The introduction into the heathen world of the fundamental truths that there is but one God, omnipotent and omniscient, who overrules every event, that He has revealed Himself through His Son as a God of love and mercy, and that man's duty to Him is obedience to His laws, was a mighty step in advance of the gross conceptions of idolatry formerly prevalent among these nations. But neither heathens nor Christians had for a long time any clear idea that the overruling of God in Providence was according to fixed laws. Being ignorant on this point, they ascribed to unseen supernatural agency, working in a capricious fashion, all phenomena which appeared to differ from, or disturb the ordinary course of events. Upon such matters heathen and Christian ideas commingled, and thus heathen ideas and practices were incorporated with Christian ideas and practices. Then, when ecclesiastical councils met to determine truth, and formulate their creeds, these combined heathen and Christian ideas being accepted by them, became dogmas of the Church, and henceforth those who differed from the dogmatic creed of the Church, or advocated views in advance of these confessions, were regarded as enemies of truth. Naturally, as the Church became powerful she became more repressive, and opposed all enquiry which appeared to lead to conclusions different from those already promulgated by her, and finally, it became a capital offence to teach any other doctrines than those sanctioned by the Church. The beliefs of the members of these councils being, as we have already seen, a mixture of heathen and Christian ideas, the Church thus became a great conservator of superstition; and to show that this was really so, we may adduce one example:—Pope Innocent VIII. issued a Bull as follows:—"It has come to our ears that members of both sexes do not avoid to have intercourse with the infernal fiends, and that, by this service, they afflict both man and beast, that they blight the marriage bed, destroy the births of women and the increase of cattle, they blast the corn on the ground, the grapes of the vineyard and the fruits of the trees, and the grass and herbs of the field." The promulgation of this Bull is said to have produced dreadful consequences, by thousands being burned and otherwise put to death, for having intercourse with the fiends.
We regret to say such beliefs and such means of repressing free enquiry were not confined to one branch of the Christian Church. Protestants as well as Roman Catholics, when they had the power, suppressed many of the practices of heathenism after a cruel fashion, but at the same time fostered the superstitions and Pagan beliefs which had originated these practices, and punished those who protested against these beliefs. The same method of procedure is in operation at the present day. Nevertheless, the introduction of Christianity into the heathen world made a wonderful revolution in their religious practices as well as in their beliefs. Their idols and the symbols of their divinities were abolished, along with the sacrifices offered to these. Their great festivals, at which human sacrifices were offered and abominable practices committed, were so modified as to be stripped of their immorality and cruelty, and while being retained—retained because they could not be utterly abolished—they were Christianized,—that is, a Christian colouring was given to them,—and they became Church festivals or holydays,—a subject I will treat more fully of [in another chapter].
It is not, as I have already said, my intention to trace the gradual development of our modern idea of Providence, our ascription of universal government, of all direction of the phenomena of nature and of life to the one only omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God, but rather to place before the reader the practices and beliefs which prevailed in this country during the early years of the present century. And from this survey we shall discover what a mass of old Pagan ideas still survived and influenced the minds and practice of the people,—how they yet clung to the notion that many of the phenomena of nature and life were under the control of supernatural agents, although they did not regard these agents, as what in olden times they were considered to be—divinities, but believed them to be a class of beings living upon or within the earth, and endowed by the devil with supernatural powers.
In the northern sagas, and in the old ballads and saintly legends of the Middle Ages—supernatural agents who played a prominent part—there are giants of enormous size and little dwarfs who can make themselves invisible, and do all sorts of good to their favourites, and harm to their enemies. We are also introduced there to dragons and other monsters which have human understandings, and, guided by a wicked spirit, could do great mischief. Such beings took the place of the ancient divinities, and in many cases when the hero or saint is in great straits, in combat with these evil spirits or fiends, Jesus Christ comes to their assistance. One instance will exemplify this:
"O'er him stood the foul fiends,
And with their clubs of steel,
Struck him o'er the helmit
That in deadly swound he fell.
But God his sorrow saw,
To the fiends his Son he sent;
From the earth they vanished
With howling and lament.
The Christian hero thanked his God,
From the ground he rose with speed,
Joyfully he sheathed his sword,
And mounted on his steed."
Illustrations of "Northern Antiquities."
By the beginning of this century these ideas of the personel of supernatural agencies had become slightly modified in this country at least, giants and dragons having given way to fairies, brownies, elves, witches, etc. The Rev. Mr. Kirk, of Aberfeldy, published a work descriptive of these supernatural beings. He says they are a kind of astral spirits between angels and humanity, being like men and women in appearance, and similar in many of their habits; some of them, however, are double. They marry and have children, for which they keep nurses; have deaths and burials amongst them, and they can make themselves visible or invisible at pleasure. They live in subterranean habitations, and in an invisible condition attend very constantly on men. They are very fond of human children and pretty women, both of which they will steal if not protected by some superior influence. Women in childbed stand in danger of being taken, but if a piece of cold iron be kept in the bed in which they lie, the spirits won't come near. Children are in greater danger of being stolen before baptism than after. They sometimes, to supply their own needs, spirit away the milk from cows, but more frequently they transfer the milk to the cows of some person who stands high in their favour. This they do by making themselves invisible, and silently milking and removing the milk in invisible vessels. When people offend them they shoot flint-tipped arrows, and by this means kill either the persons who have offended them or their cattle. They cause these arrows to strike the most vital part, but the stroke does not visibly break the skin, only a blae mark is the result visible on the body after death. These flint arrow-heads are occasionally found, and the possession of one of these will protect the possessor against the power of these astral beings, and at the same time enable him or her to cure disease in cattle and women. These flints were often sewed into the dresses of children to protect them from the Evil-eye. There were many other means of protection against the power of these beings, which we shall have occasion to refer to again. There is one method, however, which may be mentioned now. If, when a calf is born, its mouth be smeared with a balsam of dung, before it is allowed to suck, the fairies cannot milk that cow. Those taken to fairyland lose the power of calculating the lapse of time, although they are not unconscious of what is going on around them. Those spirited away to fairyland may be recovered by their friends or relatives, by performing certain formula, or—and this was often the method resorted to—by out-witting the fairies, getting possession of their stolen friends, and then doing or saying something which fairies cannot bear, upon which they are forced to depart, leaving the recovered party behind them.
The following information concerning the government, &c., of fairyland, is taken from Aytoun:—The queen of fairyland was a kind of feudatory sovereign under Satan, to whom she was obliged to pay kave, or tithe in kind; and, as her own fairy subjects strongly objected to transfer their allegiance, the quota was usually made up in children who had been stolen before the rite of baptism had been administered to them. This belief was at one time universal throughout all Scotland, and was still prevalent at the beginning of this century. Charms were quite commonly employed to defend houses from the inroads of the fairies before the infants were baptised; but even baptism did not always protect the baby from being stolen. During the period of infancy, the mother required to be ever watchful; but the risks were especially great before baptism. It is difficult to define exactly the power which the queen of elfland had, for besides carrying off Thomas the Rhymer, she was supposed to have carried off no less a personage than James IV. from the field of Flodden, and to have detained him in her enchanted country. There was also a king of elfland. From the accounts extracted from or volunteered by witches, &c., preserved to us in justiciary and presbyterial records, he appears to have been a peaceable, luxurious, indolent personage, who entrusted the whole business of his kingdom, including the recruiting department, to his wife. We get a glimpse of both their majesties in the confessions of Isabella Gowdie, in Aulderne, a parish in Nairnshire, who was indicted for witchcraft in 1662. She said—"I was in Downie Hills, and got meat there from the queen of the fairies, more than I could eat. The queen is brawly clothed in white linen, and in white and brown cloth; and the king is a braw man, well-favoured, and broad-faced. There were plenty of elf bulls rowting and skoyling up and down, and affrighted me." Mr. Kirk says "that in fairyland they have also books of various kinds—history, travels, novels, and plays—but no sermons, no Bible, nor any book of a religious kind." Every reader of Hogg's Queen's Wake knows the beautiful legend of the abduction of "Bonny Kilmeny"; but in Dr. Jamieson's Illustrations of Northern Antiquities we have found amongst these heroic and romantic ballads another legend more fully descriptive of fairyland. In this legend, a young lady is carried away to fairyland, and recovered, by her brother:—
"King Arthur's sons o' merry Carlisle
Were playing at the ba',
And there was their sister, burd Ellen,
I' the midst, amang them a'.
Child Rowland kicked it wi' his foot,
And keppit it wi' his knee;
And aye as he played, out o'er them a'.
O'er the kirk he gar'd it flee.
Burd Ellen round about the aisle
To seek the ba' has gane:
But she bade lang, and ay langer,
And she came na back again.
They sought her east, they sought her west,
They sought her up and down,
And wae were the hearts in merry Carlisle,
For she was nae gait found."
Merlin, the warlock, being consulted, told them that burd Ellen was taken away by the fairies, and that it would be a dangerous task to recover her if they were not well instructed how to proceed. The instructions which Merlin gave were, that whoever undertook the quest for her should, after entering elfland, kill every person he met till he reached the royal apartments, and taste neither meat nor drink offered to them, for by doing otherwise they would come under the fairy spell, and never again get back to earth. Two of her brothers undertook the journey, but disobeyed the instructions of the warlock, and were retained in elfland. Child Rowland, her youngest brother, then arming himself with his father's claymore, excalibar—that never struck in vain—set out on the dangerous quest. Strictly observing the warlock's instructions, after asking his way to the king of elfland's castle of every servant he met, he, in accordance with these instructions, when he had received the desired information, slew the servant. The last fairy functionary he met was the hen-wife, who told him to go on a little further till he came to a round green hill surrounded with rings from the bottom to the top, then go round it widershins (contrary to the sun) and every time he made the circuit, say—"Open door, open door, and let me come in," and on the third repetition of this incantation they would open, and he might then go in. Having received this information, he fulfilled his instructions, and slew the hen-wife. Then proceeding as directed, he soon reached the green hill, and made the circuit of it three times, repeating the words before mentioned. On the third repetition of the words the door opened, and he went in, the door closing behind him. "He proceeded through a long passage, where the air was soft and agreeably warm, like a May evening, as is all the air in elfland. The light was a sort of twilight or gloaming; but there were neither windows nor candles, and he knew not whence it came if it was not from the walls and roof, which were rough and arched like a grotto, and composed of a clear transparent rock incrusted with sheep's silver, and spar and various bright stones." At last he came to two lofty folding doors which stood ajar. Passing through these doors, he entered a large and spacious hall, the richness and brilliance of which was beyond description. It seemed to extend throughout the whole length and breadth of the hill. The superb Gothic pillars by which the roof was supported were so large and lofty, that the pillars of the "Chaury Kirk or of the Pluscardin Abbey are no more to be compared to them than the Knock of Alves is to be compared to Balrimes or Ben-a-chi." They were of gold and silver, and were fretted like the west window of the Chaury Kirk (Elgin Cathedral), with wreaths of flowers, composed of diamonds and precious stones of all manner of beautiful colours. The key stones of the arches, instead of being escutcheoned, were ornamented also with clusters of diamonds in brilliant devices. From the middle of the roof, where the arches met, was hung, suspended by a gold chain, an immense lamp of one hollowed pearl, and perfectly transparent, in the centre of which was a large carbuncle, which, by the power of magic, turned round continually, and shed throughout all the hall a clear mild light like that of the setting sun. But the hall was so large, and these dazzling objects so far removed, that their blended radiance cast no more than a pleasing mellow lustre around, and excited no other than agreeable sensations in the eyes of Child Rowland. The furniture of the hall was suitable to its architecture; and at the further end, under a splendid canopy, sitting on a gorgeous sofa of velvet, silk and gold, and "kembing her yellow hair wi' a silver kemb,"