SATAN AND A SOUL, DORCHESTER.
We are now chiefly concerned with the last instance. The Slavonic Bog, a god, is met in Saxon as a goblin, for the “boy” who came into the court of King Arthur and laid his wand upon a boar’s head was clearly a “bog” (the Saxon g being exchanged erroneously for y, as in dag’s aeg, day’s eye, etc). In Welsh, similarly, Brog is a goblin, and we have the evil idea in bug.
“Warwick was a bug that feared us all.”
—Shakespeare. Henry IV., v., 2.
That is “Warwick was a goblin that made us all afraid.” The Boggart is a fairy still believed in by Staffordshire peasants. We have yet bugbear, as the Russians have Buka, and the Italians Buggaboo, of similar meaning.
As with the barbaric gods, so with the classic deities, who equally supplied material of which to make foul fiends. Bacchus, with the legs and sprouting horns of a goat, that haunter of vine-yards, then his fauns constructed on the same symbolic principle, gave rise to the satyrs. These, offering in their form disreputable points for reprobation, were found to be a sufficiently appropriate symbol of the Devil. The reasons of variety in the satyr figure are not far to seek, beyond the constant tendency of the mediæval artist to vary form while preserving essence. Every artist had his idea of the devil, either drawn from the rich depths of a Gothic imagination, from the descriptions accumulated by popular credulity, and most of all from that result of both—the Devil of the Mystery or Miracle Plays.
The plays were performed by trade gilds. Every town had many of these gilds, though several would sometimes join at the plays; and even very small villages had both gild and plays. There are yet existing some slight traces of the reputation which obscure villages had in their own vicinity for their plays, of which Christmas mumming contains the last tattered relic. So that, the Devil being a favourite character in the pieces so widely performed, it is not surprising to find him equally at home among the works of the carvers, who, according to the nature of artists of all time, would doubtless holiday it with the best, and look with more or less appreciation upon such drama as was set before them.
Where we see Satan as the satyr, he is the rollicking fiend of the Mystery stage, tempting with sly good-humour, tormenting with a grim and ferocious joy, or often merely posturing and capering in a much to be envied height of the wildest animal spirits. There is in popular art no trace, so far as the writer’s observation extends, of that lofty sorrow at man’s unworthiness, which has occasionally been attributed to Satan.