von Thümen tried to seek, but was caught up with his horse by a whirlwind and deposited at home again. The Devil is believed to be seated at the centre of every whirlwind. At Biesenthal it is said a noble lady became the Wind's bride. She was in her time a famous rider and huntress, who rode recklessly over farmers' fields and gardens; now she is herself hunted by snakes and dragons, and may be heard howling in every storm.

I suspect that the bristling hair so frequently portrayed in the Japanese Oni, Devils, refers to their frequent residence at the centre of a gale of wind. Their demon of the storm is generally pictured throned upon a flower of flames, his upraised and extended fingers emitting the most terrific lightnings, which fall upon his victims and envelop them in flames. Sometimes, however, the Japanese artists poke fun at their thunder-god, and show him sprawling on the ground from the recoil of his own lightnings. The following extract from The Christian Herald (London, April 12, 1877) will show how far the dread of this Japanese Oni extends: A pious father writes, 'A few days ago there was a severe thunderstorm, which seemed to gather very heavily in the direction where my son lived; and I had a feeling that I must go and pray that he might be protected, and not be killed by the lightning. The impression seemed to say, 'There is no time to be lost.' I obeyed, and went and knelt down and prayed that the Lord would spare his life. I believe he heard my prayer. My son called on me afterwards, and, speaking of the shower, said, 'The lightning came downwards and struck the very hoe in my hands, and numbed me.' I said, 'Perhaps you would have been killed if some one had not been praying for you.' Since then he has been converted, and, I trust, will be saved in God's everlasting kingdom,'

Such paragraphs may now strike even many christians

WATERSPOUTS.

107 as 'survivals.' But it is not so very long since some eminent clergymen looked upon Benjamin Franklin as the heaven-defying Ajax of Christendom, because he undertook to show people how they might divert the lightnings from their habitations. In those days Franklin personally visited a church at Streatham, whose steeple had been struck by lightning, and, after observing the region, gave an opinion that if the steeple were again erected without a lightning-rod, it would again be struck. The audacious man who 'snatched sceptres from tyrants and lightnings from heaven,' as the proverb ran, was not listened to: the steeple was rebuilt, and again demolished by lightning.

The supreme god of the Quichuas (American), Viracvcha ('sea foam'), rises out of Lake Titicaca, and journeys with lightnings for all opposers, to disappear in the Western Ocean. The Quichua is mentally brother of the Arab camel-driver. The sea,' it is said in the 'Arabian Nights,' -'the sea became troubled before them, and there arose from it a black pillar, ascending towards the sky, and approaching the meadow,' and 'behold it was a Jinn1 of gigantic stature.' The Jinn is sometimes helpful as it is formidable; it repays the fisherman who unseals it from the casket fished up from the sea, as fruitfulness comes out of the cloud no larger than a man's hand evoked by Elijah. The perilous Jinn described in the above extract is the waterspout. Waterspouts are attributed in China to the battles of dragons in the air, and the same country recognises a demon of high tides. The newest goddess in China is a canonised protectress against the shipwrecking

1 Although the Koran and other authorities, as already stated, have asso. ciated the Jinn with etherial fire, Arabic folklore is nearer the meaning of the word in assigning the name to all demons. The learned Arabic lexicographer of Beirut, P. Bustani, says 'The Jinn is the opposite of mankind, or it is whatever is veiled from the sense, whether angel or devil.'

108

DEMONS OF INUNDATION.

storm-demons of the coast, an exaltation recently proclaimed by the Government of the empire in obedience, as the edict stated, to the belief prevailing among sailors. In this the Chinese are a long way behind the mariners and fishermen of the French coast, who have for centuries, by a pious philology, connected Maria' with 'La Marée' and 'La Mer;' and whenever they have been saved from storms, bring their votive offerings to sea-side shrines of the Star of the Sea.

The old Jewish theology, in its eagerness to claim for Jehovah the absolutism which would make him 'Lord of lords,' instituted his responsibility for many doubtful performances, the burthen of which is now escaped by the device of saying that he 'permitted' them. In this way the Elohim who brought on the Deluge have been identified with Jehovah. None the less must we see in the biblical account of the Flood the action of tempestuous water-demons. What power a christian would recognise in such an event were it related in the sacred books of another religion may be seen in the vision of the Apocalypse 'The Serpent cast out of his mouth a flood of water after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away with the flood; and the earth helped the woman and opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood.' This Demon of Inundation meets the explorer of Egyptian and Accadian inscriptions at every turn. The terrible Seven, whom even the God of Fire cannot control, 'break down the banks of the Abyss of Waters.'1 The God of the Tigris, Tourtak (Tartak of the Bible), is 'the great destroyer.' 2 Leviathan 'maketh the deep to boil like a pot' 'when he raises up himself the mighty are afraid; by reason of breakings they purify themselves.' 3 In the Astronomical Tablets, which Professor Sayce 1 'Cuneiform Ins.,' iv. 15. 2 Ib. ii. 27. 3 Job xli.

3

dates about B.C. 1600, we have the continual association of eclipse and flood: 'On the fifteenth day an eclipse takes place. The king dies; and 'rains in the heaven, floods in the channels are.' 'In the month of Elul (August), the fourteenth day, an eclipse takes place. . . . Northward . . . its shadow is seen; and to the King of Mullias a crown is given. To the king the crown is an omen; and over the king the eclipse passes. Rains in heaven, floods in the channels flow. A famine is in the country. Men their sons for silver sell.' 'After a year the Air-god inundates.' 1

In the Chaldæo-Babylonian cosmogony the three zones of the universe were ruled over by a Triad as follows: the Heaven by Anu; the surface of the earth, including the atmosphere, by Bel; the under-world by Nouah." This same Nouah is the Assyrian Hea or Saviour; and it is Noah of the Bible. The name means a rest or residence, the place where man may dwell. When Tiamat the Dragon, or the Leviathan, opens the fountains of the great deep,' and Anu 'the windows of Heaven,' it is Hea or Noah who saves the life of man. M. François Lenormant has shown this to be the probable sense of one of the most ancient Accadian fragments in the British Museum. In it allusion is made to 'the serpent of seven heads... that beats the sea.' Hea, however, appears to be more clearly indicated in a fragment which Professor Sayce appends to this:

Below in the abyss the forceful multitudes may they sacrifice.

The overwhelming fear of Anu in the midst of Heaven encircles

his path.

The spirits of earth, the mighty gods, withstand him not.

The king like a lightning-flash opened.

'Records of the Past,' i.

2 Lenormant, 'La Magie.'

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3 Records of the Past,' iii. 129.

ADAR, the striker of the fortresses of the rebel band, opened.

Like the streams in the circle of heaven I besprinkled the seed

of men.

His marching in the fealty of Bel to the temple I directed,

(He is) the hero of the gods, the protector of mankind, far (and)

near...

O my lord, life of Nebo (breathe thy inspiration), incline thine ear.

O Adar, hero, crown of light, (breathe) thy inspiration, (incline)

thine ear.

The overwhelming fear of thee may the sea know...

Thy setting (is) the herald of his rest from marching,

In thy marching Merodach (is) at rest1 . . .

...

Thy father on his throne thou dost not smite.

Bel on his throne thou dost not smite.

The spirits of earth on their throne may he consume.

May thy father into the hands of thy valour cause (them) to go forth. May Bel into the hands of thy valour cause (them) to go forth.

(The king, the proclaimed) of Anu, the firstborn of the gods. He that stands before Bel, the heart of the life of the House of the Beloved."

The hero of the mountain (for those that) die in multitudes.

the one god, he will not urge.3

In this primitive fragment we find the hero of the mountain (Noah), invoking both Bel and Nebo, aerial and infernal Intelligences, and Adar the Chaldæan Hercules, for their 'inspiration '-that breath which, in the biblical story, goes forth in the form of the Dove (the herald of his rest' in the Accadian fragment), and in the wind' by which the waters were assuaged (in the fragment the spirits of the earth' which are given into the hand of the violent hero of the mountain,' whom alone the gods 'will not urge').

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The Hydra may be taken as a type of the destructive water-demon in a double sense, for its heads remain in many mythical forms. The Syrian Dagon and Atergatis, fish-deities, have bequeathed but their element to our

1 The god of the Euphrates.

The Assyrian has of the high places.' 3 Records of the Past,' iii. 129, 130.