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—

Robert Burns naively appeals to Old Nick’s better nature—

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.1

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’2 (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:—

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;4 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—

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.

‘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?’1

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.2 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.3

‘It were well,’ said Jason to Medea, ‘that the female race should not exist; then would there not have been any evil among men.’4 The same sentiment is in Milton—

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.6 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.7

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:—

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.8

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.9 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,

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.