"The devil is bleaching his grandmother." He must therefore have a grandmother to bleach. Then, too, Loki has children, and so has Satan. And here the orthodox Devil is often divided into two persons, Satan or Lucifer, who (as we saw in Cadmon's poem) lies bound in Hell, like Loki, and the Devil, Satan's son, who comes upon earth to tempt and torment men. In the legend of Juliana, as referred to by Kemble, the Devil speaks of Satan as his father and king. And in the dialogue of "Salomon and Saturn," Saturn asks, "But who shoots the Devil with boiling shafts?" and Salomon answers: "The Paternoster shoots the Devil with boiling shafts, and the lightning burns and marks him, and the rain from above harms him, and the thunder threshes him with its fiery axe, and drives him to the iron chain wherein his father dwells, Satan and Sathiel." Besides this, the love of mischief for its own sake, which is characteristic of the Devil, especially in northern legend, is certainly derived from the character of Loki. But there were also subordinate supernatural beings, gods or monsters, in the Teutonic creed, who were identified with the Devil on the conversion of our forefathers to Christianity. Such was Grendel, part man, part monster, and part fiend, who haunted meres and lagoons, who, like Loki, had a mother, and with that mother is slain by Beowulf in what is, perhaps, a later form of the legend. Such, too, were the Nicors, gods or monsters of the sea and rivers, who bring on tempests, and drag men to the bottom to devour them, who still live on in popular belief as Nixies in England, and Nicklemen in north Germany and Holland, but who have also supplied the Devil with the familiar name of "Old Nick." It is only from this identification that we can explain such a conception of the business of demons as the following, from "Salomon and Saturn: Sometimes they seize the sailor, Sometimes they turn them into the body of a snake, Sharp and piercing; they sting the neat A foaming bath in a flood falls to the earth. Against a troop of foes take care of his life; marks, Baleful book letters, they write away the blade, The influence of the old religion upon the popular beliefs of the Middle Ages was great and lasting, as is shown by the thinly disguised heathenism of the spells still preserved to us, as well as by the relentless warfare which the Church continued to wage against it, which, however, did not prevent heathen ceremonies, such as those connected with Midsummer eve, and the driving of cattle through a fire in time of plague, from lasting in some cases almost down to our own day. But its influence is nowhere more plainly to be traced than in the character of the mediæval Devil. Such, then, seem to be the sources from which the character is derived which was popularly ascribed to the Devil in the Middle Ages. They are three in number: the narrative of the Bible, certain isolated passages of Scripture forced or misapplied, and the heathen religions. And its elements were combined under the influence of that strong tendency to materialism and anthropomorphism which marks the times. The character thus formed is, on the whole, one and the same throughout Europe, for religious literature and legend was common property, and the monks and friars, or at least those of the same order, formed a cosmopolitan brotherhood. And what is of more importance, the tone of thought was the same throughout western Christendom. It only remains, therefore, to sketch this complete or developed character of the Devil, and to give some illustrations of it. With his shape we are probably already familiar from the frequent representations of him in mediæval art, and we may pass at once to those inward characteristics which make man, or the Devil, far more than outward appearance. The mediæval Devil, then, is a material being, bearing a strong resemblance to man, especially in his vices, but possessed of certain supernatural powers, though greatly limited in their exercise. He is clever, cunning, and crafty, but, at the same time, liable to be overreached by men possessing a fair share of the same qualities. Like Hannibal, he has one great object in life, the destruction, not of the Roman State, but of the souls of mankind. Still, he is often possessed by a petty spirit of malice and mischief, which better employed on his main object. He diverts his attention when he might be is fond of entering into contracts for men's souls, in which he always fulfils his part of the bargain to the letter, but yields up the soul assigned to him if the other party can pay his debt in false coin, or show of a Franciscan friar, as the following that the Devil has violated his agreement in the smallest particular. This trustworthiness, along with his strong sense of humor and occasional gleams of reasonableness and equity, are the redeeming features in his character. As Herbert says, We paint the devil foul, but he Now the ways in which he tempted the saints sometimes show great discernment and knowledge of character. Thus, on one occasion two devils appeared to St. Guthlac, and made him the following address, perhaps the only instance of a diabolical sermon extant. We shall presently have an example of a religious service as performed by devils. We are acquainted," said they, "with thy life, and the firmness of thy faith we know, and also we know thy patience to be unconquered. We now henceforth will no longer trouble or injure thee, and not only so, but we will even tell thee concerning all those who of yore dwelt in the wilderness, how they lived their lives. Moses first, and Elias, they fasted; and also the Saviour of all the earth, he fasted in the wilderness; and likewise the famous monks that were in Egypt and dwelt there in deserts, they, through their abstinence, slew and quelled in themselves all corruption. Therefore, if thou desirest to wash from thee the sins that thou didst once commit, thou shouldest afflict thy body by abstinence, because by how much the more severely thou afflictest thyself in this life, by so much the more firmly shalt thou be strengthened in eternity. Therefore, thy fasting must not be for a space of two or three days, but it is necessary by a fast of seven nights to cleanse the man; as in six days God first formed and adorned the beauty of the whole earth, and on the seventh rested Himself." The saint, however, was not to be led by this apparently orthodox doctrine to destroy himself, but continued to take the barley. cake once a day, which formed his only food. This is an unusually subtle device on the part of the Devil. In general, his malice could be guarded against by simple and mechanical means, the sign of the cross, or a blessing. It is the unexorcised lettuce in which he is liable to be swallowed; it is the unblessed mouth of a man that forms a grateful refuge for him when he is very weary. But the surest defence against him, in later times, was the habit story will show. "A friar, who had deserted the order, was followed by two brothers, who, in love for his soul, kept on urging him to return. As he obstinately refused, they saw a black dog rushing towards him, and, terrified at the sight, told him to beware of the ugly beast. But he, in his madness, pulled off his habit, and, throwing it away, betook himself to flight. And when he had gone but a few yards, the monster, which, while he wore the habit, had been unable to touch him, having then received power, leaped upon him, dragged him to the ground, and strangled him so quickly that the brothers, running up, found him already dead." This is an instance of mere brute ferocity, combined with malice, on the Devil's part. Yet so entirely was he under God's control that he was sometimes even compelled to minister to his servants. "Once, when John of Parma, min. ister-general of the Friars Minor, was travelling in winter on a visitation to the countries on this side the Alps, the party lost their way, and found themselves at nightfall in a desert place among woods. His comrades asked him anxiously what was to be done. He answered that they must ask the divine help, and consider that God had never failed those who trusted him; let them, therefore, call on the Virgin and St. Francis. This they accordingly did; and, when they had prayed and sung hymns for a while, they heard a bell struck, which roused them to praise God the more, and, following the sound along a miry and difficult road, they found themselves in front of an abbey. On their knocking at the door, several monks opened it at once, as if they had been expecting them, brought them to the fire, dried their clothes, laid supper, and prepared beds for them, seeing to all that they required with apparent cheerfulness. After the first watch of the night John of Parma rose for prayer, and, hearing the bell which calls the monks to praise God, he went with them to the choir, leaving his weary companions fast asleep. The priest of the week began the office, but without the usual ceremony, and omitting the versicle ' O Lord, open Thou my lips,' plunged at once, in a confused way, into that verse of the Psalm, There are they fallen, all they that work wickedness; ' and the choir answered, They are cast down, and shall not be able to stand.' This was said thrice, and John's suspicions were aroused; so he commanded them, by vir tue of Christ's Passion, to tell him who they were. The abbot answered that they were all angels of darkness, who, by the divine command, had been sent, unwillingly, to minister to him and his companions that night, through the prayers of the Mother of God, and of 'that standardbearer, your father' (St. Francis). Then the whole abbey vanished, and John of Parma found himself in a cave in the wood, lying on the bare ground with his companions." It is curious to notice in the story the verses of the Bible which the devils found suited to their case. But John of Parma's experience was very exceptional. In general the Devil was left free to devote himself to his main object, the destruction of souls. To gain this end there were no pains that he would not take, no situation in which he would not place himself. He assumed the likeness of an elegant young man in order to lead astray a girl called Mariken, whom he not unnaturally induced to change her name to Emmeken, any allusion to the Blessed Virgin being specially distasteful to him. Through her means he gained more than a thousand souls, but was at last robbed of his chief victim and accomplice through the efforts of her uncle, a holy priest, in spite of all his exertions, for he feared that on his return to Hell he would be tormented for his partial ill-success, like a Carthaginian general. He clothed himself with the body of a beautiful princess of Constantinople, lately dead, in order to marry Baldwin, Count of Flanders, on account of the unrivalled opportunities for evil which this position would give him. And he acted for thirteen years as lady's maid to a Portuguese woman named Lupa, but was robbed of his prey after all; for since, amid all her wickedness, she had not ceased to reverence St. Francis and his disciple St. Antony, they brought her the habit of their order on her death-bed, and so saved her from the clutches of the fiend. Yet, in spite of all this zeal and versatility, he cannot be acquitted of the grave fault of sometimes wasting his time. It could, for instance, serve no great purpose for the devils to leap about the refectory tables at St. Dominic's convent. And from the time which he devoted to teaching in the Black School he did not reap an unmixed benefit; for, though "the Devil took the hindmost," this was sometimes the man's cloak or his shadow, and his more able pupils, such as Sæmundr the Learned, learnt among other accomplishments, to exorcise and cheat their teacher. One of his favorite plans for getting souls into his power was to make a contract with men, by which, in consideration of value received, they should belong to him at the end of a certain period. The price paid varied according to circumstances. If the man was a bad shot, it was the power of hitting whatever he aimed at ; if he was in love, a return of his affection by his sweetheart; or it might be any other advantage that he most desired at the time. But in order to induce people to make these somewhat uneven bargains, a condition was often added by which they might have a chance of escaping from the consequences. It is the old argument of the Devil to Eve, "Ye shall not surely die." So in the case of the Freischütz, the Devil was obliged to tell him in every case what he was aiming at. A man in this predicament was saved, on the day before that on which he had to carry out his part of the bargain, by an ingenious device on the part of his wife. Taking off her clothes, she smeared her body with syrup, and rolled in a heap of feathers, after which she went and ran about in the fields. The man went out to shoot for the last time with his gamekeeper, the Devil, who, on seeing this strange bird, called out, "There, fire!" "But what is it?" said the husband. The Devil looked and looked, but was obliged to confess that he did not know. "Then our bargain is off," said the man, and the Devil vanished with an intolerable stench. Again: "As Sæmundr the Learned was returning from the Black School, he and his companions heard that a certain living in Iceland was vacant. So they all went to the king in Norway to ask for it, and he promised it to the one who should reach the place first. Then Sæmundr called the Devil, and said, Swim with me to Iceland; if you bring me there without wetting the skirts of my coat you shall have my soul.' The Devil agreed, and, changing himself into a seal, took Sœmundr on his back and started for Iceland. On the way Sæmundr amused himself by reading the Psalms of David. But, when they got close to the shore of Iceland, he closed the book, and hit the seal on the head with it; he dived, and Sæmundr's skirts were wetted, but he easily reached the land. So Sæmundr got his living, and the Devil lost his bargain.” This was not the only occasion on which Sæmundr cheated the Devil. "A man named Kalf Arnason, had, while a pupil in the Black School, made a present of himself to the Devil. But on his return to Iceland he and danced her to death. But on other The fend," quod he, "yow fech body and The Sompnour calls the attention of the Devil to the present thus made him, and suggests that he should carry it off at once. was not unnaturally anxious to escape Men who give me a fox's name The name at once struck the king as be- "Nay," quod the devyl, "God wot, never a And his view is confirmed; for now the cart begins to move, and the carter blesses his horses : "That was wel twight, myn oughne lyard boy, I pray God save thy body and seint Loy. the? Here may ye seen, myn owne deere brother, The cheri spake oon thing, but he thought another." The Devil's sense of humor has already been illustrated by some of the foregoing stories. It often displays itself in malicious practical joking, for the Devil is undoubtedly the father of practical jokes. "It is worthy of record," says the historian of the coming of the Franciscans into England, "that, when the brothers were in the house in Cornhill, the Devil came in a visible shape, and said to Brother Gilbert de Vyz, while he was sitting alone, 'Do you think you have escaped me? You shall yet have this,' threw upon him a handful of lice and vanished." This again was beside his main purpose. The "quick beasts that tickle men at night" were no more likely to do spiritual harm to Brother Gilbert than to St. Thomas of Canterbury. And here ends our attempt to sketch the Devil of the Middle Ages. We have seen him as the hero of a tragedy in Cædmon, in an intermediate character in the various legends that were current about him, and as the comedian of the miracle play the prototype of Shylock, as the part was originally acted. He has passed from the sublime to the grotesque, from the grotesque to the ridiculous. It was for the most part the fresh study of the Bible, in a more reasonable spirit, which led once again to a more serious and rational conception of his character. The popular view above described is now hardly to be found, except in remote districts, in connection with local legends. A. C. CHAMPNEYS. WALKING MANNERS. A phase of the Anglomania that now prevails in Parisian society is that of taking walking exercise. A few years ago French ladies seldom went on foot except during shopping excursions, when the contents of the windows were to be examined. But now it is quite the fashion to take a constitutional, and with the good weather that has come to Paris during the last week or two, a morning walk in the Bois has become the fashion. Frenchmen complain that few women know how to walk. They say that Englishwomen think more of the exercise itself than the manner of it; are, in fact, too much in earnest in getting over the ground. They look with greater leniency on the little tripping step of the true Parisienne, a description of locomotion which is sufficiently fatiguing to account for the very small amount of walking that comes into the daily programme of a French lady's life. A coquettish, selfconscious way of setting down each foot, as though a separate thought went to every step, distinguishes the daughters of France all over the world. It sometimes results in a graceful gait, and always looks smart, the latter being the great desideratum from the fair walker's point of view. Englishwomen think little about their gait as a rule, except now and then spasmodically, when their attention is specially directed to the subject. Fashionable boots are the great enemies of graceful walking. They cripple the feet and destroy all freedom of movement. There is a popular idea that teaching girls to dance improves their manner of walking. This notion is a relic of the days when the waltz was unknown, and the stately measures of the gavotte and the minuet necessitated careful training of the limbs and much instruction in deportment. It is possible that our great-grandmothers may have walked well; but it is certain that their great-granddaughters do not. Half an hour spent in the Row on any morning will convince the most credulous. Some people are in clined to throw the blame upon the dress-improver. Others remember that English girls walked no better before it came in. They sway from side to side; or they unnecessarily move the whole body, or they take immensely long steps; or rush into the opposite extreme, imitating the movements of a mincing machine. There is a curious fashion just now in the manner of carrying the arms. The elbows are thrust out as far as possible from the body, giving a sort of square look to the whole figure, which is far from pleasing. So long as the elbows form an angle, things must be in a concatenation accordingly. Hence the long-handled sunshades that look so awkward in the hands of abbreviated beauty. All these things militate against a graceful gait, and though Englishwomen may claim superiority to their countrymen in every other respect, they will admit that the time has yet to come when they excel them in the art of walking. Daily News. THE RINGS OF SATURN.-There remains now but little doubt concerning the nature of these marvels of the heavens which so long have puzzled astronomers. They cannot be the solid flat hoops that they appear to be, as they are too thin in proportion to their other dimensions to retain their stability against the gravitation of their primary. The idea that they are liquid comes to grief still more hopelessly. But they may be, and in all probability are, a multitude of small satellites which, seen as we see them with their interspaces foreshortened, need not be very close together to appear continuous. To understand this, place yourself at night on Constitution Hill, Piccadilly, or on any other street where you command the view of a row of gas-lights half a mile long in foreshortened perspective. It will then be seen that the distant gas-lights appear to touch each other, to form a continuous line instead of a row of luminous dots, as do those which are nearer, or are viewed more athwart the line. Further evidence in support of this view of the constitution of the rings is continually coming forward in observations of changes among the rings. Thus the observations of Paul Stroobant (Bulletin de l'Académie Royale de Belgique, November, 1887), extending from January 27 to April 20, show that the divisions known as Encke's and Struve's are subject to considerable changes of position, and to occasional disappearance of one, while the other remains visible. The changes of the inner dusky ring are still more remarkable, and indicate extreme mobility of its constituents; suggesting the idea that it bears a relation to Saturn similar to that of the zodiacal light to the sun. Science-Gossip. |