207] It was by this means that Noah was reduced to swinish inebriation. There followed the curses on those around him, which, however drunken, were those of a father, and reproduced on the cleansed world all the dooms which had been pronounced in Eden.

If the date of this legend could be made early enough, it would appear to be a sort of revenge for this temptation of Noah to drunkenness that Talmudic fable shows Asmodeus brought under bondage to Solomon, and forced to work on the Temple, by means of wine. Asmodeus had dug for himself a well, and planted beside it a tree, so making for himself a pleasant spot for repose during his goings to and fro on earth. But Solomon's messenger Benaja managed to cover this with a tank which he filled with wine. Asmodeus, on his return, repeated to himself the proverb, 'Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise' (Prov. xx. 1); yet, being very thirsty, he drank, fell asleep, and when he awoke found himself loaded with chains.

However, after working for a time for Solomon, he discovered that king's weaknesses and played upon them. Solomon was so puffed up with a sense of his power that he accepted a challenge from his slave (Asmodeus) to show his superiority without the assistance of his magic ring, and without keeping his competitor in bonds. No sooner was Asmodeus free, and in possession of the ring, than he transported Solomon four hundred miles away, where he remained for a long time among the seductive beauties of the Courts of Naamah, Rahab, and other she-devils. Meanwhile the Devil, assuming the form of Solomon, sat on his throne, and became the darling of his Queen and concubines.

The Devil of Wine and strong drink generally has a wide representation in folklore. We find him in the bibulous Serpent of Japan, who first loses his eight heads metaphorically, and then literally from the first of Swords-men. The performances of Mephistopheles in Auerbach's Cellar are commemorated in its old frescoes, and its motto: 'Live, drink, carouse, remembering Faust and his punishment: it came slowly, but was in ample measure.' Thuringian legends relate that the Devil tries to stop the building of churches by casting down the stones, but this may be stopped by the builders promising to erect a winehouse in the same neighbourhood. An old English legend relates that a great man's cellar was haunted by devils who drank up his wine. On one occasion a barrel was marked with holy water, and the devil was found stuck fast on it.

Gluttony, both in eating and drinking, has had its many personifications. The characteristics of the Hunger demons are travestied in such devils as these, only the diabolical, as distinguished from the demonic element, appears in features of luxuriousness. The contrast between the starveling saints of the early Church and the well-fed friars of later times was a frequent subject of caricature, as in the accompanying example (Fig. 30) from the British Museum, fourteenth century (MS. Arundel), where a lean devil is satisfying himself through a fattened friar. One of the most significant features of the old legend of Faust is the persistence of the animal character in which Mephistopheles appears. He is an ugly dog--a fit emblem of the scholar's relapse into the canine temper which flies at the world as at a bone he means to gnaw. Faust does not like this genuine form, and bids the Devil change it. Mephistopheles then takes the form of a Franciscan friar; but 'the kernel of the brute' is in him still, and he at once loads Faust's table with luxuries and wines from the cellars of the Archbishop of Salzburg and other rich priests. The prelates are fond of their bone too. When Mephistopheles and Faust find their way into the Vatican, it is to witness carousals of the Pope and his Cardinals. They snatch from them their luxuries and wine-goblets as they are about to enjoy them. Against these invisible invaders the holy men bring their crucifixes and other powers of exorcism; and it is all snarling and growling--canine priest against puppy astrologer. Nor was it very different in the history of the long contention between the two for the big bone of Christendom.

The lust of Gold had its devils, and they were not different from other types of animalism. This was especially the case with such as represented money, extorted from the people to supply wealth to dissolute princes and prelates. The giants of Antwerp represent the power of the pagan monarchs who exacted tribute; but these were replaced by such guardians of tribute-money as the Satyr of our picture (Fig. 31), which Edward the Confessor saw seated on a barrel of Danegeld,

Vit un déable saer desus Le tresor, noir et hidus.

There are many good fables in European folklore with regard to the miser's gold, and 'devil's money' generally, which exhibit a fine instinct. A man carries home a package of such gold, and on opening it there drop out, instead of money, paws and nails of cats, frogs, and bears--the latter being an almost personal allusion to the Exchange. A French miser's money-safe being opened, two frogs only were found. The Devil could not get any other soul than the gold, and the cold-blooded reptiles were left as a sign of the life that had been lived.

In the legends of the swarms of devils which beset St. Anthony we find them represented as genuine animals. Our Anglo-Saxon fathers, however, were quite unable to appreciate the severity of the conflict which man had to wage with the animal world in Southern countries and in earlier times. Nor had their reverence for nature and its forms been crushed out by the pessimist theory of the earth maintained by Christianity. Gradually the representation of the animal tempters was modified, and instead of real animal forms there were reported the bearded bestialities which surrounded St. Guthlac and St. Godric. The accompanying picture (Fig. 32) is a group from Breughel (1565), representing the devils called around St. James by a magician. These grotesque forms will repay study. If we should make a sketch of the same kind, only surrounding the saint with the real animal shapes most nearly resembling these nondescripts, it would cease to be a diabolical scene.

For beastliness is not a character of beasts; it is the arrest of man. It is not the picturesque donkey in the meadow that is ridiculous, but the donkey on two feet; not the bear of zoological gardens that is offensive morally, but the rough, who cannot always be caged; it is the two-legged calf, the snake pretending to be a man, the ape in evening dress, who ever made the problem of evil at all formidable. It was insoluble until men had discovered as Science that law of Evolution which the ancient world knew as Ethics.

A Hindu fable relates that the animals, in their migration, came to an abyss they could not cross, and that the gods made man as a bridge across it. Science and Reason confirm these ancient instincts of our race. Man is that bridge stretching between the animal and the ideal habitat by which, if the development be normal, all the passions pass upward into educated powers. Any pause or impediment on that bridge brings all the animals together to rend and tear the man who cannot convey them across the abyss. A very slight arrest may reveal to a man that he is a vehicle of intensified animalism. The lust of the goat, the pride of the peacock, the wrath of the lion, beautiful in their appropriate forms, become, in the guise of a man uncontrolled by reason, the vices which used to be called possession, and really are insanities.