the devil in this story was not wholly unintentional, as the author
believes. While Satan cannot be said to be "one of those who take to
the ministry mostly," he often likes to slip into priestly robes. In
the "Temptation of Jesus" by Lucas van Leyden the devil is habited as
a monk with a pointed cowl.
In the comparison of a soul with a shadow there is a reminiscence of
Adalbert von Chamisso, whose _Peter Schlemihl_ (1814) sells his shadow
to the devil. In his story _The Fisherman and His Soul_ Oscar Wilde
considers the shadow of the body as the body of the soul.
That the devils in hell eat the damned consigned there for punishment
is also in accord with mediaeval tradition. This idea probably is of
Oriental origin. The seven Assyrian evil spirits have a predilection
for human flesh and blood. Ghouls and vampires belong to this class of
demons.
The devil's pitchfork is not the forked sceptre of Pluto supplemented
by another tine, as is commonly assumed. It is the ancient sign of
fertility, which is still used as a fertility charm by the Hindus in
India and the Zuñi and Aztec Indians of North America and Mexico. A
related symbol is the trident of Poseidon or Neptune. This symbol was
recently carried in a children's May Day parade through Central Park
in New York.
THE PRINTER'S DEVIL
The term "Printer's Devil" is usually accounted for by the fact that
Aldus Manutius, the great Venetian printer, employed in his printing
shop (about 1485) a black slave, who was popularly thought to be an
imp of Satan. This expression may have a deeper significance. It may
owe its origin to the fact that Fust, the inventor of the printing
press, was believed to have connections with the Evil One. It will be
remembered that during the Middle Ages and, in Catholic countries,
even for a long time afterwards every discovery of science, every
invention of material benefit to man, was believed to have been
secured by a compact with the devil. Our ancestors deemed the human
mind incapable, without the aid of the Evil One, of producing anything
beyond their own comprehension. The red letters which Fust used at the
close of his earliest printed volumes to give his name, with the place
and date of publication, were interpreted in Paris as indications of
the diabolical origin of the works so easily produced by him. (M. D.
Conway, _Demonology and Devil-Lore_.) Sacred days, as is well known,
are printed in the Catholic calendar with red letters, and the devil
has also employed them in books of magic. This is but another instance
of the mimicry by "God's Ape" of the sanctities of the Church.
In the infernal economy, where a strict division of labour prevails,
the printer's devil is the librarian of hell. The books over which he
has charge must be as numerous as the sands on the sea-shore. For
nearly every book written without priestly command was associated in
the good old days with the devil. The assertion that Satan hates
nothing so much as writing or printer's ink apparently is a very great
calumny. He has often even been accused of stealing manuscripts in
order to prevent their publication. The prince of darkness naturally
rather shuns than courts inquiry. On one occasion Joseph Görres, the
defender of Catholicism, complained that the devil, provoked by his
interference in Satanic affairs (he is the author of _Die christliche
Mystik_, which is a rich source for diabolism, diabolical possession
and exorcism), had stolen one of his manuscripts; it was, however,
found some time afterwards in his bookcase, and the devil was
completely exonerated.
The concluding paragraph of this story is especially interesting in
the light of the present agitation for unbound books and a eulogy of
the old Franklin Square Library.
THE DEVIL'S MOTHER-IN-LAW
BY FERNÁN CABALLERO
Fernán Caballero is the pseudonym of Mrs. Cecilia Böhl von Faber,
Marchioness de Arco-Hermoso, who was a Swiss by birth, daughter of the
literary historian Johann Böhl von Faber, the Johannes of Campe's
_Robinson_ (1779). Her father initiated her early into Spanish
literature, which he interpreted for her in the spirit of the Romantic
movement of those early days. The interest in mediaeval traditions,
which she owes to this early training, increased when, later, she went
to Catholic Spain. The charm of her popular Andalusian tales consists
in the fact that she fully shares with the Catholic peasants of that
province an implicit faith in the truth of these mediaeval legends. In
her stories we find perhaps the purest expression of mediaevalism in
modern times. Fernán Caballero gradually drifted to the extreme Right
in all questions of religion, art and life. She hated every liberal
expression in matters of faith or art with the fanaticism of a
Torquemada. This author not only shared the somewhat general Catholic
view that all Protestants were eternally damned, but she naïvely
believed that every son of Israel had a tail (Julian Schmidt).
The story of woman's triumph over the Devil is well characteristic of
the Land of the Blessed Lady, as Andalusia is commonly called.
The legend of a devil imprisoned in a phial is also found in the work
of the Spaniard Luis Velez de Guevara called _El Diablo cojuelo_
(1641), from whom Alain Le Sage borrowed both title and plot for his
novel _Le Diable boiteux_ (1707). Asmodeus, liberated from a bottle,
into which he had been confined by a magician, entertains his
deliverer with the secret sights of a big city at midnight, by
unroofing the houses of the Spanish capital and showing him the life
that was going on in them. The legend was introduced into Spain from
the East by the Moors and finally acclimated to find a place in local
traditions. From that country it spread over the whole of Europe. The
Asiatics believed that by abstinence and special prayers evil spirits
could be reduced into obedience and confined in black bottles. The
tradition forms a part of the Solomonic lore, and is frequently told
in esoteric works. In the cabalistic book _Vinculum Spirituum_, which
is of Eastern origin, it is said that Solomon discovered, by means of
a certain learned book, the valuable secret of inclosing in a bottle
of black glass three millions of infernal spirits, with seventy-two of
their kings, of whom Beleh was the chief, Beliar (_alias_ Belial) the
second, and Asmodeus the third. Solomon afterwards cast this bottle
into a deep well near Babylon. Fortunately for the contents, the
Babylonians, hoping to find a treasure in the well, descended into it,
broke the bottle, and freed the demons (cf. also _The Little Key of
Rabbi Solomon, containing the Names, Seals and Characters of the 72
Spirits with whom he held converse, also the Art Almadel of Rabbi
Solomon, carefully copied by "Raphael,"_ London, 1879). This legend is
also found in the tale of the Fisherman and the Djinn in the _Arabian
Nights_, which was also treated by the German poet Klopstock in his
poem "Wintermärchen" (1776).
The devil, as it is said in this story, has a mortal hatred of the
sound of bells. The origin of ringing the church bells was, according
to Sir James Frazer, to drive away devils and witches. The devil in
Poe's story "The Devil in the Belfry" (1839) was, indeed, very
courageous in invading the belfry.
The concluding part of the story is identical with the Machiavellian
tale of Belphagor.
This tale of the Devil's mother-in-law first appeared in the volume
_Cuentos y poesias populares Andaluces_ (Seville, 1859), which was
translated the same year into French by Germond de Lavigne under the
title _Nouvelles andalouses_. An English translation under the title
_Spanish Fairy Tales_ appeared in 1881. This particular story was
rendered again into English two years later and included in _Tales
from Twelve Tongues_, translated by a British Museum Librarian
[Richard Garnett?], London, 1883.
THE GENEROUS GAMBLER
BY CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE
This worshipper and singer of Satan shared his American _confrère's_
predilection for the devil. He found his models in the diabolical
scenes of Edgar Allan Poe, whom he interpreted to the Latin world.
"Baudelaire," said Théophile Gautier, his master and friend, "had a
singular prepossession for the devil as a tempter, in whom he saw a
dragon who hurried him into sin, infamy, crime, and perversity." To
Baudelaire, the trier of men's souls, the Tempter, was as real a
person as he was to Job. He believed that the devil had a great deal
to do with the direction of human destinies. "C'est le Diable qui
tient les fils qui nous remuent!" Men are mere puppets in the hands of
the devil. "Baudelaire's motto," as Mr. James Huneker has well
remarked, "might be the reverse of Browning's lines: The Devil is in
his heaven. All's wrong with the world."
Baudelaire's devil is a dandy and a boulevardier with wings. Each
author, it has been said, creates the devil in his own image.
The greatest boon which Satan could offer Baudelaire was to free him
from that great modern monster, _Ennui_, which selects as its prey the
most highly gifted natures. The boredom of life--this was, indeed, as
this unhappy poet admits, the source of all his maladies and of all
his miseries. He called it the "foulest of vices" and hoped to escape
from it "by dreaming of the superlative emotional adventure, by
indulging in infinite, indeterminate desire" (Irving Babbit). His
preface to the _Flowers of Evil_, in which he addresses the reader,
ends with the following statement in regard to the nature of this
modern beast of prey: "Among the jackals, the panthers, the hounds,
the apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents--the yelling,
howling, growling, grovelling monsters which form the foul menagerie
of our vices--there is one which is the most foul, the most wicked,
the most unclean of all. This vice, although it uses neither
extravagant gestures nor makes a great outcry, would willingly make a
ruin of the earth, and swallow up all the world in a yawn. This is
_Ennui!_ who, with his eye moistened by an involuntary tear, dreams of
scaffolds while smoking his hookah. Thou knowest him, this delicate
monster, hypocritical reader, my like, my brother!"
In Gorky's story "The Devil" the devil himself suffers from _ennui_.
But Baudelaire believed he had good reason to doubt Satan's word, and,
therefore, prayed to the Lord to make the devil keep his promise to
him. He had little faith in the father of lies. In his book called
_Artificial Paradises_ (1860) Baudelaire expressed the thought that
the devil would say to the eaters of hashish, the smokers of opium, as
he did in the olden days to our first parents, "If you taste of the
fruit, you will be as the gods," and that the devil no more kept his
word with them than he did with Adam and Eve, for the next day, the
god, tempted, weakened, enervated, descended even lower than the
beast.
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, Assyria, Greece and Egypt. The Assyrian god
was often associated 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 Gérard 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
Ménard's _Le Diable au café_ 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'être parvenu à se faire nier.) Baudelaire's disciple J. K.
Huysmans similarly expresses in his novel _Là-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 âme
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 title of "Le Diable" in the
_Revue du Dix-Neuvième Siècle_ of June, 1866, and was finally included
in _Poèmes en Prose_. This story has also been translated into English
by Joseph T. Shipley.
THE THREE LOW MASSES
A CHRISTMAS STORY
BY ALPHONSE DAUDET
Daudet and Maupassant furnish the best proof of the assertion 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 Père 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 "God 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 hell where the
tasks are carefully parcelled out among the thousands of imps, the
church has been assigned 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 hell 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 Mass 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 associated 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
passion subject to the embrace of any other mortal or immortal.
Reference is made by the author to Albert Réville'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 hell is paved with good intentions. _An
averia carrucae capta in vetito 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 Belzébuth, 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 shore of the Red Sea in Egypt, saw Satan carrying a bag full of
damned souls on his back. The heart of this saint was filled with
compassion 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 Woodcock, 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 god 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 MAUPASSANT
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
god-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 Rückert ("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 Maupassant
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.
The devil is erroneously represented in this story as very lazy.
Industry, it has been said, is the great Satanic virtue. "If we were
all as diligent and as conscientious as the devil," observed an old
Scotch woman to her minister, "it wad be muckle better for us."