It is true that
our _Old Nick_ is derived from _Nikkar_, one of the titles of that
divinity, but the association of the Evil One with the raven is older,
and most probably owing to the ill-omened character of the bird itself.
Already in the apocryphal gospel of the "Infancy," the demoniac Son of
the Chief Priest puts on his head one of the swaddling-clothes of Christ
which Mary has hung out to dry, and forthwith "the devils began to come
out of his mouth and to fly away as _crows_ and serpents."
It will be noticed that the witches underwent a form of baptism. As the
system gradually perfected itself among the least imaginative of men, as
the superstitious are apt to be, they could do nothing better than
describe Satan's world as in all respects the reverse of that which had
been conceived by the orthodox intellect as Divine. Have you an
illustrated Bible of the last century? Very good. Turn it upside down,
and you find the prints on the whole about as near nature as ever, and
yet pretending to be something new by a simple device that saves the
fancy a good deal of trouble. For, while it is true that the poetic fancy
plays, yet the faculty which goes by that pseudonyme in prosaic minds
(and it was by such that the details of this Satanic commerce were pieced
together) is hard put to it for invention, and only too thankful for any
labor-saving contrivance whatsoever.
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