Bodin assumes the
identity of the Devil with Pan, and in the popular mythology both of
Kelts and Teutons there were certain hairy wood-demons called by the
former _Dus_ and by the latter _Scrat_. Our common names of _Deuse_ and
_Old Scratch_ are plainly derived from these, and possibly _Old Harry_ is
a corruption of _Old Hairy_. By Latinization they became Satyrs. Here, at
any rate, is the source of the cloven hoof. The belief in the Devil's
appearing to his worshippers as a goat is very old. Possibly the fact
that this animal was sacred to Thor, the god of thunder, may explain it.
Certain it is that the traditions of Vulcan, Thor, and Wayland[104]
converged at last in Satan. Like Vulcan, he was hurled from heaven, and
like him he still limps across the stage in Mephistopheles, though
without knowing why. In Germany, he has a horse's and not a cloven
foot,[105] because the horse was a frequent pagan sacrifice, and
therefore associated with devil-worship under the new dispensation. Hence
the horror of hippophagism which some French gastronomes are striving to
overcome. Everybody who has read "Tom Brown," or Wordsworth's Sonnet on a
German stove, remembers the Saxon horse sacred to Woden. The raven was
also his peculiar bird, and Grimm is inclined to think this the reason
why the witch's familiar appears so often in that shape.
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