204 REPORTS. 



not at all the devil of popular evangelical theology. A being 

 who may generally be found tin-potting around Torteval, with 

 half a bushel of parsnips in a wheelbarrow, is certainly not a 

 personage who is likely to be the actuating power of, and 

 responsible for, all the moral evil of the universe as we are 

 told the devil really is. 1 have never found this Guernsey 

 devil credited, for instance, with the possession of more than 

 half-a-bushel of parsnips at once — never a bushel. He is 

 evidently in a very small way of business. In the short 

 reports of the old witchcraft trials preserved at the Greffe 

 Office, the accused persons usually say that they first met the 

 devil near Torteval or St. Peter-in-the-Wood and he had 

 about half-a-bushel of parsnips which he Avas wheeling in a 

 barrow. And thus they struck up an acquaintance. This 

 devil of Guernsey folklore indeed seems to be really a survival 

 or lineal descendant of one of the forest gods of the older 

 faith. We generally find that in the case of the inevitable 

 changes that come about, the gods of the old religion become 

 the devils of the newer faith. And this is what probably 

 occurred in Guernsey. This popular Guernsey devil has very 

 little in common with the truculent demon of the Faust 

 legend, and he has still fewer of the attributes of the 

 magnificent fiend of Milton's Paradise Lost. He is altogether 

 on a lower level and is built on a smaller scale. 



There is also another question about this Guernsey devil. 

 Who was he at all ? Did the misguided dupes who gave 

 evidence or made confession under the ancient law really meet 

 some man in the country who was posing as the devil, or was 

 the whole episode nothing more than the work of their own 

 imagination ? The old forest gods were non-existent. They 

 were merely the figments of the worshippers' minds. Was this 

 traditional Guernsey devil any more substantial ? Was his 

 barrow a real barrow, and the parsnips it held, were they 

 actually edible roots ? If they were, where had they come 

 from ? And how had the so-called devil obtained them ? 

 Guernsey is not a large country, and in those days its 

 population was a mere fraction of what it is now. So that it 

 would not have been unreasonable to suppose that if a real 

 man and a real wheelbarrow had been present, this traditional 

 devil and his belongings would have been individually recog- 

 nised by some of those who are said to have thus scraped 

 acquaintance with him. But we do not hear of any recognition 

 of this kind. 



Another prevalent feature is fatalism — the strenuous 

 belief that what is to be will be and must be in spite of all 



