Demonology and Devil-lore

by Moncure Daniel Conway

‘Rather man, for he withstands the wind.’

‘Thou art a babbler,’ said Nimrod. ‘I worship the fire and will cast thee into it.’

When Abraham was cast into the fiery furnace by Nimrod, and on the seventh day after was found sitting amid the roses of a garden, the mighty hunter—hater of gardens—resolved on a daring hunt for Abraham’s God himself. He built a tower five thousand cubits high, but finding heaven still far away, he attached a car to two half-starved eagles, and by holding meat above them they flew upward, until Nimrod heard a voice saying, ‘Godless man, whither goest thou?’ The audacious man shot an arrow in the direction of the voice; the arrow returned to him stained with blood, and Nimrod believed that he had wounded Abraham’s God.

He who hunted the universe was destroyed by one of the weakest of animated beings—a fly. In the aspiring fly which attacked Nimrod’s lip, and then nose, and finally devoured his brain, the Moslem and Hebrew doctors saw the fittest end of one whose adventurous spirit had not stopped to attack animals, man, Abraham, and Allah himself.

But though, in one sense, destroyed, Nimrod, say various myths, may be heard tumbling and groaning about the base of his tower of Babel, where the confusion of tongues took place; and it might be added, that they have, like the groan, a meaning irrespective of race or language. Dehak and Nimrod have had their brothers in every race, which has ever reached anything that may be called civilisation. It was the barbaric Baron and the Robber Knight of the Middle Ages, living by the hunt, who, before conversion, made for the Faithful Eckhardts of the Church the chief impediment; they might then strike down the monk, whose apparition has always been the legendary warning of the Demon’s approach. When the Eckhardts had baptized these knights, they had already been transformed to the Devils which people the forests of Germany, France, and England with their terrible spectres. The wild fables of the East, telling of fell Demons coursing through the air, whispered to the people at one ear, and the equally wild deeds of the Robber Knights at the other. The Church had given the people one name for all such phantasms—Devil—and it was a name representative of the feelings of both priest and peasant, so long as the Robber Knights were their common enemy. Jesus had to be a good deal modified before he could become the model of this Teutonic Esau. It is after the tradition of his old relation to huntsmen that the Devil has been so especially connected in folklore with soldiers. In the ‘Annals of Leipzig,’ kept in Auerbach’s Cellar, famous for the flight of Mephisto and Faust from its window on a wine-cask, I found two other instances in which the Devil was reported as having appeared in that town. In one case (1604), the fiend had tempted one Jeremy of Strasburg, a marksman, to commit suicide, but that not succeeding, had desired him to go with him to the neighbouring castle and enjoy some fruit. The marksman was saved by help of a Dean. In 1633, during a period of excessive cold and snow, the Devil induced a soldier to blaspheme. The marksman and the soldier were, indeed, the usual victims of the Wild Huntsmen’s temptations; and it was for such that the unfailing magic bullets were moulded in return for their impawned souls.

How King Olaf—whose name lingers among us in ‘Tooley Street,’ so famous for its Three Tailors![6]—spread the Gospel through the North after his baptism in England is well known. Whatever other hunt may have been phantasmal, it was not Olaf’s hunt of the heathen. To put a pan of live coals under the belly of one, to force an adder down the throat of another, to offer all men the alternatives of being baptized or burnt, were the arguments which this apostle applied with such energy that at last—but not until many brave martyrdoms—the chief people were convinced. Olaf encountered Odin as if he had been a living foe, and what is more, believed in the genuine existence of his former God. Once, as Olaf and his friends believed, Odin appeared to this devastator of his altars as a one-eyed man in broad-brimmed hat, delighting the King in his hours of relaxation with that enchanting conversation for which he was so famous. But he (Odin) tried secretly to induce the cook to prepare for his royal master some fine meat which he had poisoned. But Olaf said, ‘Odin shall not deceive us,’ and ordered the tempting viand to be thrown away. Odin was god of the barbarian Junkers, and the people rejoiced that he was driven into holes and corners; his rites remained mainly among huntsmen, and had to be kept very secret. In the Gulathings Lagen of Norway it is ordered: ‘Let the king and bishop, with all possible care, search after those who exercise pagan rites, who use magic arts, who adore the genii of particular places, of tombs, or rivers, and who, after the manner of devils in travelling, are transported from place to place through the air.’

Under such very actual curses as these, the once sacred animals of Odin, and all the associations of the hunt, were diabolised. Even the hunting-horn was regarded as having something præternatural about it. The howling blast when Odin consulteth Mimir’s head[7] was heard again in the Pied Piper’s flute, and passed southward to blend its note with the horn of Roland at Roncesvalles,—which brought help from distances beyond the reach of any honest horn, and even with the pipe of Pan.

That the Edda described Odin as mounted on a mysterious horse, as cherishing two wolves for pets, having a roasted boar for the daily pièce de résistance of his table, and with a raven on either shoulder, whispering to him the secret affairs of the earth, was enough to settle the reputation of those animals in the creed of christian priests. The Raven was, indeed, from of old endowed with the holy awfulness of the christian dove, in the Norse Mythology. To this day no Swede will kill a raven. The superstition concerning it was strong enough to transmit even to Voltaire an involuntary shudder at its croak. Odin was believed to have given the Raven the colour of the night that it might the better spy out the deeds of darkness. Its ‘natural theology’ is, no doubt, given correctly by Robert Browning’s Caliban, who, when his speculations are interrupted by a thunderstorm, supposes his soliloquy has been conveyed by the raven he sees flying to his god Setebos. In many parts of Germany ravens are believed to hold souls of the damned. If a raven’s heart be secured it procures an unerring shot.

From an early date the Boar became an ensign of the prowess of the gods, by which its head passed to be the device of so many barbaric clans and ancient families in the Northern world. In Vedic Mythology we find Indra taking the shape of a Wild Boar, also killing a demon Boar, and giving Tritas the strength by which a similar monster is slain.[8] According to another fable, while Brahma and Vishnu are quarrelling as to which is the first-born, Siva interferes and cries, ‘I am the first-born; nevertheless I will recognise as my superior him who is able to see the summit of my head or the sole of my feet.’ Vishnu, transforming himself to a Boar, pierced the ground, penetrated to the infernal regions, and then saw the feet of Siva, who on his return saluted him as first-born of the gods. De Gubernatis regards this fable as making the Boar emblem of the hidden Moon.[9] He is hunted by the Sun. He guards the treasure of the demons which Indra gains by slaying him. In Sicilian story, Zafarana, by throwing three hog’s bristles on embers, renews her husband’s youth. In Esthonian legend, a prince, by eating pork, acquires the faculty of understanding the language of birds,—which may mean leading on the spring with its songs of birds. But whether these particular interpretations be true or not, there is no doubt that the Boar, at an early period, became emblematic of the wild forces of nature, and from being hunted by King Odin on earth passed to be his favourite food in Valhalla, and a prominent figure in his spectral hunt.

Enough has already been said of the Dog in several chapters of this work to render it but natural that this animal should take his place in any diabolical train. It was not as a ‘hell-hound,’ or descendant of the guardians of Orcus, that he entered the spectral procession of Odin, but as man’s first animal assistant in the work of obtaining a living from nature. It is the faithful friend of man who is demoralised in Waldemar’s Lystig, the spectre-hound of Peel Castle, the Manthe Doog of the Isle of Man, the sky-dogs (Cwn wybir or aunwy) of Wales, and Roscommon dog of Ireland.