BOOK 1 malignant devils; but unless their horrible fellowship was speedily to come to an end, they must be under the rule of some king, and this king they found in the Semitic Satan. Of the theology which sprung from this root it is enough to say that it endowed the king of the fallen angels with the powers of omnipresence and omniscience, and made him so far a conqueror in his great struggle with the author of his being as to succeed in wresting for ever out of the hands of God all but an insignificant fraction of the whole race of mankind. The victory of the Almighty God could not extend either to the destruction of Satan and his subordinate demons, or to the rescue of the souls whom he had enticed to their ruin; and if power be measured by the multitude of subjects, his defeat by Michael could scarcely be regarded as much impairing his magnificent success. Of the effect of this belief on the moral and social developement of Christendom, it is unnecessary to speak: but it must not be forgotten that this particular developement of the Jewish demonology was the natural outgrowth of passionate convictions animating a scanty band in an almost hopeless struggle against a society thoroughly corrupt and impure. It was almost impossible for any whose eyes were opened to its horrors to look upon it as anything but a loathsome mass which could never be cleansed from its defilement. What could they see but a vast gulf separating the few who were the soldiers of Christ from the myriads who thronged together under the standard of his adversary? Hence grew up by a process which cannot much excite our wonder that severe theology, which, known especially as that of Augustine, represented the Christian Church as an ark floating on a raging sea, open only to those who received the sacrament of baptism, and shut both here and hereafter to infants dying before it could be administered. It was inevitable that under such conditions the image of Satan should more and more fill the The Christian missionaries were further conscious that their own thaumaturgy might be called into question, if that of the old creed were treated as mere imposture or illusion. 'Die neue Lehre konnte leichter keimen und wurzeln wenn sie die alte als gehässig und sündlich, nicht als absolut nichtig schilderte die Wunder des Christen erscheinen dadurch glaubhafter, dass auch dem althergebrachten Heidenthum etwas übernatürliches gelassen wurde.'-Grimm, D. M. 757. LOKI AND HEL. X. 361 theological horizon for the few whose enthusiasm and con- CHAP. victions were sincere. But these conditions were changed with the conversion of tribes, in whom the thought of one malignant spirit marring and undoing the work of God had never been awakened; and although henceforth the teaching of the priesthood might continue to be as severe as that of Augustine or Fulgentius, it was met by the passive resistance of men whose superstitions were less harsh and oppressive. The Aryan Nations,' says Professor Max Müller, had no devil. Pluto, though of a sombre character, was a very respectable personage: and Loki, though a mischievous person, was not a fiend. The German goddess, Hel, toolike Proserpine-had seen better days.' It was thus no easy task to imbue them with an adequate horror of a being of whose absolute malignity they could form no clear conception. tonic But these tribes had their full share of that large inherit- The Teuance of phrases which had described originally the covering Devil. or biting snake, Vritra or Ahi, who shuts up the rain-clouds in his prison-house. Probably not one of the phrases which furnished the groundwork of Iranian dualism had been lost or forgotten by any other of the Aryan tribes; but like Vritra or Ahi, like the Sphinx or the Pythôn, like Belleros or Chimaira, or Echidna, the beings to whom the German tribes applied these phrases had already been overcome. The phrases also had varied in character from grave solemnity to comedy or burlesque, from the type of the Herakles whom we see in the apologue of Prodikos to the Herakles who jests with Thanatos (Death) after he has stolen away Alkêstis. To the people at large the latter mode of thinking and speaking on the subject was more congenial; and to it the ideas of the old gods were more 1 Chips, &c., vol. ii. p. 235. Dr. Dasent's words are not less explicit. "The notion of an Arch-enemy of god and man, a fallen angel, to whom power was permitted at certain times for an all-wise purpose by the Great Ruler of the universe, was as foreign to the heathendom of our ancestors as his name was outlandish and strange to their tongue. This notion Christianity BOOK II. Wayland the Smith. readily adapted. Hel had been, like Persephonê, the queen of the unseen-land,-in the ideas of the northern tribes, a land of bitter cold and icy walls. She now became not the queen of Niflheim, but Niflheim itself, while her abode, though gloomy enough, was not wholly destitute of material comforts. It became the Hell where the old man hews wood for the Christmas fire, and where the Devil in his eagerness to buy the flitch of bacon yields up the marvellous quern which is 'good to grind almost anything."1 It was not so pleasant, indeed, as heaven, or the old Valhalla, but it was better to be there than shut out in the outer cold beyond its padlocked gates. But more particularly the devil was a being who under pressure of hunger might be drawn into acting against his own interest; in other words, he might be outwitted, and this character of a poor or stupid devil is almost the only one exhibited in Teutonic legends. In fact, as Professor Max Müller remarks, the Germans, when they had been indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Satan or Diabolus, treated him in the most good-humoured manner;' nor is it easy to resist Dr. Dasent's conclusion that no greater proof can be given of the small hold which the Christian Devil has taken of the Norse mind, than the heathen aspect under which he constantly appears, and the ludicrous way in which he is always outwitted."4 But this freedom was never taken with Satan. While Why the Sea is Salt.' Dasent, Norse Tales, i This inexhaustible quern is only another form of the treasures of Helen or Brynhild. But though the snow may veil all the wealth of fruits and vegetables, this wealth is of no use to the chill beings who have laid their grasp upon it. These beings must be therefore so hard pressed for hunger that, like Esau, they may be ready to part with anything or everything for a mess of pottage or a flitch of bacon. 2 The Master Smith, in the heathenish story so entitled, entraps the devil into a purse, as the Fisherman entraps the Jin in the Arabian Tale, and the devil is so scared that when the Smith presents himself at the gate of hell, he gives orders to have the nine padlocks carefully locked. Dr. Dasent remarks that the Smith makes trial of hell in the first instance, for having behaved ill to the ruler' of heaven, and 'actually quarrelled with the master' of hell, he was naturally anxious' to know whether he would be received by either. Ibid. cii. It has been said of Southey that he could never think of the devil without laughing. This is but saying that he had the genuine humour of our Teutonic ancestors. His version of the legend of Eleëmon may be compared with any of the popular tales in which Satan is overmatched by men whom he despises. Grimm, 969. WAYLAND. that name remained unchanged in the language of theology, the word devil passed into an immense number of forms, the Gothic tieval, diuval, diufal, the Icelandic djöfull, Swedish djevful, all of them, together with the Italian, French, and Spanish forms carrying back the word diáßoλos to the same root which furnised the Latin Divus, Djovis, and the Sanskrit deva.' To this devil were applied familiarly those epithets which are bestowed in the Vedic hymns on the antagonist of Indra. Like Vritra, he is often spoken of simply as the fiend or the enemy (o Tovnρós); more often he is described as the old devil or serpent, the ealda deofol of Cadmon, the old Nick2 and old Davy of common English speech at the present day. Like Pani, he is Vâlant, the cheat or seducer,3 who appears in a female form as Valandinne.1 But to the Germans the fall of the devil from heaven suggested the idea that, like Hephaistos, he must have been lamed by the descent, and hence we have the lame devil, or devil upon two sticks, who represents the limping Hephaistos not only in his gait but in his office. Like him, the Valant is a smith, and the name, which has assumed elsewhere the forms Faland, Phaland, Foland, Valland, passes into the English form Wayland, and gives us the Wayland Smith whom Tresilian confronts in Scott's novel of Kenilworth. Like the robbers who steal Indra's cattle, he is also the dark, murky, or black being, the Graumann or Greyman of German folk-lore. Like the Fauns and other mythical beings of Greek and Latin mythology, he has a body which is either wholly or in part that of a beast. Some times he leaves behind him the print of a horse's hoof, and the English demon Grant, another 5 1 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 939. 2 This name, one of a vast number of forms through which the root of the Greek vhxw, to swim, has passed, denotes simply a water-spirit, the nicor of the Beowulf, the nix or nixy of German fairy tales. The devil is here regarded as dwelling in the water, and thus the name explains the sailor's phrase 'Davy's locker.' Grimm, D. M., 456. 3 Nib. 1334. Ib. 1686; Grimm, D. M., 943. Scott's romance, Wayland is a mere im- Grimm, D. M., 945. This black 363 CHAP. X. BOOK 2 form probably of Grendel,' showed itself in the form of a foal. The devil of the witches was a black buck or goat; that of the fathers of the Christian Church was a devouring wolf.3 Like Ahi, again, and Pythôn and Echidna, he is not only the old serpent or dragon but the hell-worm, and the walfish or leviathan (a name in which we see again the Vala or deceiver).* Like Baalzebub, he assumes the form of a fly, as Psychê may denote either a good or an evil spirit. As the hammer which crushes the world, and inflicts the penalty of sin on the sinner, he plays the part of the Aloadai and Thor Miölnir. As the guardian of the underworld, he is the hellward and the hell-shepherd or host. His gloomy abode lies towards the north, whether as the gloomy Ovelgunne, which has furnished a name for many places in Germany, the Hekelfelde, Heklufiall, or hag's fell, or the nobiskroech, nobiskrug, which answers to the gate beyond which the lost souls leave hope behind them.5 The same process, which converted the kindly Holda into the malignant Unholda, attributed to the devil occupations borrowed from those of the Teutonic Odin and the Greek Orion. But it is no longer the mighty hunter following his prey on the asphodel meadow, or the god traversing his domain in stately procession. The brave and good who had followed the midnight journeys of Wuotan give place to the wretched throng of evil-doers who are hurried along in the devil's train, or in that of some human being, who for his pre-eminent wickedness is made to take the devil's place. In Denmark the hunter is King Waldemar, in Germany Dietrich of Bern, in France King Hugh or Charles V.; in England it is Herne the Hunter of Windsor, and the one-handed Boughton or Lady Skipwith 1 Grimm, D. M. 946. 2 Grimm, ib. 946-7. The buck was specially sacred to Donar or Thor; but it is possible that this transformation, like that of Lykâôn and Arkas, was suggested by an equivocal name; and the buck may be only a kindred form to the Slavish Bog, which reappears among us in the form of Puck, Bogy, and Bug. 3 Grimm, ib. 948. With these Grimm couples the hell hound and black raven, the former answering to the Hellenic Kerberos. He also compares the Old German warg, a wolf, with the Polish wrog, the Bohemian wrah, the Slovinian vrag, an evil-doer. Grimm, ib. 950. Ib. 954. This word nobis is formed from the Greek ἄβυσσος, through the Italian form nabisso for in abysso-a change similar to that which converted ἐς κύνας βάλλειν into σκύβαλα. |