MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY DEMONOLOGY AND ENGLISH FOLK-LORE [Lectures by Dr. Moncure D. Conway, editor, author, clergyman, sometime minister of the South Place Ethical Society, London, England (born in Stafford County, Virginia, March 17, 1832; ————————), delivered in Masonic Temple, New York City, during the lecture season of 1875. These lectures were of a series treating Demonology, Ancient Fable, and English Folk-Lore, and the origin and present condition of Oriental Religions, which Dr. Conway repeated in various places.] LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:-An English lady said to a friend of mine, both being mothers of families, "Do you make your children bow their heads whenever they hear mentioned the name of the devil? I do. I think it is safer." It is curious to find this respect for Satan cropping up among Christian families, though devel (two e's) is the gypsy name for God. Lucifer means light-bearer, the morning-star; and many demonic names agree with our fables of devils fallen from a bright abode. In early ages this fable of rebellious spirits falling out of heaven was taken in a literal way. Jupiter was believed to have thrown Vulcan from heaven. He took nine days in falling, and was lamed by the fall. It was in that way that Mephistopheles also got his lameness. We have to deal with deities if we would find the origin of demons. In the elaborate contrivances in nature for good and for evil, primitive man felt himself surrounded by contrarious gods, as we feel surrounded by diverse laws. We have long taken gods and goddesses out of the laws of nature; science has taught us how to unmask them, and their masks now belong to the mythology of Copyright, 1901, by A. C. Butters. races. Having done their part in investing each phase of nature with a sentiment, they remain now as records of our own primitive history,-what you and I did in the ages when we were sacrificing or sacrificed. In the earliest personifications of nature, no devil was ever conceived. No malignant spirit was thought of. The forces of nature, and their personifications, were never thought of as good or evil, but simply as sometimes. afflicting and sometimes benefiting men. The reason why we find no devils in primitive books is because no devils were needed, the gods being amply equal to any evil doings that had to be gotten up. [Laughter.] Even when this happy family of gods was broken up there was as yet no notion of a devil. It is of importance to bear in mind the mythological distinction between devil and demon. A devil is evil for the sake of being evil, does harm for the sake of doing harm. A demon is simply a poor, wandering being, whose harm is incidental to the satisfaction of his own pressing necessities. He is like the pitiful shark, impelled by insatiable hunger. The demons were ghosts suffering from cold, heat, hunger, thirst, and the way to deal with them was to offer them what they needed. When distinction between demons and deities began, deities represented the pure sky, sunlight, air; demons the black cloud, storm, lightning, all horrible and terrible things in nature, and the obstacles men had to encounter. And, indeed, by gathering together the chief demons, we can find, stage by stage, the main difficulties with which man had to contend in his struggle for existence. First of all, there was hunger. In every part of the earth, the chief struggle of man was for his daily bread. He had to get his fish in the sea, animals in the forests, birds in the air, which he saw all around him living by the same avocation; and there seemed to be a spirit of hunger abroad. There seemed to be a hunger principle in the universe and at the same time the resources of nature were so rare, the animals, fishes, and birds so hard to get, that he imagined there was an invisible being similarly voracious who wanted the fishes and cattle for himself. There is an African tribe whose representation of their devil is a great stomach. It has two claws to hold its prey and a mouth to swallow it, but otherwise nothing but a stomach; and that is a type of half the demons. It is the ghoul that makes the Arab shudder on the desert, and it is the vampire, which in superstition takes many forms. Only last year, a man absolutely had the body of his daughter taken up and the heart burned because it was believed that she was drawing the whole family to the grave with her, whereas they were all dying of consumption as she had died. The race has been haunted by this demon that “goeth about seeking whom it may devour." Everything in nature that seemed to swallow up something was regarded as one of the voracious demons. If a village was engulfed by an earthquake, if the sun was eclipsed, it was a demon's work. The English Government sent an expedition to India to observe the recent solar eclipse. When the officers had arranged the instruments on the morning of the eclipse, the natives gathered a large pile of brushwood, and when the eclipse began they lit the brush, and screamed at the top of their voices. They thought the sun would be devoured unless they frightened off the Swallower. The officers, as the smoke rose up, saw that the atmosphere would presently be filled with it, and that the object of the expedition might be defeated. Courageous Englishmen scattered the brush and trampled out the fire. It was a type of the courage that there should always be to disperse the smoke that obscures the vision of science. [Applause.] When the eclipse came the natives threw out all the food they had in their houses, which was to say to this demon: "Only let the sun alone and satisfy thyself with the food in our houses." The English were astonished at such long survival of the dragon story, but it was substantially the same with one revealed in England about that time. A mine in England was flooded and 200 workmen drowned. The news came to the neighboring village and all the women went out and screamed at the top of their voices,—no lamentation, no feeling, but simply a yelling at the top of the pit. These women refused to eat, and stayed there all day and all night; this was all on the same principle that the Hindoos threw out all the food, for when asked why they did this, they said that the sons and fathers might be saved. Many famous demons have been pictured as Shakespeare pictures Cassius, with "a lean and hungry look." Such were the demons of antiquity. The German peasant says that the devil's back is hollow, and he is too thin to cast a shadow. Disease was a prolific source of demons. There was a special demon behind every plague. The cholera was a great stern woman, very beautiful, and snowy white. An Eastern poet says that he met this being, and asked, "Who art thou?" And the demon replied, "I am the plague; I have come from Damascus, where ten thousand are dying; I slew a thousand, terror slew the rest." When there was a plague among the animals it was an indication that a furious being wished to devour the cattle. When I was in Moscow last, the cattle plague was raging in a suburban village, and one morning the women drove all their cattle into the village; then harnessing themselves to a plow, they plowed around the village; when they reached the point from which they had started, they buried a dog and cat alive, and cried out all day, "Cattle plague! cattle plague! Spare our cattle, and take instead this cat and dog!" There were demons of the burning sun, and demons of extreme cold. In Iceland witches were supposed to be possessed by cold demons, it would seem as their victims, and are said to haunt the fireside, their favorite articles being those that belong to the fireside, such as the shovel. There were demons of strong winds, such as Typhon. This idea of a spirit living at the center of a gale of wind was a universal one. In Japan, the phrase "raising the wind," is equivalent to "raising the devil." There were demons in poisonous plants; belladonna (beautiful women) is said to have got its name from the fascinating sorceress supposed to favor that plant. There were demonic animals. Cats (diminished tigers) preserve enough diabolism in tradition to make some people, even to this day, tremble when they see a black cat at night. The dog, too, was demonic. In ancient India and in Greece the dog watched at the gates of death, and still |