Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted

c >> comparative mythology by John Fiske >> Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted

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[117] For further particulars see Cox, Mythology of the Aryan
Nations, Vol. II. pp 358, 366; to which I am indebted for
several of the details here given. Compare Welcker,
Griechische Gotterlehre, I. 661, seq.

According to the Scotch divines of the seventeenth century,
the Devil is a learned scholar and profound thinker. Having
profited by six thousand years of intense study and
meditation, he has all science, philosophy, and theology at
his tongue's end; and, as his skill has increased with age, he
is far more than a match for mortals in cunning.[118] Such,
however, is not the view taken by mediaeval mythology, which
usually represents his stupidity as equalling his malignity.
The victory of Hercules over Cacus is repeated in a hundred
mediaeval legends in which the Devil is overreached and made a
laughing-stock. The germ of this notion may be found in the
blinding of Polyphemos by Odysseus, which is itself a victory
of the sun-hero over the night-demon, and which curiously
reappears in a Middle-Age story narrated by Mr. Cox. "The
Devil asks a man who is moulding buttons what he may be doing;
and when the man answers that he is moulding eyes, asks him
further whether he can give him a pair of new eyes. He is told
to come again another day; and when he makes his appearance
accordingly, the man tells him that the operation cannot be
performed rightly unless he is first tightly bound with his
back fastened to a bench. While he is thus pinioned he asks
the man's name. The reply is Issi (`himself'). When the lead
is melted, the Devil opens his eyes wide to receive the deadly
stream. As soon as he is blinded, he starts up in agony,
bearing away the bench to which he had been bound; and when
some workpeople in the fields ask him who had thus treated
him, his answer is, 'Issi teggi' (`Self did it'). With a laugh
they bid him lie on the bed which he has made: 'selbst
gethan, selbst habe.' The Devil died of his new eyes, and was
never seen again."

[118] "Many amusing passages from Scotch theologians are cited
in Buckle's History of Civilization, Vol. II. p. 368. The same
belief is implied in the quaint monkish tale of "Celestinus
and the Miller's Horse." See Tales from the Gesta Romanorum,
p. 134.

In his attempts to obtain human souls the Devil is frequently
foiled by the superior cunning of mortals. Once, he agreed to
build a house for a peasant in exchange for the peasant's
soul; but if the house were not finished before cockcrow, the
contract was to be null and void. Just as the Devil was
putting on the last tile the man imitated a cockcrow and waked
up all the roosters in the neighbourhood, so that the fiend
had his labour for his pains. A merchant of Louvain once sold
himself to the Devil, who heaped upon him all manner of riches
for seven years, and then came to get him. The merchant "took
the Devil in a friendly manner by the hand and, as it was just
evening, said, 'Wife, bring a light quickly for the
gentleman.' 'That is not at all necessary,' said the Devil;
'I am merely come to fetch you.' 'Yes, yes, that I know very
well,' said the merchant, 'only just grant me the time till
this little candle-end is burnt out, as I have a few letters
to sign and to put on my coat.' 'Very well,' said the Devil,
'but only till the candle is burnt out.' 'Good,' said the
merchant, and going into the next room, ordered the
maid-servant to place a large cask full of water close to a
very deep pit that was dug in the garden. The men-servants
also carried, each of them, a cask to the spot; and when all
was done, they were ordered each to take a shovel, and stand
round the pit. The merchant then returned to the Devil, who
seeing that not more than about an inch of candle remained,
said, laughing, 'Now get yourself ready, it will soon be burnt
out.' 'That I see, and am content; but I shall hold you to
your word, and stay till it IS burnt.' 'Of course,' answered
the Devil; 'I stick to my word.' 'It is dark in the next
room,' continued the merchant, 'but I must find the great book
with clasps, so let me just take the light for one moment.'
'Certainly,' said the Devil, 'but I'll go with you.' He did
so, and the merchant's trepidation was now on the increase.
When in the next room he said on a sudden, 'Ah, now I know,
the key is in the garden door.' And with these words he ran
out with the light into the garden, and before the Devil could
overtake him, threw it into the pit, and the men and the maids
poured water upon it, and then filled up the hole with earth.
Now came the Devil into the garden and asked, 'Well, did you
get the key? and how is it with the candle? where is it?' 'The
candle?' said the merchant. 'Yes, the candle.' 'Ha, ha, ha! it
is not yet burnt out,' answered the merchant, laughing, 'and
will not be burnt out for the next fifty years; it lies there
a hundred fathoms deep in the earth.' When the Devil heard
this he screamed awfully, and went off with a most intolerable
stench."[119]

[119] Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. 11. p. 258.

One day a fowler, who was a terrible bungler and could n't hit
a bird at a dozen paces, sold his soul to the Devil in order
to become a Freischutz. The fiend was to come for him in seven
years, but must be always able to name the animal at which he
was shooting, otherwise the compact was to be nullified. After
that day the fowler never missed his aim, and never did a
fowler command such wages. When the seven years were out the
fowler told all these things to his wife, and the twain hit
upon an expedient for cheating the Devil. The woman stripped
herself, daubed her whole body with molasses, and rolled
herself up in a feather-bed, cut open for this purpose. Then
she hopped and skipped about the field where her husband stood
parleying with Old Nick. "there's a shot for you, fire away,"
said the Devil. "Of course I'll fire, but do you first tell me
what kind of a bird it is; else our agreement is cancelled,
Old Boy." There was no help for it; the Devil had to own
himself nonplussed, and off he fled, with a whiff of brimstone
which nearly suffocated the Freischutz and his good
woman.[120]

[120] Thorpe, Northern Mythology, Vol. II. p. 259. In the
Norse story of "Not a Pin to choose between them," the old
woman is in doubt as to her own identity, on waking up after
the butcher has dipped her in a tar-barrel and rolled her on a
heap of feathers; and when Tray barks at her, her perplexity
is as great as the Devil's when fooled by the Frenschutz. See
Dasent, Norse Tales, p. 199.

In the legend of Gambrinus, the fiend is still more
ingloriously defeated. Gambrinus was a fiddler, who, being
jilted by his sweetheart, went out into the woods to hang
himself. As he was sitting on the bough, with the cord about
his neck, preparatory to taking the fatal plunge, suddenly a
tall man in a green coat appeared before him, and offered his
services. He might become as wealthy as he liked, and make his
sweetheart burst with vexation at her own folly, but in thirty
years he must give up his soul to Beelzebub. The bargain was
struck, for Gambrinus thought thirty years a long time to
enjoy one's self in, and perhaps the Devil might get him in
any event; as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. Aided by
Satan, he invented chiming-bells and lager-beer, for both of
which achievements his name is held in grateful remembrance by
the Teuton. No sooner had the Holy Roman Emperor quaffed a
gallon or two of the new beverage than he made Gambrinus Duke
of Brabant and Count of Flanders, and then it was the
fiddler's turn to laugh at the discomfiture of his old
sweetheart. Gambrinus kept clear of women, says the legend,
and so lived in peace. For thirty years he sat beneath his
belfry with the chimes, meditatively drinking beer with his
nobles and burghers around him. Then Beelzebub sent Jocko, one
of his imps, with orders to bring back Gambrinus before
midnight. But Jocko was, like Swiveller's Marchioness,
ignorant of the taste of beer, never having drunk of it even
in a sip, and the Flemish schoppen were too much for him. He
fell into a drunken sleep, and did not wake up until noon next
day, at which he was so mortified that he had not the face to
go back to hell at all. So Gambrinus lived on tranquilly for a
century or two, and drank so much beer that he turned into a
beer-barrel.[121]

[121] See Deulin, Contes d'un Buveur de Biere, pp. 3-29.

The character of gullibility attributed to the Devil in these
legends is probably derived from the Trolls, or "night-folk,"
of Northern mythology. In most respects the Trolls resemble
the Teutonic elves and fairies, and the Jinn or Efreets of the
Arabian Nights; but their pedigree is less honourable. The
fairies, or "White Ladies," were not originally spirits of
darkness, but were nearly akin to the swan-maidens,
dawn-nymphs, and dryads, and though their wrath was to be
dreaded, they were not malignant by nature. Christianity,
having no place for such beings, degraded them into something
like imps; the most charitable theory being that they were
angels who had remained neutral during Satan's rebellion, in
punishment for which Michael expelled them from heaven, but
has left their ultimate fate unannounced until the day of
judgment. The Jinn appear to have been similarly degraded on
the rise of Mohammedanism. But the Trolls were always imps of
darkness. They are descended from the Jotuns, or Frost-Giants
of Northern paganism, and they correspond to the Panis, or
night-demons of the Veda. In many Norse tales they are said to
burst when they see the risen sun.[122] They eat human flesh,
are ignorant of the simplest arts, and live in the deepest
recesses of the forest or in caverns on the hillside, where
the sunlight never penetrates. Some of these characteristics
may very likely have been suggested by reminiscences of the
primeval Lapps, from whom the Aryan invaders wrested the
dominion of Europe.[123] In some legends the Trolls are
represented as an ancient race of beings now superseded by the
human race. " 'What sort of an earth-worm is this?' said one
Giant to another, when they met a man as they walked. 'These
are the earth-worms that will one day eat us up, brother,'
answered the other; and soon both Giants left that part of
Germany." " 'See what pretty playthings, mother!' cries the
Giant's daughter, as she unties her apron, and shows her a
plough, and horses, and a peasant. 'Back with them this
instant,' cries the mother in wrath, 'and put them down as
carefully as you can, for these playthings can do our race
great harm, and when these come we must budge.' " Very
naturally the primitive Teuton, possessing already the
conception of night-demons, would apply it to these men of the
woods whom even to this day his uneducated descendants believe
to be sorcerers, able to turn men into wolves. But whatever
contributions historical fact may have added to his character,
the Troll is originally a creation of mythology, like
Polyphemos, whom he resembles in his uncouth person, his
cannibal appetite, and his lack of wit. His ready gullibility
is shown in the story of "Boots who ate a Match with the
Troll." Boots, the brother of Cinderella, and the counterpart
alike of Jack the Giant-killer, and of Odysseus, is the
youngest of three brothers who go into a forest to cut wood.
The Troll appears and threatens to kill any one who dares to
meddle with his timber. The elder brothers flee, but Boots
puts on a bold face. He pulled a cheese out of his scrip and
squeezed it till the whey began to spurt out. "Hold your
tongue, you dirty Troll," said he, "or I'll squeeze you as I
squeeze this stone." So the Troll grew timid and begged to be
spared,[124] and Boots let him off on condition that he would
hew all day with him. They worked till nightfall, and the
Troll's giant strength accomplished wonders. Then Boots went
home with the Troll, having arranged that he should get the
water while his host made the fire. When they reached the hut
there were two enormous iron pails, so heavy that none but a
Troll could lift them, but Boots was not to be frightened.
"Bah!" said he. "Do you suppose I am going to get water in
those paltry hand-basins? Hold on till I go and get the spring
itself!" "O dear!" said the Troll, "I'd rather not; do you
make the fire, and I'll get the water." Then when the soup
was made, Boots challenged his new friend to an eating-match;
and tying his scrip in front of him, proceeded to pour soup
into it by the ladleful. By and by the giant threw down his
spoon in despair, and owned himself conquered. "No, no! don't
give it up yet," said Boots, "just cut a hole in your stomach
like this, and you can eat forever." And suiting the action to
the words, he ripped open his scrip. So the silly Troll cut
himself open and died, and Boots carried off all his gold and
silver.

[122] Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, No. III. and No.
XLII.

[123] See Dasent's Introduction, p. cxxxix; Campbell, Tales of
the West Highlands, Vol. IV. p. 344; and Williams, Indian Epic
Poetry, p. 10.

[124] "A Leopard was returning home from hunting on one
occasion, when he lighted on the kraal of a Ram. Now the
Leopard had never seen a Ram before, and accordingly,
approaching submissively, he said, 'Good day, friend! what may
your name be?' The other, in his gruff voice, and striking
his breast with his forefoot, said, 'I am a Ram; who are you?'
'A Leopard,' answered the other, more dead than alive; and
then, taking leave of the Ram, he ran home as fast as he
could." Bleek, Hottentot Fables, p. 24.

Once there was a Troll whose name was Wind-and-Weather, and
Saint Olaf hired him to build a church. If the church were
completed within a certain specified time, the Troll was to
get possession of Saint Olaf. The saint then planned such a
stupendous edifice that he thought the giant would be forever
building it; but the work went on briskly, and at the
appointed day nothing remained but to finish the point of the
spire. In his consternation Olaf rushed about until he passed
by the Troll's den, when he heard the giantess telling her
children that their father, Wind-and-Weather, was finishing
his church, and would be home to-morrow with Saint Olaf. So
the saint ran back to the church and bawled out, "Hold on,
Wind-and-Weather, your spire is crooked!" Then the giant
tumbled down from the roof and broke into a thousand pieces.
As in the cases of the Mara and the werewolf, the enchantment
was at an end as soon as the enchanter was called by name.

These Trolls, like the Arabian Efreets, had an ugly habit of
carrying off beautiful princesses. This is strictly in keeping
with their character as night-demons, or Panis. In the stories
of Punchkin and the Heartless Giant, the night-demon carries
off the dawn-maiden after having turned into stone her solar
brethren. But Boots, or Indra, in search of his kinsfolk, by
and by arrives at the Troll's castle, and then the dawn-nymph,
true to her fickle character, cajoles the Giant and enables
Boots to destroy him. In the famous myth which serves as the
basis for the Volsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied, the dragon
Fafnir steals the Valkyrie Brynhild and keeps her shut up in a
castle on the Glistening Heath, until some champion shall be
found powerful enough to rescue her. The castle is as hard to
enter as that of the Sleeping Beauty; but Sigurd, the Northern
Achilleus, riding on his deathless horse, and wielding his
resistless sword Gram, forces his way in, slays Fafnir, and
recovers the Valkyrie.

In the preceding paper the Valkyries were shown to belong to
the class of cloud-maidens; and between the tale of Sigurd and
that of Hercules and Cacus there is no difference, save that
the bright sunlit clouds which are represented in the one as
cows are in the other represented as maidens. In the myth of
the Argonauts they reappear as the Golden Fleece, carried to
the far east by Phrixos and Helle, who are themselves
Niblungs, or "Children of the Mist" (Nephele), and there
guarded by a dragon. In all these myths a treasure is stolen
by a fiend of darkness, and recovered by a hero of light, who
slays the demon. And--remembering what Scribe said about the
fewness of dramatic types--I believe we are warranted in
asserting that all the stories of lovely women held in bondage
by monsters, and rescued by heroes who perform wonderful
tasks, such as Don Quixote burned to achieve, are derived
ultimately from solar myths, like the myth of Sigurd and
Brynhild. I do not mean to say that the story-tellers who
beguiled their time in stringing together the incidents which
make up these legends were conscious of their solar character.
They did not go to work, with malice prepense, to weave
allegories and apologues. The Greeks who first told the story
of Perseus and Andromeda, the Arabians who devised the tale of
Codadad and his brethren, the Flemings who listened over their
beer-mugs to the adventures of Culotte-Verte, were not
thinking of sun-gods or dawn-maidens, or night-demons; and no
theory of mythology can be sound which implies such an
extravagance. Most of these stories have lived on the lips of
the common people; and illiterate persons are not in the habit
of allegorizing in the style of mediaeval monks or rabbinical
commentators. But what has been amply demonstrated is, that
the sun and the clouds, the light and the darkness, were once
supposed to be actuated by wills analogous to the human will;
that they were personified and worshipped or propitiated by
sacrifice; and that their doings were described in language
which applied so well to the deeds of human or quasi-human
beings that in course of time its primitive purport faded from
recollection. No competent scholar now doubts that the myths
of the Veda and the Edda originated in this way, for philology
itself shows that the names employed in them are the names of
the great phenomena of nature. And when once a few striking
stories had thus arisen,--when once it had been told how Indra
smote the Panis, and how Sigurd rescued Brynhild, and how
Odysseus blinded the Kyklops,--then certain mythic or
dramatic types had been called into existence; and to these
types, preserved in the popular imagination, future stories
would inevitably conform. We need, therefore, have no
hesitation in admitting a common origin for the vanquished
Panis and the outwitted Troll or Devil; we may securely
compare the legends of St. George and Jack the Giant-killer
with the myth of Indra slaying Vritra; we may see in the
invincible Sigurd the prototype of many a doughty
knight-errant of romance; and we may learn anew the lesson,
taught with fresh emphasis by modern scholarship, that in the
deepest sense there is nothing new under the sun.

I am the more explicit on this point, because it seems to me
that the unguarded language of many students of mythology is
liable to give rise to misapprehensions, and to discredit both
the method which they employ and the results which they have
obtained. If we were to give full weight to the statements
which are sometimes made, we should perforce believe that
primitive men had nothing to do but to ponder about the sun
and the clouds, and to worry themselves over the disappearance
of daylight. But there is nothing in the scientific
interpretation of myths which obliges us to go any such
length. I do not suppose that any ancient Aryan, possessed of
good digestive powers and endowed with sound common-sense,
ever lay awake half the night wondering whether the sun would
come back again.[125] The child and the savage believe of
necessity that the future will resemble the past, and it is
only philosophy which raises doubts on the subject.[126] The
predominance of solar legends in most systems of mythology is
not due to the lack of "that Titanic assurance with which we
say, the sun MUST rise";[127] nor again to the fact that the
phenomena of day and night are the most striking phenomena in
nature. Eclipses and earthquakes and floods are phenomena of
the most terrible and astounding kind, and they have all
generated myths; yet their contributions to folk-lore are
scanty compared with those furnished by the strife between the
day-god and his enemies. The sun-myths have been so prolific
because the dramatic types to which they have given rise are
of surpassing human interest. The dragon who swallows the sun
is no doubt a fearful personage; but the hero who toils for
others, who slays hydra-headed monsters, and dries the tears
of fair-haired damsels, and achieves success in spite of
incredible obstacles, is a being with whom we can all
sympathize, and of whom we never weary of hearing.

[125] I agree, most heartily, with Mr. Mahaffy's remarks,
Prolegomena to Ancient History, p. 69.

[126] Sir George Grey once told some Australian natives about
the countries within the arctic circle where during part of
the year the sun never sets. "Their astonishment now knew no
bounds. 'Ah! that must be another sun, not the same as the one
we see here,' said an old man; and in spite of all my
arguments to the contrary, the others adopted this opinion."
Grey's Journals, I. 293, cited in Tylor, Early History of
Mankind, p. 301.

[127] Max Muller, Chips, II. 96.

With many of these legends which present the myth of light and
darkness in its most attractive form, the reader is already
acquainted, and it is needless to retail stories which have
been told over and over again in books which every one is
presumed to have read. I will content myself with a weird
Irish legend, narrated by Mr. Patrick Kennedy,[128] in which
we here and there catch glimpses of the primitive mythical
symbols, as fragments of gold are seen gleaming through the
crystal of quartz.

[128] Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 255-270.

Long before the Danes ever came to Ireland, there died at
Muskerry a Sculloge, or country farmer, who by dint of hard
work and close economy had amassed enormous wealth. His only
son did not resemble him. When the young Sculloge looked about
the house, the day after his father's death, and saw the big
chests full of gold and silver, and the cupboards shining with
piles of sovereigns, and the old stockings stuffed with large
and small coin, he said to himself, "Bedad, how shall I ever
be able to spend the likes o' that!" And so he drank, and
gambled, and wasted his time in hunting and horse-racing,
until after a while he found the chests empty and the
cupboards poverty-stricken, and the stockings lean and
penniless. Then he mortgaged his farm-house and gambled away
all the money he got for it, and then he bethought him that a
few hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he
went to look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a
thimbleful of water in the mill-race, and the wheel rotten,
and the thatch of the house all gone, and the upper millstone
lying flat on the lower one, and a coat of dust and mould over
everything." So he made up his mind to borrow a horse and take
one more hunt to-morrow and then reform his habits.

As he was returning late in the evening from this farewell
hunt, passing through a lonely glen he came upon an old man
playing backgammon, betting on his left hand against his
right, and crying and cursing because the right WOULD win.
"Come and bet with me," said he to Sculloge. "Faith, I have
but a sixpence in the world," was the reply; "but, if you
like, I'll wager that on the right." "Done," said the old
man, who was a Druid; "if you win I'll give you a hundred
guineas." So the game was played, and the old man, whose right
hand was always the winner, paid over the guineas and told
Sculloge to go to the Devil with them.

Instead of following this bit of advice, however, the young
farmer went home and began to pay his debts, and next week he
went to the glen and won another game, and made the Druid
rebuild his mill. So Sculloge became prosperous again, and by
and by he tried his luck a third time, and won a game played
for a beautiful wife. The Druid sent her to his house the next
morning before he was out of bed, and his servants came
knocking at the door and crying, "Wake up! wake up! Master
Sculloge, there's a young lady here to see you." "Bedad, it's
the vanithee[129] herself," said Sculloge; and getting up in a
hurry, he spent three quarters of an hour in dressing himself.
At last he went down stairs, and there on the sofa was the
prettiest lady ever seen in Ireland! Naturally, Sculloge's
heart beat fast and his voice trembled, as he begged the
lady's pardon for this Druidic style of wooing, and besought
her not to feel obliged to stay with him unless she really
liked him. But the young lady, who was a king's daughter from
a far country, was wondrously charmed with the handsome
farmer, and so well did they get along that the priest was
sent for without further delay, and they were married before
sundown. Sabina was the vanithee's name; and she warned her
husband to have no more dealings with Lassa Buaicht, the old
man of the glen. So for a while all went happily, and the
Druidic bride was as good as she was beautiful But by and by
Sculloge began to think he was not earning money fast enough.
He could not bear to see his wife's white hands soiled with
work, and thought it would be a fine thing if he could only
afford to keep a few more servants, and drive about with
Sabina in an elegant carriage, and see her clothed in silk and
adorned with jewels.

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