749 



Demons with specialised function* exist in myth- 

 ology everywhere, as tin- Japanese <ni, wlio bring 

 mi winds, themselves living at the centre of the 

 st. inn ; the Chinese air-dragons, whose battle* 

 bring on watersjiouts ; the demons of floods in old 

 Kgvptian and Akkadian mythology; the spectres 

 and phantom-, that infest tin- sea; the nixies of 

 northern Kurope, ami the kelpii - ol Scotland, who 

 haunt pools to drown unwary travellers, and natu- 

 rally hate bridge*, although elsewhere many bridges 

 ;i> \\i-ll as other superhuman works have been 

 erected, usually in miraculously short periods of 

 time, by demons, often at the command of powerful 

 musicians like Michael Scott. Sometimes the devil 

 even consents to build a church for the reward of 

 the sunl ut the first that enters it. Others again 

 are those sirens who, by their unearthly beauty or 

 the charm of their singing, draw on unwary youths 

 to their ruin ; most famous of these, the romantic 

 Lorelei of the Rhine. Again, particular animals, 

 chiefly those with power to harm man, are favourite 

 hosts for demons to inhabit, especially the serpent, 

 but also the cat, the hedgehog, the hare, the fox, 

 the he-goat, the raven, the wolf the old Norse 

 l-'enris, and the dog, especially if black in colour, 

 like the dog in Faust. The madness of dogs, with 

 its peculiar horror, itself opens up a strange chapter 

 in the history of demonology. 



One of the most systematic of demonologies is that 

 elaborated by the Moslem theologians. The Jinn 

 (sing. Jinnee) were created two thousand years 

 before Adam, but sinned against God and were 

 degraded from their original high estate. The 

 greatest among them was II. lees (Eblis), who was 

 cast out by Allah for refusing to worship Adam as 

 made of earth, he himself having been formed of 

 smokeless fire. The Sheytiins form his host ; other 

 species of subordinate fiends are the Jann, the 

 least powerful, also 'Efreets (Afrits) and Marids, 

 the last the most powerful. Eminent among the 

 evil Jinn are the five sons of Iblees Teer, who 

 brings about calamities, losses, and injuries ; El- 

 Aawar, who encourages debauchery ; Sot, who 

 suggests lies ; Diisim, who causes hatred between 

 man and wife ; and Zelemboor, who presides over 

 places of traffic. Inferior demons are the Ghoul, 

 often in human form and devouring the bodies 

 of the dead like the Russian werewolves ; the 

 Seal. th. found in forests ; the Delhiin, living in 

 islands; and the Shikk, shaped like a human being 

 halved lengthwise. The Jinn assume various 

 shapes, sometimes as men of enormous size and 

 portentous hideousness. They live chiefly on the 

 mountains of Kaf, which encompass the whole 

 earth, and their evil influence may be averted by 

 talismans and invocations, and pre-eminently wise 

 magicians like Solomon may command their ser- 

 vices. They consist of forty troops, each troop 

 containing six hundred thousand. See chapter it. 

 of Lane's Arabian Society in the Middle Ages 

 (edited by Stanley Lane-Poole, 1883). 



The subject of dualism, or the division of all the 

 invisible powers into two great armies of good and 

 evil demons, ranged under the supreme impersona- 

 tions of good and evil, will be discussed under 

 ZOROASTER, and here it is sufficient to say that 

 it modified tha whole later Jewish and Talmud ic 

 demonology, and reappeared in the Manicluean 

 heresy. To it is due the distinction between the 

 demon and the devil, a notion which seems funda- 

 mental to the modern moral sense, but was foreign 

 to the earlier demonology, according to which all 

 the specially malignant qualities and the love of 

 evil for its own sake lecome characteristic of the 

 latter. The Vritra and the other night-powers, 

 the Panis, of the Vedic hymns, are as yet hardly 

 more than personifications of merely physical evil, 

 not inherently and absolutely wicked ; while the 



l.-.ki of the ancient Scandinavian*, their nearest 

 approximation to a per*onilication of evil, wan 

 rather a demigod than a devil, not cwientialiy 

 hostile to the other deities, although he workM 

 them mischief enough; and the four archdemoriM 

 of the Kalihins, Samael, A/a/el, Awu-l, and Mac- 

 cathiel, seem to have been originally nothing 

 more than personifications of the element* as 

 energies of the deity. Even the name Lucifer 

 ( ' the light-bearer ' ), the fallen angel of the morn- 

 ing star, tits ill with a conception of a devil utterly 

 and hopelessly evil. The widely-spread belief tlmt 

 demons are lame accords well with a Bup|Mjsed fall 

 from heaven and an original state of innocence. It 

 is not a little striking at anyrate to find the game 

 characteristic in Hephaistos, Wayland the Smith, 

 and the Persian Ashum the Asmodeus of the 

 Book of Tobit, the ' Diahle Boiteux ' of Le Sage. 

 The sootiness of his abode and his blackness of 

 colour are persistent characteristics, although, 

 indeed, some West African negroes have a 

 white devil. The usual cloven feet of the devil 

 in European folk-tales, often the last mark of 

 identification, when even the horns and the 

 tail are hidden, is a reminiscence of the Greek 

 satyr and the forest-sprites of old Teutonic and 

 other folklore. The ugliness of the medieval 

 representations of the devil in religious art, as 

 may be seen in the fantastic gargoyles of many 

 churches, was but a part of the early church s 

 policy of degradation to which the native deities 

 were subjected, and from which sprung the 

 medieval belief that the various gods of the old 

 heathen world were the devils or degraded angola 

 of Scripture. This notion is familiar to readers 

 of Paradise Lost, although Milton makes an in- 

 genious poetic use of it that is all his own. And 

 even the medieval devil, with all his terror, had 

 strange limitations to his power, especially per- 

 haps in the folklore of the north. He is often 

 ludicrously outwitted, and his machinations foiled 

 by some obvious enough device or verbal quibble. 

 It is not merely the weakest saint upon his knees 

 that can kittle his infernal schemes, but Mime 

 country-fellow who beats him at his own weapons, 

 and whom afterwards he will have in hell at no 

 price. The old Scotch notion of Satan as grown so 

 much the more dangerous from the accumulated 

 wickedness and wisdom of six thousand years is 

 hopelessly inconsistent with the archfiend of Norse 

 folklore. 



The early Christian idea of hell, the altode of 

 the demons, owed many of its features to the Jew- 

 ish Gehenna, with its 'perpetual ij re) the horror of 

 its sacrifices, and its loathsome worm ; and the 

 characteristics of Moloch and other primitive fire- 

 gods became associated with the devil, degraded 

 from a fire-god to a mere |H>wcrful spirit. The 

 Jinn of Arabian mythology, who are slaves of 

 the lamp and ascend as clouds of smoke, serve also 

 to show how fundamental was the notion of a fire- 

 fiend which jwssed. though under degraded form, 

 into Christian theology. Consistent with this is 

 the widespread l>elief in Europe that the devil can-, 

 not touch or cross running water, of which po-tic 

 use is admirably made in the magnificent phan- 

 tasy of Tarn o 'Mntntcr. Again, the struggle be- 

 tween Balder and the deadly power* of winter in 

 the Norse mythology was spiritualised and ampli- 

 fied into Christ con<iiieiing Death and Hell and 

 releasing the spirits from prison : and the old north- 

 ern ideas of wintry cold personified into a powerful 

 and malignant demon, under new influences |a*sed 

 to swell the attributes of the Christian devil, whore 

 dreary abode provided those torments of frost as 

 well as fire familiar to readers of Dante. Herein is 

 the origin of the folklore notion that the home of 

 the demons was the north, and hence the inveterate 



