Modern tales of diablerie are not so uncommon as might be expected. In the time of Chaucer, the popular belief ascribed the departure of the elves to the great number of wandering friars who mercilessly pursued them with bell, book, and candle; and at the present day, in the opinion of our uneducated peasantry, the itinerant sectarian preachers are endowed with similar attributes. The stories told of these men, and their encounters with the powers of darkness, would fill a new Golden Legend. There is one tale in particular which comes within our designation of "popular stories," as is well known in almost all parts of England,—How a godly minister falls over the company of wicked scoffing elves, and how he gets out.[[2]] The last time I heard it, it was related of a preacher of the Ranting persuasion, well known some dozen years ago in a certain district of Warwickshire; and I prefer to give it in this localised form, as it enables me to present your readers with "Positively the last from Fairyland."
Providence B—— was a well-known man throughout that whole country-side. He had made more converts than all his brethren put together, and, in the matter of spirits and demons, would stand a comparison with Godred or Gutlac, or, by'r Lady, St. Anthony himself. Now it fell out one day, that Providence was sent for to the house of a wealthy yeoman to aid in expelling an evil spirit which had long infested his daughter. I must here remark, en parenthèse, that scenes of this fearfully ludicrous nature are far from unfrequent in our country districts. The besotted state of ignorance in which a great portion of our rural population are still enwrapt, renders them peculiarly open to the fleecing of these fanatics, who, marvellous to relate, are almost everywhere
looked upon with respect, and treated with the greatest consideration, proving incontestably that,
"Mad as Christians used to be
About the seventeenth century,
There's others to be had
In this the nineteenth just as bad."
On this occasion the job proved a tough one, and it was not till a late hour that Prov. set off on his road home. It was a pitchy dark night, and somehow or other the preacher and his nag contrived to lose their way among the green lanes, and it was not till they had floundered about for some time that our hero discerned (as is usual in such cases) a light gleaming through the thick foliage before him, which he incontinently discovers to proceed from a solitary dwelling in the middle of the woods. Of course he dismounts, and knocks at the door; and of course it was opened by a suspicious-looking old woman in toggery which it would do Mr. James's heart good to depict. To his request for a night's lodging, she yielded a ready assent—too ready, Prov. thought; for it seemed from her manner as though he had been expected. He was shown into a bed-room, and was proceeding to divest himself of his garments, when he hears a knock at the door, and a voice asked him to come down to supper. Prov. made answer that he didn't want any, that he was in bed, and that moreover he was engaged at his devotions; but presently the messenger returned, and declared that if he did not join the company downstairs, they would come and sup with him. Poor Prov. quaked with fright, but thought it politic to cloak his fears, so followed the servant to the house-room, where there were a number of people sitting round a table plentifully laden with good things. All of them were little "shrivelled up" old men; and, as the chairman motioned Prov. to a vacant seat, they all regarded him with a stare that made him feel the reverse of jolly. Although he is well acquainted with the neighbourhood, he recognises none of them. The meal proceeded in solemn silence: look which way he would, he encounters the gaze of his companions, who appear to scowl at him with an expression of fiendish hate. Dreadful surmises flit across his brain. Suddenly his attention becomes directed to the posterior portion of the gentleman next him. "By Jove! he has a tail. Yes, he has; and so has his neighbour, and so have they all." He fancies too he can trace a resemblance between the individual who sits at the head of the table and the fiend of the morning's exorcism. All is now clear as a pike-staff. It is a decided case of trepan. That dark fellow on the right has to complain of a forcible ejection from a comfortable dwelling in the portly corpus of Master Muggins the miller; and he on the left is the identical demon who got into Farmer Nelson's cow, and gave our hero a world of trouble to get him out. He is in the power of the incubi, whom he has been so long warring against. Not a moment is to be lost, for already they are whispering together, and the scowls get fiercer and fiercer. What is to be done? A monk would have had recourse to his breviary; Prov. thought of his hymn-book. "Brethren," says he, "it is usual wi' us at the heend of a feast to ax a blessing."
"A blessing quotha! and to us?" roared the fiends. "Ha! ha! Yea! yea!" said Prov.; and instanter he out with that spirit-stirring stanza of "immortal John:"
"Jesus the name, high over all,