Lye’s dictionary cites another goddess, Ricen, with the translation Diana, which he seems to have taken from some Cotton MS. It stands too isolated for us to make any successful investigation, but I may be excused for calling to mind the fact that Diana is mentioned by the versifying chroniclers as among the Saxon gods, and also that the superstition known in Germany as the “Wild Hunt,” and which is properly connected with Wóden, goes very generally among us by the name of Ludus Dianae. This, which became the foundation of many a cruel persecution, under the name of witchcraft, is spread over every part of Germany in one form or another: sometimes it is [the daughter of] Herodias who is compelled for ever to expiate her fatal dancing; at other times we have Minerva or Bertha, Holda, Habundia, Dame Abonde, Domina, Hera—the Lady, and so on. It is true that our fragmentary remains of Saxon heathendom do not contain any immediate allusions to this superstition, but yet it can scarcely be doubted that it did exist here as it did in every part of the continent[[705]], and one therefore would not willingly decide at once against there having been some deity who might be translated by Diana in the interpretatio Romana.
FIENDS and MONSTERS.—The community of belief, between the Germans of this island, of the continent, and their Scandinavian kinsmen, does not appear to have been confined to the beneficent gods of fertility or warlike prowess. In the noble poem of Beowulf we are made acquainted with a monstrous fiend, Grendel, and his mother, supernatural beings of gigantic birth, stature and disposition, voracious and cruel, feeding upon men, and from their nature incapable of being wounded with mortal weapons. The triumph of the hero over these unearthly enemies forms the subject of one half the poem. But Grendel, who, from the characteristics given above, may at once be numbered among the rough, violent deities of nature, the Jotnar[[706]] of the North and Titans of classical mythology, is not without other records: in two or three charters we find places bearing his name, and it is remarkable that they are all connected more or less with water, while the poem describes his dwelling as a cavern beneath a lake, peopled with Nicors and other supernatural beings of a fiendish character. The references are Grindles pyt[[707]], Grindles bece[[708]], and Grendles mere[[709]]. Grimm, by a comparison of philological and other data, identifies Grendel with the Norse Loki, the evil-bringer, and in the end destroyer of the gods[[710]]. The early converted Anglosaxons who possessed another devil to oppose to the Almighty in the Ragnaravkr[[711]], could easily reconcile themselves to the destruction of Grendel by an earthly hero; although the ancient heathendom breaks out in the supernatural powers attributed to the latter, and which placing him very near the rank of the gods, induce a belief that Beówulf contains only the shadow of an older myth which may have been current far beyond the limits of this island[[712]]. It will be sufficient to call attention to the many German tales in which the devil’s mother figures as a principal actor, nay to our own familiar expression, the devil’s dam, to show how essential this characteristic of the fiend was: the devil of the Church had certainly no mother; but the old Teutonic evil spirit had, and Loki and Grendel are alike in this. Even the religious view, which naturally shaped itself to other influences, could not escape the essential heathendom of this idea: the devil who is so constant an agent in the Anglosaxon legends, has, if not a mother, at least a father, no less than Satan himself; but Satan lies bound in hell, as Loki lies bound, and it is only as his emissary and servant that the devil his son[[713]] appears on earth, to tempt and to destroy. In Cædmon, the legend of St. Andrew, Juliana, Gúðlác, etc., it is always the devil’s son and satellite who executes his work on earth, and returns to give an account of his mission to him that sent him.
Thus throughout the strange confusion which besets all Anglosaxon compositions in which the devil is introduced either as a tempter or a persecutor of the holy and just, we may perceive a ray of ancient heathendom, gloomy enough, no doubt, but far less miserable than the vile materialism of the notions with which it has been mixed up. The rude Eoten or Titan is not nearly so repugnant to our Christian ideas as the gross corporeal fiends who have grown out of him, and who play so conspicuous a part in Anglosaxon hagiology or purgatorial legends: nor is it easy to conceive any superstition more degrading than that which Eastern or perhaps even Roman traditions thus engrafted upon the ancient creed. With these we are not called upon to deal in any further detail, for though they have no claim whatever to be called Christian, they certainly have nothing to do with Anglosaxon heathendom. The Grendels and Nicors of our forefathers were gods of nature, the spirits of the wood and wave: they sunk into their degraded and disgusting forms only when the devils of a barbarous superstition came to be confounded and mixed up with them. There is still something genuine and poetical in the account which a monk of St. Gall gives of the colloquy between the ancient gods when the missionaries settled on the shores of the lake of Constance; when in the dead of night, the holy anchoret watching at his nets,
Heard how the spirit of the flood
Spake to the spirit of the hill:
“Volvente deinceps cursu temporis, electus Dei Gallus retia lymphae laxabat in silentio noctis, sed inter ea audivit demonem de culmine montis pari suo clamantem, qui erat in abditis maris. Quo respondente, ‘Adsum!’ montanus e contra: ‘Surge,’ inquit, ‘in adiutorium mihi! Ecce peregrini venerunt, qui me de templo eiecerunt;’ nam Deos conterebant, quos incolae isti colebant; insuper et eos ad se convertebant; ‘Veni, veni, adiuva nos expellere eos de terris!’ Marinus demon respondit: ‘En unus illorum est in pelago, cui nunquam nocere potero. Volui enim retia sua ledere, sed me victum proba lugere. Signo orationis est semper clausus, nec umquam somno oppressus.’ Electus vero Gallus haec audiens, munivit se undique signaculo crucis, dixitque ad eos: ‘In nomine Jesu Christi praecipio vobis, ut de locis istis recedatis, nec aliquem hic ledere praesumatis!’ Et cum festinatione ad littus rediit, atque abbati suo, quae audierat, recitavit. Quod vir Dei Columbanus audiens, convocavit fratres in ecclesiam, solitum signum tangens. O mira dementia diaboli! voces servorum Dei praeripuit vox fantasmatica, cum heiulatus atque ululatus dirae vocis audiebatur per culmina [montium[[714]]].”
But words are hardly strong enough to express the feeling with which an educated mind contemplates the fantastical, filthy and hideous images which gross fanaticism strove to force into the service of a religion whose end and means are love; the material terrors which were substituted for the sanctions of the most spiritual, pure and holy creed; the vulgar, degrading and ridiculous phantasmagoria devised to destroy the essential selfishness and impurity of men, and startle them into justice and righteousness of life! The Teutonic Titans, though terrible from their rude strength, and dangerous even to the gods themselves, are neither disgusting nor degrading: they are like Chronos and Saturn, full of power and wisdom; they are in constant warfare with the gods, because the latter are the representatives of a more humane order; because the latter was more civilised: but as the giant race were mighty at the beginning, so are they to triumph at the end of the world; and it is only when they shall have succeeded in destroying the gods of Oþinn’s race, that they will themselves vanish from the scene, and the glorious reign of Allfather commence. Loki alone has something mean and tricksey in his character, something allied to falsehood—a slight spice of the Mephistopheles. But it is not probable that this belongs to his earliest form, and it appears rather to mark the deterioration of a myth becoming popular, and assuming traits of the popular, humorous spirit, which takes delight in seeing power counteracted by cunning, and revenges itself for the perfection of its heroes by sometimes exposing them to ludicrous defeat. But even Loki was at first the friend and associate of the gods: he was united with them by the most sacred bonds of brotherhood, and his skill and wisdom secured them victory in many a dangerous encounter. Like Lucifer, he had been a tenant of heaven: why he and the gods ultimately parted in anger we are not told; but we find him pursuing them with the utmost malice, till at length he causes the death of Baldr. He is then bound and cast beneath the worlds, the poisonous snake hangs over him distilling torturing venom: his faithful wife sits by and catches the drops as they fall, but when the vessel in which she receives them is full and she turns for a moment to empty it, the deadly juice reaches the prostrate god, and in his agony he trembles in every limb. This convulsion is known to men as the earthquake. It is only in the twilight of the gods that he will break his chain and lead the sons of Muspel to avenge him upon the race of Oþinn.
But Loki is no devil in the Anglosaxon sense of Satan and his son; he is no deceiver or persecutor of men; least of all is he their torturer in another world. He suffers indeed, but like Prometheus, or Entelechus, or Ægeon, and his hour of triumph is to come. There is in his genuine character nothing mean or little,—much indeed that is terrible, gloomy and vague, but nothing ridiculous or disgusting. The Saxon devil with horns, tail, cloven feet, sulphur and pitch, torches, red-hot tongs, pincers and pitchforks is less creditable to the imagination, and more dangerous to the moral being, of his inventors.
Nor are the occupations of such a fiend less vulgar than his form: he blasts the corn, wounds the cattle, fetters the hands of the doomed, enters the mouth of those who have not guarded it by the sign of the cross, and in a future state becomes the torturer—in the most material and mechanical way—of those whose life has been spent in the service of sin. The coarse fancy of Marlowe himself halts after the descriptions of the Anglosaxon divines and poets, revelling in this fruitful theme. Unpleasant as such records are, and revolting to our sense of right, it is necessary that we should know what was taught or permitted by the clergy, if we are to know anything of the mode of life and mode of belief of our forefathers.
As early even as the eighth century, we find so great a man as Beda condescending to admit into his ecclesiastical history, such melancholy evidence of Manichæan materialism as the vision of Drihthelm. He tells how such a man in Northumbria, lying at the point of death, had fallen into a trance, recovering from which and being restored to health, he had entered the monastery of Melrose, in which he continued till his death. During his trance he had seen visions which he afterwards communicated to Hamgisl a priest, Aldfríð king of the Northumbrians, and others. He related that on being released from the body his soul had been led by one, bright of aspect, gloriously clothed, towards the east, into a valley wide and deep and of a length that seemed infinite: one side glowed terribly with flames, the other was filled with furious hail and freezing snow. Either side was full of human souls which were tossed from left to right as by a tempest. For when they could not bear the violence of the immense heat, they rushed wretchedly into the midst of the dreadful cold; and when they could find no rest there, they sprung back again, again to burn in the midst of inextinguishable flames. When Drihthelm saw them thus eternally tormented by a crowd of deformed demons, he thought within himself, “This is surely hell, of whose intolerable tortures I have often heard tell!” But his companion said, “This is not the hell thou thinkest!” and proceeding further, he beheld how the darkness began to thicken around and fill the whole space before him. Suddenly in this deep night he perceived globes of dusky fire cast up from what seemed to be a vast well, into which they fell again, without intermission. In the midst of these horrors his conductor left him. On looking more intently, he now perceived that the tongues of fire were all full of human souls, tossed aloft like sparks in smoke, and then dragged back into the abyss. And an incomparable stench, which bubbled up with the vapours, filled all those abodes of darkness. Around him sounded the shouts and taunts of fiends, like a vulgar mob exulting over a captive enemy: suddenly a host of evil spirits dragged through the darkness five souls, one of a laic, one of a woman, one tonsured like a cleric, and plunged them into the abyss amidst a confused roar of lamentation and laughter. Then certain malignant spirits ascending from the deep, surrounded the trembling spectator, terrifying him with their flaming eyes and the fire which burst from their mouths and noses, and threatening to seize him with fiery pincers which they held in their hands. From this danger he was rescued by the return of his companion, who conducted him to two corresponding regions of eternal bliss, every one of whose details is in the strongest contrast to those already described, but just as material, as gross and sensual. The moral of this is too important to be given in any but Beda’s own words. “And when, on our return, we had reached those happy mansions of spirits clothed in white, he said unto me, ‘Knowest thou what all these things are which thou hast beheld?’ I answered, ‘No.’ Then said he, 'The valley which thou sawest, horrible with its boiling flames and its stiff cold, that is the place where shall be tried and chastised the souls of those men, who delaying to confess and to amend their sins, yet fly to penitence in the hour of death, and thus leave the body: yet since they had confession and penance even in death, shall all, at the day of judgment, reach the kingdom of heaven. But many, both the prayers of the living, and their alms and fasts, and most of all the celebration of masses, assist, so that they shall be freed even before the day of judgment. But that flame-belching, putrid well which thou hast seen is the mouth of hell itself, into which whoever shall fall, shall never be set free for ever and ever. And that flowery place in which thou sawest those most beauteous youths enjoy themselves in splendour, is that wherein are received the souls of those who indeed leave the body in good works, but yet are not of such perfection that they may at once enter the kingdom of heaven; who yet shall all, in the day of judgment, enter into the sight of Christ, and the joys of the heavenly kingdom. For they who are perfect in every word and act and thought, immediately on leaving the body shall reach the heavenly kingdom; to whose precincts that place belonged, where thou heardest the sound of pleasant singing, together with the smell of sweetness and the splendour of light[[715]].'” Having thus seen and heard, Drihthelm was allowed to return to the body, where no doubt he became a powerful champion of Purgatory. But Beda is not satisfied with this tale: he goes on to tell of a Mercian noble, who would not go to confession. At the point of death, he sees two angels enter his room, bearing the record of his good deeds, which fill but a small roll: having caused him to read this, they make way for a crowd of fiends, black and foul, who bear the enormous tale of his sins of word, work and thought, which also he is compelled to read. Then the leader of the fiends turning to the sons of light exclaims, “Why sit ye here, knowing assuredly that he is ours?” to which they reply, “Ye say truly: take him, and lead him with you into the accumulation of your own damnation!” Upon this the good spirits vanish, and two demons, a sort of Occidental Munkir and Nekir, smite him with ploughshares on the head and feet, and creep into him; when they meet within him, he dies and passes into everlasting torments[[716]]. This tale, which Beda heard from the venerable bishop Pecthelm[[717]], he refines upon, explains, and finishes by declaring that he relates it simply for the salvation of those who shall read or hear it. No doubt the distempered ravings of monks, made half mad by inhuman austerities, unnatural restrictions, and wretched themes of contemplation, would in themselves be of little worth: we can comprehend the visions of a Saint Francis de Salis, an Ignatius Loyola, a Peter the Hermit, a Santa Theresa, and even more readily those of a Drihthelm or a Madame Guyon: but how shall we understand the record of them by a Beda or a Fenelon?