Chapter 33

How to call to the Devil, when one wishes to have dealings with him, we learn from a Dan. superstition (no. 148): Walk three times round the church, and the third time stand still in front of the church-door, and cry 'come out!' or whistle to him through the keyhole. That is exactly how spirits of the dead are summoned up (Superst. G, line 206 seq.). The kiss, by which homage was rendered to the devil, does not occur till we come to heretics and the later witches; it seems either copied from the secular homagium, or a parody of the christian kiss of peace during Adoration.

The devil in some stories, who brings money or corn to his friends and favourites, approximates to good-natured homesprites or elves; and in such cases nothing is said about a bond or about abjuring God. He is usually seen as a fiery dragon rushing through the air and into chimneys (Superst. I, nos. 6. 253. 520-2-3. 858). The Esthonians say, red streaks of cloud shew the dragon is flying out, the dark that he is returning with booty (Superst. M, no. 102); so the Lithuanians about the red alb and the blue (N, no. 1). In Lausitz they tell of a corn-dragon (ïitny smij) who fills his friend's thrashing floor, a milk-dragon (mlokowy smij) who purveys for the goodwife's dairy, and a penny-dragon (peneïny smij) who brings wealth. The way to get hold of such a one is the following: you find a threepenny piece lying somewhere today; if you pick it up, there'll be a sixpenny piece in the same place tomorrow, and so the value of what you find will keep rising till you come to a dollar. If you are so greedy as to take the dollar too, you get the dragon into your house. He demands respectful treatment and good fare (like a homesprite); if goodman or goodwife neglect it, he sets the house on fire over thier heads. The only way to get rid of him is to sell the dollar, but below its price, and so the buyer is aware and silently consents. (52) It is the same with the alraun and the gallows-mannikin (p. 513n.). If given away, these breeding-dollars always come back (Superst. I, no. 781).

But nowhere does the Devil savour so much of heathenism as where he has stept into the place of the old giant (pp. 999. 1005. 1023-4). Both of them the thunder-god pursues with his hammer; as the sleeping giant is struck by Thôr's miölnir, so is the devil by the blacksmith's hammer (p. 1011); (53) the devil with three golden hairs (KM. no. 29) has already been likened to the ON. Ugarthilocus (p. 244). And more especially is he giant-like, where the people credit him with stupendous feats of building and stone-throwing: here he puts on completely the burly, wrathful, spiteful and loutish nature of the iötunn (pp. 534. 543-54); stupid devil is used like stupid giant (p. 528). The building of christian churches is hateful to him, and he tries to reduce them to ruins; but his schemes are sure to be foiled by some higher power or by the superior craft of man. Like the giant, he often shews himself a skilful architect, and undertakes to build a castle, bridge or church, only bargaining for the soul of him who shall first set foot in the new building.

What was once told of the giant is now told of the devil, but a harsher crueller motive usually takes the place of milder ones. The giant in building has commonly some sociable neighbourly purpose (pp. 535-54), the devil wishes merely to do mischief and entrap souls. Norway has many legends of giant's bridges. The jutul loves a huldra on the other side of the water; to be able to visit her dryshod, he sets about building a bridge, but the rising sun hinders its completion (Faye 15. 16). Another time two jutuls undertake the work to facilitate their mutual visits. Over the Main too the giants propose to build a bridge (p. 547), though the motive is no longer told. When the Devil builds the bridge, he is either under compultion from men (Thiele 1, 18), or is hunting for a soul (Deut. sag. nos. 185. 336); but he has to put up with the cock or chamois which is purposely made to run first across the new bridge. (54) A Swiss shepherd in a narrow glen, finding he could not drive his flock over the brook, wished the devil would bridge it over for him; instantly the fiend appeared and offered to do the work on condition that the first thing that crossed would be his: it was a goat that led the way (Tobler 214a). In one French story, having reserved for himself every thirteenth creature that should cross the bridge, he has already clutched numbers of men and beasts, when a holy man, being a thirteenth, confronts and conquers him (Mém. de l'acad. celt. 5, 384). (55) The church-building devils also have bargained for the soul of the first that should enter, they make a wolf scamper through the door (Deut. sag. no. 186); he in a rage flies up through the roof, and leaves a gap that no mason can fill up (the last incident is in nos. 181-2). On the mountains he builds mills, and destroys them again (nos. 183. 195). (56) His wager with the architect of Cologne cathedral is remarkable: that he will lead a rivulet from Treves to Cologne, (57) before the other can finish his church (no. 204). In the same way a giantess wagers to throw a stone bridge over a strait of the sea, before St. Olaf shall have brought his church-building to an end; but the bridge was not half done, when the bells pealed out from the sacred pile. She in vexation hurled the stones she was building with at the churchtower, but never once could she hit it; then she tore off one of her legs, and flung it at the steeple. Some accounts say she knocked it down, others that she missed; the leg fell in a bog, which is still named Giögraputten (Faye p. 119). Bell-ringing is hated by dwarfs (p. 459), giants (Faye p. 7. 17. Thiele 1, 42), and devils, (58) who keep retiring before it: these legends all signalize the triumph of Christianity. Out of some churches the devil drags the bells away (Deut. sag. 202): at first he does not know what the new structure is for, and is pacified by evasive answers (no. 181); but when it stands complete, he tries to batter it down with stones. Devil's stones are either those he has dropt as he bore them through the air for building, or those he carried up the hills when undoing some work he had begun, or those he has thrown at a church (nos. 196-8-9. 200. 477). Scandinavian stories of stones hurled by the giant race at the first christian church are in Thiele 2, 20. 126-7. Faye pp. 16. 18; a Shetland one in Hilbert p. 433. Frequently such fragments of rock have the fingers of the devil's hands imprinted on them; a stone on which he has slept shews the mark of his ear, Deut. sag. 191. At Limburg near Türkheim in the Palatinate is a stone, which the Evil one was bringing to fling at the church; but being only a young devil, he tired of the heavy load, and lay down to sleep on it; his figure printed itself on the rock, and he overslept the time during which the throw ought to have been made. In the vale of Durbach, on a hill of the Stollenwald, stand eleven large stones; the twelfth and largest one the devil was carrying off, to batter down the Wendels-kirk with; he had got across the Rappenloch with it, and halfway up the Schiehald, when he laid his burden down, and had a rest. But after that he could no longer lift the heavy stone, its pointed end stuck fast in the mountain, and you may still see the round hole made in it by the devil's shoulder-bone. So the church was spared, but the devil still drives about the place now and then with six he-goats, and at midnight you hear the crack of his whip (Mone's Anz. 3, 91).--- Devil's Dikes (59) are explained by the people as built by the Devil to mark the boundary of his kingdom (Deut. sag. 188); he is imagined then as the ruler of a neighbouring and hostile kingdom (a Iötunheimr), nay, as disputing with God the possession of the earth, till at last they agree to divide it, and the Devil builds the boundary-wall (no. 189). But these devil's walls and devil's ditches alike gather additional significance for us. The people call the Roman fortifications in Bavaria, Swabia, Franconia and the Wetterau, not only devil's walls, but pfalgraben, pohlgraben, pfahltöbel (-mounds), and even simply pfal, pl. pfäle, which is explained as our pfahl, pale or stake, a word early borrowed from Lat. pälus (Graff 3, 331). But these walls have no stakes in them, only stones and bricks; it seems more correct to trace the name to our old friend Phol; the form Wulsgraben, which occurs in the Wetterau (Dieffenb. Wett. p. 142) and is merely a softened pronunciation of Phulsgraben, is clearly in favour of it; and we have seen several instances in which Phol, Pfal, Pful interchange. What is more, in various places the devil's wall is also called the schweingraben (swinedike), and a remarkable Swabian folktale says it was scratched up and rooted up out of the ground in the night by a chanticleer and a hog. (60) Does not that unmistakably point to pfol the boar (p. 996)? I have scarcely a doubt that popular tradition and local names will yield some further confirmations. On this devil's wall the devil is said to come driving on Christmas night (Abh. der Münchn. acad. 1, 23, conf. 38), as nearly all the heathen gods are astir from then to Twelfthday. Nor ought we to overlook, that in such districts we also come across teufelsgraben, dükersgraben, e.g. in Lower Hesse, where Roman walls never came: any rocks and walls that strike the eye are traced back by popular imagination either to giants and devils, or to Romans (p. 85) and Hellenes (p. 534). One piece of rock the Devil puts on as a hat, to shew his enormous strength; then comes the Saviour, and slips the same on his little finger (Deut. sag. no. 205), just as Thôrr keeps outdoing the giant (p. 545): doubtless a fiction of primitive times. But when footprints of the Saviour and the Devil are pointed out on high cliffs, from which the tempter shewed and offered to his Lord the landscape invitingly spread out below (DS. 184. 192), that seems to be founded on the Bible. (61) Projecting crags are called devil's pulpits (Stald. 2, 85, känzeli, fluhkanzel), whence he is said to have preached to the assembled people (DS. 190. Bechst. 3, 222); perhaps in olden times a heathen priest stood there, or a divine image? or are they simply ancient Woden's hills? The devil's beds may be placed by the side of the Brunhilde beds and the like (see Suppl.).

Here I will make room for a few detailed narratives. The Devil is represented as a masterful giant who will have his tithe and toll: sometimes he appropriates the first who crosses the bridge, at other times the last. So from the wheel of fortune (p. 868) he every year made the last pupil drop off, (62) and took him to himself. A Spanish legend has it, that there was a cave at Salamanca, where he constantly maintained seven scholars, on condition that when they had finished their studies, the seventh should pay the lawing. Once, when a set of students were taking their leave, and the last was ordered to stay, he pointed to his shadow, saying 'he is the last!' So the devil had to take the shadow, and the pupil escaping remained without a shadow all his life. Jamieson gives the details of a Scotch superstition: 'Losing one's shadow arrives to such as are studying the art of necromancy. When a class of students have made a certain progress in their mystic studies, they are obliged to run through a subterraneous hall, where the devil literally catches the hindmost in the race, unless he crosses the hall so speedily that the Arch-enemy can only apprehend his shadow. In the latter case the person of the sage never after throws any shade, and those who have thus lost their shadow always prove the best magicians.' The devil is cheated of his prey, and has to put up with the bare shadow, like the dishonest man in the sham penance (RA. 678) (63) (see Suppl.).

That significant Norrland story of the giant Wind and Weather (p. 548), whose connexion with the Devil is placed beyond a doubt by the observations on pp. 1000-14, is related by Thiele 1, 45 in the following shape. Esbern Snare wished to build Kallundborg church, but his means not sufficing, a trold offered his assistance on condition that, when the church was finished, Esbern should be able to tell the trold's name, or else forfeit to him his heart and eyes. The work went rapidly forward, and only half a pillar was wanting, when Esbern began to be alarmed, because he knew not yet the trold's name. Anxious and sad he wandered in the fields, when at the top of a rock he heard the voice of a trold-wife: 'hush, hush, my child, tomorrow comes thy father Fin bringing thee Esbern Snare's heart and eyes to play with.' Esbern came home comforted; he stept into the church, the trold was just bringing up the stone shaft that was still wanting, when Esbern hailed him by the name of Fin! In a rage the trold shot up into the air with the half-pillar: that is why the church stands on three pillars and a half only. Finnr is the name of a dwarf in the Edda. ---The German legend on p. 549 is told thus in Lower Hesse: A peasant on the Ellenbach (by the Sandershäuser mt. near Cassel) had so much corn to gather in, that he knew not how to house it all: his barn was to small, and he had not the money to build a larger. As, thoughtful and anxious, he paced his fields, a gray old mannikin stept up to him, and asked the reason of his sadness. When the peasant had told him the plight he was in, Graymannikin smiled and said: 'a barn I would doubtless build for thee, so roomy that thou canst garner all thy crop therein, and ere tomorrow's dawn shall it stand ready in thy yard, if thou wilt make over to me whatsoever hidden property thou ownest.' (64) The peasant thought of treasures underground, which could do him no good till they were lifted, and he closed with the stranger's offer: not till he turned to leave did he notice a cow's foot and horse's foot peep out from under the gray coat. He went home, and told his wife what had happened to him in the field: 'my God! what hast thou done? I have a child unborn, and thou hast signed it away to the Evil one.' The moment it was dark, a tremendous din arose in the farmyard, carters, carpenters, masons working away together, the Devil as architect directing the whole business, which advanced with incredible speed: a few hours more, and the barn stood ready built, the roof was thatched, the walls filled up, only a square or two stood open in the gable. Then the cunning wife, dressed in her husband's clothes, crept across the yard to the henhouse, clapt her hands, (65) and mimicked the crow of a cock, and all the cocks set up a crowing one after the other. The evil spirits scuttled away with a great uproar, leaving but one gablesquare of the new barn empty: one carter had just come up with a large stone drawn by four chestnuts, when the Devil caught him up and smashed him, cart and steeds and all, against the barn; his figure was printed on the same stone for a remembrance, and may be seen there now. The barn-gable no human hand has ever been able to close up; what was built in by day would always fall out again by night. (66)



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