" The
name of _Robin_, which we met with in the confession of Alice Duke, has,
perhaps, wider associations than the woman herself dreamed of; for,
through Robin des Bois and Robin Hood, it may be another of those
scattered traces that lead us back to Woden. Probably, however, it is
only our old friend Robin Goodfellow, whose namesake Knecht Ruprecht
makes such a figure in the German fairy mythology. Possessed persons
called in higher agencies,--Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Powers; and
among the witnesses against Urbain Grandier we find the names of
Leviathan, Behemoth, Isaacarum, Belaam, Asmodeus, and Beherit, who spoke
French very well, but were remarkably poor Latinists, knowing, indeed,
almost as little of the language as if their youth had been spent in
writing Latin verses.[112] A shrewd Scotch physician tried them with
Gaelic, but they could make nothing of it.
It was only when scepticism had begun to make itself uncomfortably
inquisitive, that the Devil had any difficulty in making himself visible
and even palpable. In simpler times, demons would almost seem to have
made no inconsiderable part of the population. Trithemius tells of one
who served as cook to the Bishop of Hildesheim (one shudders to think of
the school where he had graduated as _Cordon bleu_), and who delectebatur
esse cum hominibus, loquens, interrogans, respondens familiariter
omnibus, aliquando visibiliter, aliquando invisibiliter apparens.
Pages:
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181