Devil Stories Part 34

The representation of the devil in the shape of a he-goat goes back to far antiquity. Goat-formed deities and spirits of the woods existed in the religions of India, a.s.syria, Greece and Egypt. The a.s.syrian G.o.d was often a.s.sociated with the goat, which was supposed to possess the qualities for which he was worshipped. The he-goat was also the sacred beast of Donar or Thor, who was brought to Scandinavia by the Phoenicians. (On the relation of satyrs to goats see also James G.

Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, vol. VIII, pp. 1 _sqq._) At the revels on the Blocksberg Satan always appeared as a black buck.

_Le bon diable_, which is a favourite phrase in France, points to his simplicity of mind rather than generosity of spirit. It generally expresses the half-contemptuous pity with which the giants, these huge beings with weak minds, were regarded.

The idea that Satan would gamble for a human soul is of mediaeval origin and may have been taken by Baudelaire from Gerard de Nerval, who in his mystery play _Le Prince des Sots_ (1830) has the devil play at dice with an angel, with human souls as stakes. As a dice-player Satan resembles Wuotan. Mr. H. G. Wells in _The Undying Fire_ (1919) has Diabolus play chess with the Deity in Heaven.

The devil in this story falls back into speaking Hebrew when the days of his ancient celestial glory are brought back to his mind. In Louis Menard's _Le Diable au cafe_ the devil calls Hebrew a dead language, and as a modern prefers to be called by the French equivalent of his original Hebrew name. In the Middle Ages the devil's favourite language was Latin. Marlowe's Mephistopheles also speaks this language. Satan is known to be a linguist. "It is the Devil by his several languages," said Ben Jonson.

According to popular belief the devil is a learned scholar and a profound thinker. He has all science, philosophy, and theology at his tongue's end.

The Shavian devil in contradistinction to the Baudelairian fiend does bitterly complain that he is so little appreciated on earth. Walter Scott's devil (in "Wandering Willie's Tale," 1824) also complains that he has been "sair miscaa'd in the world."

The preacher to whom our author refers is the Jesuit Ravignan, who declared that the disbelief in the devil was one of the most cunning devices of the great enemy himself. (La plus grande force du diable, c'est d'etre parvenu a se faire nier.) Baudelaire's disciple J. K.

Huysmans similarly expresses in his novel _La-Bas_ (1891) the view that "the greatest power of Satan lies in the fact that he gets men to deny him." (Cf. the present writer's essay "The Satanism of Huysmans"

in _The Open Court_ for April, 1920.) The devil mocks at this theological dictum in Pierre Veber's story "L'Homme qui vendit son ame au Diable" (1918). In Perkins's story "The Devil-Puzzlers" the devil expresses his satisfaction over his success in this regard.

The story "The Generous Gambler" first appeared in the _Figaro_ of February, 1864, was reprinted under the t.i.tle of "Le Diable" in the _Revue du Dix-Neuvieme Siecle_ of June, 1866, and was finally included in _Poemes en Prose_. This story has also been translated into English by Joseph T. Shipley.

THE THREE LOW Ma.s.sES

A CHRISTMAS STORY

BY ALPHONSE DAUDET

Daudet and Maupa.s.sant furnish the best proof of the a.s.sertion made in the Introduction to this book that even the Naturalists who, as a rule, disdained the phantastic plots of the Romanticists, whose imagination was rigorously earth-bound, felt themselves nevertheless attracted by devil-lore. Although most of Daudet's subjects are chosen from contemporary French life, this short-story treats a devil-legend of the seventeenth century. This story as "The Pope's Mule" and "The Elixir of the Reverend Pere Gaucher" obviously has no other object but to poke fun at the Catholic Church. It belongs to the literary type known as the Satirical Supernatural.

This story is characteristic of Daudet's art, containing as it does all of his delicacy and daintiness of pathos, of raillery, of humour.

It originally appeared in that delightful group of stories _Lettres de Mon Moulin_ (1869).

The horns and tail of his Satanic majesty peep out as vividly in this book as the disguised devils in Ingoldsby's _Legend of the North Countrie_.

Although hating all men, the devil has a special hatred for the priests, and he delights in bringing them to fall. Satan loathes the priests, because, as Anatole France says, they teach that "G.o.d takes delight in seeing His creatures languish in penitence and abstain from His most precious gifts" (_Les Dieux ont soif_, p. 278).

It is evident from this story that the popular belief that the devil avoids holy edifices is not based on facts. Here the devil not only enters the church, but even performs the duties of a sacristan at the foot of the altar. According to mediaeval tradition the devil has his agents even in the churches. In the administration of h.e.l.l where the tasks are carefully parcelled out among the thousands of imps, the church has been a.s.signed to the fiend with the poetic name of Tutevillus. It is his duty to attend all services in order to listen to the gossips and to write down every word they say. After death these women are entertained in h.e.l.l with their own speeches, which this diabolical church clerk has carefully noted down. Tradition has it that one fine Sunday this demon was sitting in a church on a beam, on which he held himself fast by his feet and his tail, right over two village gossips, who chattered so much during the Blessed Ma.s.s that he soon filled every corner of the parchment on both sides. Poor Tutevillus worked so hard that the sweat ran in great drops down his brow, and he was ready to sink with exhaustion. But the gossips ceased not to sin with their tongues, and he had no fair parchment left whereon to record their foul words. So having considered for a little while, he grasped one end of the roll with his teeth and seized the other end with his claws and pulled so hard as to stretch the parchment. He tugged and tugged with all his strength, jerking back his head mightily at each tug, and at last giving such a fierce jerk that he suddenly lost his balance and fell head over heels from the beam to the floor of the church. (From "The Vision of Saint Simon of Blewberry" in F. O. Mann's collection of mediaeval tales.)

DEVIL-PUZZLERS

BY FREDERICK BEECHER PERKINS

Through Asmodeus the devil became a.s.sociated with humour and gallantry. Asmodeus sharpened his wits in his conversations with the wisest of kings. It will be recalled that this demon was the familiar spirit of Solomon, whose throne, according to Jewish legend, he occupied for three years. Perhaps it was not Solomon after all but this diabolical usurper who gathered around himself a thousand wives.

It is said that Asmodeus is as dangerous to women as Lilith is to men.

He loves to decoy young girls in the shape of a handsome young man.

His love for the beautiful Sarah is too well known to need any comment. He is a fastidious devil, and will not have the object of his pa.s.sion subject to the embrace of any other mortal or immortal.

Reference is made by the author to Albert Reville's epitome of Georg Roskoff's _Geschichte des Teufels_ (Leipzig, 1869), a standard work on the history of the devil. The review by this French Protestant first appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for 1870, and was translated into English the following year. A second edition appeared six years later. Roskoff's book, on the other hand, has never appeared in translation.

It is not easy to grasp the scholastic subtleties of mediaeval schoolmen. Dr. Ethel Brewster suggests the following interpretations: _An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas intentiones_. Whether a demon buzzing in the air devours our good intentions. This will correspond to our saying that h.e.l.l is paved with good intentions. _An averia carrucae capta in vet.i.to nomio sint irreplegibilia._ Whether the carriers of a [bishop's] carriage caught in a forbidden district should be punished. We can well understand how even the devil might be puzzled by such questions.

Professor Brander Matthews aptly calls this story "diabolically philosophical."

THE DEVIL'S ROUND

A TALE OF FLEMISH GOLF

BY CHARLES DEULIN

The modern devil is an accomplished gentleman. He is the most all-round being in creation. Mynheer van Belzebuth, as he is called in this story, is indeed the greatest gambler that there is upon or under the earth. On the golf-field as at the roulette-table he is hard to beat. It was the devil who invented cards, and they are, therefore, called the Devil's Bible, and it was also he who taught the Roman soldiers how to cast lots for the raiment of Christ (John xix, 24).

Dice are also called the devil's bones.

The devil carries the souls in a sack on his back also in the legend of St. Medard. It is told that this saint, while promenading one day on the sh.o.r.e of the Red Sea in Egypt, saw Satan carrying a bag full of d.a.m.ned souls on his back. The heart of this saint was filled with compa.s.sion for the poor souls and he quickly slit the devil's bag open, whereupon the souls scrambled for liberty:

"Away went the Quaker--away went the Baker, Away went the Friar--that fine fat Ghost, Whose marrow Old Nick Had intended to pick Dressed like a Woodc.o.c.k, and served on toast!

"Away went the nice little Cardinal's Niece And the pretty Grisettes, and the Dons from Spain, And the Corsair's crew, And the coin-cliping Jew, And they scamper'd, like lamplighters, over the plain!"

The Witches' Sabbath is the annual reunion of Satan and his worshippers on earth. The witches, mounted on goats and broomsticks, flock to desolate heaths and hills to hold high revel with their devil.

Beelzebub swears in this story by the horns of his grandfather. While the devil is known to have a grandmother, there has never been found a trace of his grandfather. Satan has probably been adopted by the grandmother of Grendel, the Anglo-Saxon evil demon. The horns have been inherited by Satan from Dionysos. This Greek G.o.d had bull-feet and bull's horns.

The reader, who is interested in the origin of the European Carnival (Shrove Tuesday) customs, is referred to the editor's monograph _The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy_ (New York: G. E. Stechert & Co., 1920).

THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL

BY GUY DE MAUPa.s.sANT

No greater proof of the permanence and persistence of the devil as a character in literature can be adduced than the fact that this writer, in whom we find the purest expression of Naturalism, for whom the visible world was absolutely all that there is, was attracted by a devil-legend. But on this point he had a good example in his G.o.d-father and master Gustave Flaubert, who, though a realist of realists, showed deep interest in the Tempter of St. Anthony.

This legend of the fraudulent bargain between a sprite and a farmer as to alternate upper- and under-ground crops, with which "the great vision of the guarded mount" is here connected, is of Northern origin, but has travelled South as far as Arabia. It will be found in Grimm's _Fairy Tales_ (No. 189); Thiele's _Danish Legends_ (No. 122), and T.

Sternberg's _The Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northampshire_ (p. 140).

Rabelais used it as a French legend, and in its Oriental form it served as a subject for a poem by the German Friedrich Ruckert ("Der betrogene Teufel"). In all these versions the agreement is entered into between the devil (in the Northampshire form it is a bogie or some other field spirit) and a peasant. It was reserved for Maupa.s.sant to make St. Michael get the better of Satan on earth as in heaven.

According to this legend the devil broke his leg when, in his flight from St. Michael, he jumped off the roof of the castle into which he had been lured by the saint. The traditional explanation for the devil's broken leg is his fall from heaven. "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven" (Luke x, 18). All rebellious deities, who were universally supposed to have fallen from heaven, have crooked or crippled legs. Hephaestos, Vulcan, Loki and Wieland, each has a broken leg. This idea has probably been derived from the crooked lightning flashes. The devil's mother in the mediaeval German mystery-plays walks on crutches. Asmodeus, the Persian demon Aeshma daeva, also had a lame foot. In Le Sage's book _Le Diable boiteux_ Asmodeus appears as a limping gentleman, who uses two sticks as crutches. According to rabbinical tradition this demon broke his leg when he hurried to meet King Solomon. In addition to his broken leg the devil inherited the goat-foot from Pan, the bull-foot from Dionysius and the horse-foot from Loki. The Ethiopic devil's right foot is a claw, and his left a hoof.