It may easily be inferred from some of the Doctor's peculiar opinions, or fancies, as he in unaffected humility would call them, that though a dear lover of children, his love of them was not indiscriminate. He made a great distinction between young angels and young yahoos, and thought it might very early be discovered whether the angel or the brute part predominated.
This is sometimes so strongly marked and so soon developed as to excite observation even in the most incurious; and hence the well-known superstition concerning Changelings.
In the heroic ages a divine origin is ascribed to such persons as were most remarkable for their endowments either of body or of mind; but this may far more probably be traced to adulation in the poets, than to contemporary belief at any time prevailing among the people; whereas the opposite superstition was really believed in the middle ages, and traces of it are still to be found.
It is remarkable that the Fairies who in the popular belief of this country are never represented as malignant upon any other occasion, act an evil part in the supposed case of Changelings. So it is with the Trolls also of our Scandinavian kinsmen, (though this race of beings is in worse repute;) the children whom they substitute for those whom they steal are always a plague to the nurse and to the parents. In Germany such children were held to be young Devils, but whether Mac-Incubi, Mac-Succubi, or O'Devils by the whole blood is not clearly to be collected from Martin Luther, who is the great authority upon this subject. He is explicit upon the fact that the Nix or Water Fiend, increases the population by a mixed breed; but concerning the Killcrops, as his countrymen the Saxons call them, whom the Devil leaves in exchange, when he steals children for purposes best known to himself, Luther does not express any definite opinion, farther than that they are of a devilish nature: how fathered, how mothered the reader is left to conjecture as he pleases.
“Eight years since,” said Luther, at “Dessaw I did see and touch a changed child, which was twelve years of age; he had his eyes and all members like another child; he did nothing but feed, and would eat as much as two clowns or threshers were able to eat. When one touched it, then it cried out. When any evil happened in the house, then it laughed and was joyful; but when all went well, then it cried, and was very sad. I told the Prince of Anhalt, that if I were Prince of that country, so would I venture homicidium thereon, and would throw it into the river Moldaw. I admonished the people dwelling in that place devoutly to pray to God to take away the Devil; the same was done accordingly, and the second year after the Changeling died.
“In Saxonia, near unto Halberstad, was a man that also had a Killcrop, who sucked the mother and five other women dry, and besides devoured very much. This man was advised that he should in his pilgrimage at Halberstad make a promise of the Killcrop to the Virgin Mary, and should cause him there to be rocked. This advice the man followed, and carried the Changeling thither in a basket. But going over a river, being upon the bridge, another Devil that was below in the river called, and said, Killcrop! Killcrop! Then the child in the basket, (which never before spake one word) answered ho, ho! The Devil in the water asked further, whither art thou going? The child in the basket said, ‘I am going towards Halberstad to our Loving Mother, to be rocked.’ The man being much affrighted thereat, threw the child with the basket over the bridge into the water. Whereupon the two Devils flew away together, and cried, ho, ho, ha! tumbling themselves one over another and so vanished.
“Such Changelings and Killcrops,” said Luther, “supponit Satan in locum verorum filiorum; for the Devil hath this power, that he changeth children, and instead thereof layeth Devils in the cradles, which thrive not, only they feed and suck: but such Changelings live not above eighteen or nineteen years. It oftentimes falleth out that the children of women in child-bed are thus changed, and Devils laid in their stead, one of which more fouleth itself than ten other children do, so that the parents are much therewith disquieted; and the mothers in such sort are sucked out, that afterwards they are able to give suck no more. Such Changelings,” said Luther, “are baptized, in regard that they cannot be known the first year, but are known only by sucking the mothers dry.”
Mr. Cottle has made this the subject of a lively eclogue; but if that gentleman had happened upon the modern edition of Luther's Colloquia Mensalia, or Divine Discourses at his Table, instead of the old one, this pleasant poem would never have been written, the account of the Killcrops being one of the passages which the modern editor thought proper to omit. His omissions are reprehensible, because no notice is given that any such liberty has been taken; and indeed a paragraph in the introductory life which is prefixed to the edition might lead the reader to conclude that it is a faithful reprint; that paragraph saying there are many things which, for the credit of Luther, might as well have been left out, and proceeding to say, “but then it must be considered that such Discourses must not be brought to the test of our present refined age; that all what a man of Luther's name and character spoke, particularly at the latter part of his life, was thought by his friends worth the press, though himself meant it only for the recreation of the company; that he altered many opinions in his progress from darkness to light; and that it is with a work of this kind, as with the publishing of letters which were never intended for the press; the Author speaks his sentiments more freely, and you are able to form a true idea of his character, by looking, as it were, into his heart.” Nevertheless there are considerable omissions, and as may be supposed of parts which are curious, and in a certain sense valuable because they are characteristic. But the reprint was the speculation of a low publisher, put forth in numbers, and intended only for a certain class of purchasers, who would read the book for edification. The work itself deserves farther notice, and that notice is the more properly and willingly bestowed upon it here, because the original edition is one of the few volumes belonging to my venerable friend which have passed into my possession, and his mark occurs frequently in its margin.
“I will make no long excursion here, but a short apology for one that deserved well of the reformed Religion. Many of our adversaries have aspersed Luther, with ill words, but none so violent as our English fugitives, because he doth confess it that the Devil did encounter him very frequently, and familiarly, when he first put pen to paper against the corruptions of the Church of Rome. In whose behalf I answer: much of that which is objected I cannot find in the Latin Editions of his works which himself corrected, although it appears by the quotations some such things were in his first writings set forth in the Dutch language. 2. I say no more than he confesseth ingenuously of himself in an epistle to Brentius, his meaning was good, but his words came from him very unskilfully, and his style was most rough and unsavoury. St. Paul says of himself, that he was rudis sermone, rude in speech. But Luther was not so much ἰδιώτης τῷ λόγῳ the word used in Saint Paul, as ἄγροικος, after his Dutch Monastical breeding, and his own hot freedom. By nature he had a boisterous clownish expression; but for the most part very good jewels of doctrine in the dunghills of his language. 3. If the devil did employ himself to delude and vex that heroical servant of God, who took such a task upon him, being a simple Monk, to inveigh against errors and superstitions which had so long prevailed, why should it seem strange to any man? Ribadaneira sticks it among the praises of his founder Ignatius Loiola, that the Devil did declaim and cry out against him, (believe it every one of you at your leisure,) and why might not the Devil draw near to vex Luther, as well as roar out a great way off against Loiola? I have digrest a little with your patience, to make Luther's case appear to be no outrageous thing, that weak ones may not be offended when they hear such stuff objected out of Parsons, or Barclay, or Walsingham, or out of Bellarmine himself. If Beelzebub was busy with the Master, what will he be with the Servants? When Christ did begin to lay the first corner stone of the Gospel, then he walked into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil.”1