_Wechselkinder_, or changelings, who were common enough, as everybody
must be aware. Of the intercourse itself Luther had no doubts.[111] A
third party took a middle ground, and believed that vermin and toads
might be the offspring of such amours. And how did the Demon, a mere
spiritual essence, contrive himself a body? Some would have it that he
entered into dead bodies, by preference, of course, those of sorcerers.
It is plain, from the confession of De la Rue, that this was the theory
of his examiners. This also had historical evidence in its favor. There
was the well-known leading case of the Bride of Corinth, for example. And
but yesterday, as it were, at Crossen in Silesia, did not Christopher
Monig, an apothecary's servant, come back after being buried, and do
duty, as if nothing particular had happened, putting up prescriptions as
usual, and "pounding drugs in the mortar with a mighty noise"?
Apothecaries seem to have been special victims of these Satanic pranks,
for another appeared at Reichenbach not long before, affirming that, "he
had poisoned several men with his drugs," which certainly gives an air of
truth to the story. Accordingly the Devil is represented as being
unpleasantly cold to the touch. "Caietan escrit qu'une sorciere demanda
un iour au diable pourquoy il ne se rechauffoit, qui fist response qu'il
faisoit ce qu'il pouuoit." Poor Devil! But there are cases in which the
demon is represented as so hot that his grasp left a seared spot as black
as charcoal. Perhaps some of them came from the torrid zone of their
broad empire, and others from the thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice.
Those who were not satisfied with the dead-body theory contented
themselves, like Dr. More, with that of "adscititious particles," which
has, to be sure, a more metaphysical and scholastic flavor about it. That
the demons really came, either corporeally or through some diabolic
illusion that amounted to the same thing, and that the witch devoted
herself to him body and soul, scarce anybody was bold enough to doubt. To
these familiars their venerable paramours gave endearing nicknames, such
as My little Master, or My dear Martin,--the latter, probably, after the
heresy of Luther, and when the rack was popish. The famous witch-finder
Hopkins enables us to lengthen the list considerably. One witch whom he
convicted, after being "kept from sleep two or three nights," called in
five of her devilish servitors. The first was "_Holt_, who came in like a
white kitling"; the second "_Jarmara_, like a fat spaniel without any
legs at all"; the third, "_Vinegar Tom_, who was like a long-tailed
greyhound with an head like an oxe, with a long tail and broad eyes, who,
when this discoverer spoke to and bade him to the place provided for him
and his angells, immediately transformed himself into the shape of a
child of foure yeares old, without a head, and gave half a dozen turnes
about the house and vanished at the doore"; the fourth, "_Sack and
Sugar_, like a black rabbet"; the fifth, "_News_, like a polcat." Other
names of his finding were Elemauzer, Pywacket, Peck-in-the-Crown,
Grizzel, and Greedygut, "which," he adds, "no mortal could invent." 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.