CHAPTER VI.

ENEMIES.


Aryas, Dasyus, Nagas--Yakkhos--Lycians--Ethiopians--Hirpini--
Polites--Sosipolis--Were-wolves--Goths and Scythians--Giants and
Dwarfs--Berserkers--Britons--Iceland--Mimacs--Gog and Magog.


We paint the Devil black, says George Herbert. On the other hand the
negro paints him white, with reason enough. The name of the Devil
at Mozambique is Muzungu Maya, or Wicked White Man. Of this demon
they make little images of extreme hideousness, which are kept by
people on the coast, and occasionally displayed, in the belief that
if the White Devil is lurking near them he will vanish out of sheer
disgust with a glimpse of his own ugliness. The hereditary horror of
the kidnapper displayed in this droll superstition may possibly have
been assisted by the familiarity with all things infernal represented
in the language of the white sailors visiting the coast. Captain
Basil Hall, on visiting Mozambique about fifty years ago, found
that the native dignitaries had appropriated the titles of English
noblemen, and a dumpy little Duke of Devonshire met him with his whole
vocabulary of English,--'How do you do, sir. Very glad see you. Damn
your eyes. Johanna man like English very much. God damn. That very
good? Eh? Devilish hot, sir. What news? Hope your ship stay too long
while very. Damn my eye. Very fine day.'

In most parts of India Siva also is painted white, which would indicate
that there too was found reason to associate diabolism with the white
face. It is said the Thugs spared Englishmen because their white faces
suggested relationship to Siva. In some of the ancient Indian books
the monster whom Indra slew, Vritra, is called Dasyu (enemy), a name
which in the Vedas designates the Aborigines as contrasted with the
Aryans of the North. 'In the old Sanskrit, in the hymns of the Veda,
ârya occurs frequently as a national name and as a name of honour,
comprising the worshippers of the gods of the Brahmans, as opposed to
their enemies, who are called in the Veda Dasyus. Thus one of the gods,
Indra, who in some respects answers to the Greek Zeus, is invoked
in the following words (Rigveda, i. 57, 8):--'Know thou the Aryas,
O Indra, and those who are Dasyus; punish the lawless, and deliver
them unto thy servant! Be thou the mighty helper of the worshippers,
and I will praise all these thy deeds at the festivals.' [111]

Naglok (snakeland) was at an early period a Hindu name for hell. But
the Nagas were not real snakes,--in that case they might have fared
better,--but an aboriginal tribe in Ceylon, believed by the Hindus to
be of serpent origin,--'naga' being an epithet for 'native.' [112] The
Singhalese, on the other hand, have adapted the popular name for demons
in India, 'Rakshasa,' in their Rakseyo, a tribe of invisible cannibals
without supernatural powers (except invisibility), who no doubt merely
embody the traditions of some early race. The dreaded powers were
from another tribe designated Yakkhos (demons), and believed to have
the power of rendering themselves invisible. Buddha's victories over
these demonic beings are related in the 'Mahawanso.' 'It was known
(by inspiration) by the vanquishers that in Lanka, filled by yakkhos,
... would be the place where his religion would be glorified. In
like manner, knowing that in the centre of Lanka, on the delightful
bank of a river, ... in the agreeable Mahanaga garden, ... there
was a great assembly of the principal yakkhos, ... the deity of
happy advent, approaching that great congregation, ... immediately
over their heads hovering in the air, ... struck terror into them
by rains, tempests, and darkness. The yakkhos, overwhelmed with awe,
supplicated of the vanquisher to be released from their terror.... The
consoling vanquisher thus replied: 'I will release ye yakkhos from
this your terror and affliction: give ye unto me here by unanimous
consent a place for me to alight on.' All these yakkhos replied:
'Lord, we confer on thee the whole of Lanka, grant thou comfort
to us.' The vanquisher thereupon dispelling their terror and cold
shivering, and spreading his carpet of skin on the spot bestowed on
him, he there seated himself. He then caused the aforesaid carpet,
refulgent with a fringe of flames, to extend itself on all sides:
they, scorched by the flames, (receding) stood around on the shores
(of the island) terrified. The Saviour then caused the delightful isle
of Giri to approach for them. As soon as they transferred themselves
thereto (to escape the conflagration), he restored it to its former
position.' [113]

This legend, which reminds one irresistibly of the expulsion of
reptiles by saints from Ireland, and other Western regions, is
the more interesting if it be considered that these Yakkhos are the
Sanskrit Yakshas, attendants on Kuvera, the god of wealth, employed in
the care of his garden and treasures. They are regarded as generally
inoffensive. The transfer by English authorities of the Tasmanians from
their native island to another, with the result of their extermination,
may suggest the possible origin of the story of Giri.

Buddha's dealings with the serpent-men or nagas is related as follows
in the same volume:--

'The vanquisher (i.e., of the five deadly sins), ... in the fifth
year of his buddhahood, while residing at the garden of (the prince)
Jeto, observing that, on account of a disputed claim for a gem-set
throne between the naga Mahodaro and a similar Chalodaro, a maternal
uncle and nephew, a conflict was at hand, ... taking with him his
sacred dish and robes, out of compassion to the nagas, visited
Nagadipo.... These mountain nagas were, moreover, gifted with
supernatural powers.... The Saviour and dispeller of the darkness
of sin, poising himself in the air over the centre of the assembly,
caused a terrifying darkness to these nagas. Attending to the prayer
of the dismayed nagas, he again called forth the light of day. They,
overjoyed at having seen the deity of felicitous advent, bowed down
at the feet of the divine teacher. To them the vanquisher preached
a sermon of reconciliation. Both parties rejoicing thereat, made an
offering of the gem-throne to the divine sage. The divine teacher,
alighting on the earth, seated himself on the throne, and was served
by the naga kings with celestial food and beverage. The lord of the
universe procured for eighty kotis of nagas, dwelling on land and in
the waters, the salvation of the faith and the state of piety.'

At every step in the conversion of the native Singhalese,--the demons
and serpent-men,--Buddha and his apostles are represented as being
attended by the devas,--the deities of India,--who are spoken of as
if glad to become menials of the new religion. But we find Zoroaster
using this term in a demonic sense, and describing alien worshippers
as children of the Devas (a Semite would say, Sons of Belial). And
in the conventional Persian pictures of the Last Judgment (moslem),
the archfiend has the Hindu complexion. A similar phenomenon may
be observed in various regions. In the mediæval frescoes of Moscow,
representing infernal tortures, it is not very difficult to pick out
devils representing the physical characteristics of most of the races
with which the Muscovite has struggled in early times. There are also
black Ethiopians among them, which may be a result of devils being
considered the brood of Tchernibog, god of Darkness; but may also, not
impossibly, have come of such apocryphal narratives as that ascribed
to St. Augustine. 'I was already Bishop of Hippo when I went into
Ethiopia with some servants of Christ, there to preach the gospel. In
this country we saw many men and women without heads, who had two
great eyes in their breasts; and in countries still more southerly
we saw a people who had but one eye in their foreheads.' [114]

In considering animal demons, the primitive demonisation of the Wolf
has been discussed. But it is mainly as a transformation of man and
a type of savage foes that this animal has been a prominent figure
in Mythology.

Professor Max Müller has made it tolerably clear that Bellerophon
means Slayer of the Hairy; and that Belleros is the transliteration
of Sanskrit varvara, a term applied to the dark Aborigines by their
Aryan invaders, equivalent to barbarians. [115] This points us for the
origin of the title rather to Bellerophon's conquest of the Lycians,
or Wolf-men, than to his victory over the Chimæra. The story of
Lycaon and his sons--barbarians defying the gods and devouring human
flesh--turned into wolves by Zeus, connects itself with the Lycians
(hairy, wolfish barbarians), whom Bellerophon conquered.

It was not always, however, the deity that conquered in such
encounters. In the myth of Soracte, the Wolf is seen able to hold
his own against the gods. Soranus, worshipped on Mount Soracte,
was at Rome the god of Light, and is identified with Apollo by
Virgil. [116] A legend states that he became associated with the
infernal gods, though called Diespiter, because of the sulphurous
exhalations from the side of Mount Soracte. It is said that once when
some shepherds were performing a sacrifice, some wolves seized the
flesh; the shepherds, following them, were killed by the poisonous
vapours of the mountain to which the wolves retreated. An oracle gave
out that this was a punishment for their pursuing the sacred animals;
and a general pestilence also having followed, it was declared that it
could only cease if the people were all changed to wolves and lived by
prey. Hence the Hirpini, from the Sabine 'hirpus,' a wolf. The story
is a variant of that of the Hirpinian Samnites, who were said to have
received their name from their ancestors having followed a sacred wolf
when seeking their new home. The Wolf ceremonies were, like the Roman
Lupercalia, for purposes of purification. The worshippers ran naked
through blazing fires. The annual festival, which Strabo describes
as occurring in the grove of Feronia, goddess of Nature, became at
last a sort of fair. Its history, however, is very significant of
the formidable character of the Hirpini, or Wolf-tribe, which could
alone have given rise to such euphemistic celebrations of the wolf.

It is interesting to note that in some regions this wolf of
superstition was domesticated into a dog. Pierius says there was a
temple of Vulcan in Mount Ætna, in whose grove were dogs that fawned
on the pious, but rent the polluted worshippers. It will be seen by
the left form of Fig. 13 that the wolf had a diminution, in pictorial
representation similar to that which the canine Lares underwent
(p. 135). This picture is referred by John Beaumont [117] to Cartarius'
work on 'The Images of the Gods of the Ancients;' the form wearing
a wolf's skin and head is that of the demon Polites, who infested
Temesa in Italy, according to a story related by Pausanias. Ulysses,
in his wanderings, having come to this town, one of his companions
was stoned to death for having ravished a virgin; after which his
ghost appeared in form of this demon, which had to be appeased, by
the direction of the oracle of Apollo, by the annual sacrifice to
him of the most beautiful virgin in the place. Euthymus, enamoured
of a virgin about to be so offered, gave battle to this demon, and,
having expelled him from the country, married the virgin. However,
since the infernal powers cannot be deprived of their rights without
substitution, this saviour of Temesa disappeared in the river Cæcinus.

The form on the right in Fig. 13 represents the genius of the
city of Rome, and is found on some of Hadrian's coins; he holds
the cornucopia and the sacrificial dish. The child and the serpent
in the same picture represent the origin of the demonic character
attributed to the Eleans by the Arcadians. This child-and-serpent
symbol, which bears resemblance to certain variants of Bel and the
Dragon, no doubt was brought to Elea, or Velia in Italy, by the
Phocæans, when they abandoned their Ionian homes rather than submit
to Cyrus, and founded that town, B.C. 544. The two forms were jointly
worshipped with annual sacrifices in the temple of Lucina, under the
name Sosipolis. The legend of this title is related by Pausanias. When
the Arcadians invaded the Eleans, a woman came to the Elean commander
with an infant at her breast, and said that she had been admonished
in a dream to place her child in front of the army. This was done;
as the Arcadians approached the child was changed to a serpent, and,
astounded at the prodigy, they fled without giving battle. The child
was represented by the Eleans decorated with stars, and holding the
cornucopia; by the Arcadians, no doubt, in a less celestial way. It
is not uncommon in Mythology to find the most dangerous demons
represented under some guise of weakness, as, for instance, among
the South Africans, some of whom recently informed English officers
that the Galeikas were led against them by a terrible sorcerer in
the form of a hare. The most fearful traditional demon ever slain
by hero in Japan was Shuden Dozi--the Child-faced Drinker. In Ceylon
the apparition of a demon is said to be frequently under the form of
a woman with a child in her arms.

Many animal demons are mere fables for the ferocity of human
tribes. The Were-wolf superstition, which exists still in Russia, where
the transformed monster is called volkodlák (volk, a wolf, and dlak,
hair), might even have originated in the costume of Norse barbarians
and huntsmen. The belief was always more or less rationalised,
resembling that held by Verstegan three hundred years ago, and which
may be regarded as prevalent among both the English and Flemish people
of his day. 'These Were-wolves,' he says, 'are certain sorcerers,
who, having anointed their bodies with an ointment they make by the
instinct of the devil, and putting on a certain enchanted girdle,
do not only unto the view of others seem as wolves, but to their own
thinking have both the nature and shape of wolves so long as they
wear the said girdle; and they do dispose themselves as very wolves,
in worrying and killing, and waste of human creatures.' During the
Franco-German war of 1870-71, a family of ladies on the German side
of the Rhine, sitting up all night in apprehension, related to me
such stories of the 'Turcos' that I have since found no difficulty
in understanding the belief in weird and præternatural wolves which
once filled Europe with horror. The facility with which the old Lycian
wolf-girdle, so to say, was caught up and worn in so many countries
where race-wars were chronic for many ages, renders it nearly certain
that this superstition (Lycanthropy), however it may have originated,
was continued through the custom of ascribing demonic characteristics
to hostile and fierce races. It has been, indeed, a general opinion
that the theoretical belief originated in the Pythagorean doctrine
of metempsychosis. Thus Shakspere:--


Thou almost makest me waver in my faith,
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
Governed a wolf, who, hanged for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And whilst thou layest in thy unhallowed dam
Infused itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starved, and ravenous.


But the superstition is much older than Pythagoras, who, no doubt,
tried to turn it into a moral theory of retributions,--as indeed did
Plato in his story of the Vision of Er the Armenian.

Professor Weber and others have adduced evidence indicating that
although belief in the transformation of men into beasts was not
developed in the Vedic age of India, the matrix of it was there. But
of our main fact--the association of demonic characters with certain
tribes--India has presented many examples. In the mountains of
Travancore there are tribes which are still generally believed to
be on terms of especial familiarity with the devils of that region;
and the dwellers on the plains relate that on these mountains gigantic
demons, sixteen or seventeen feet high, may sometimes be seen hurling
firebrands at each other.

Professor Monier Williams contributes an interesting note concerning
this general phase of South-Indian demonology. 'Furthermore, it
must not be forgotten that although a belief in devils and homage
to bhutas, or spirits, of all kinds is common all over India, yet
what is called devil-worship is far more systematically practised
in the South of India and Ceylon than in the North. And the reason
may be that as the invading Aryans advanced towards Southern India,
they found portions of it peopled by wild aboriginal savages, whose
behaviour and aspect appeared to them to resemble that of devils. The
Aryan mind, therefore, naturally pictured to itself the regions of the
South as the chief resort and stronghold of the demon race, and the
dread of demonical agency became more deeply rooted in Southern India
than in the North. Curiously enough, too, it is commonly believed in
Southern India that every wicked man contributes by his death to swell
the ever-increasing ranks of devil legions. His evil passions do not
die with him; they are intensified, concentrated, and perpetuated in
the form of a malignant and mischievous spirit.' [118]

It is obvious that this principle may be extended from individuals
to entire tribes. The Cimmerians were regarded as dwelling in a land
allied with hell. In the legend of the Alhambra, as told by Washington
Irving, the astrologer warns the Moorish king that the beautiful
damsel is no doubt one of those Gothic sorceresses of whom they have
heard so much. Although, as we have seen, England was regarded on the
Continent as an island of demons because of its northern latitude,
probably some of its tribes were of a character dangerous enough to
prolong the superstition. The nightmare elves were believed to come
from England, and to hurry away through the keyholes at daybreak,
saying 'The bells are calling in England.' [119] Visigoth probably
left us our word bigot; and 'Goths and Vandals' sometimes designate
English roughs, as 'Turks' those of Constantinople. Herodotus says
the Scythians of the Black Sea regarded the Neurians as wizards,
who transformed themselves into wolves for a few days annually; but
the Scythians themselves are said by Herodotus to have sprung from a
monster, half-woman half-serpent; and possibly the association of the
Scotch with the Scythians by the Germans, who called them both Scutten,
had something to do with the uncanny character ascribed to the British
Isles. Sir Walter Raleigh described the Red Men of America as gigantic
monsters. 'Red Devils' is still the pioneer's epithet for them in the
Far West. The hairy Dukes of Esau were connected with the goat, and
demonised as Edom; and Ishmael was not believed much better by the
more peaceful Semitic tribes. Such notions are akin to those which
many now have of the Thugs and Bashi-Bazouks, and are too uniform
and natural to tax much the ingenuity of Comparative Mythology.

Underlying many of the legends of giants and dwarfs may be found a
similar demonologic formation. A principle of natural selection would
explain the existence of tribes, which, though of small stature,
are able to hold their own against the larger and more powerful by
their superior cunning. That such equalisation of apparently unequal
forces has been known in pre-historic ages may be gathered from many
fables. Before Bali, the monarch already mentioned, whose power alarmed
the gods themselves, Vishnu appeared as a dwarf, asking only so much
land as he could measure with three steps; the apparently ridiculous
request granted, the god strode over the whole earth with two steps
and brought his third on the head of Bali. In Scandinavian fable
we have the young giantess coming to her mother with the plough and
ploughman in her apron, which she had picked up in the field. To her
child's inquiry, 'What sort of beetle is this I found wriggling in
the sand?' the giantess replies, 'Go put it back in the place where
thou hast found it. We must be gone out of this land, for these
little people will dwell in it.'

The Sagas contain many stories which, while written in glorification
of the 'giant' race, relate the destruction of their chiefs by
the magical powers of the dwarfs. I must limit myself to a few
notes on the Ynglinga Saga. 'In Swithiod,' we are told, 'are many
great domains, and many wonderful races of men, and many kinds of
languages. There are giants, and there are dwarfs, and there are also
blue men. There are wild beasts, and dreadfully large dragons.' We
learn that in Asaland was a great chief, Odin, who went out to conquer
Vanaland. The Vanalanders are declared to have magic arts,--such as
are ascribed to Finns and Lapps to this day by the more ignorant of
their neighbours. But that the people of Asaland learned their magic
charms. 'Odin was the cleverest of them all, and from him all the
others learned their magic arts.' 'Odin could make his enemies in
battle blind, or deaf, or terror-struck, and their weapons so blunt
that they could no more cut than a willow twig; on the other hand, his
men rushed forward without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit
their shields, and were as strong as bears or wild bulls, and killed
people at a blow, and neither fire nor iron told upon them. These
were called Berserkers.' (From ber, bear, and serkr, sark or coat;
the word being probably, as Maurer says, a survival of an earlier
belief in the transformation of men into bears.) But the successors of
Odin did not preserve his occult power. Svegdir, for instance, saw a
large stone and a dwarf at the door entering in it. The dwarf called
him to come in and he should see Odin. 'Swedger ran into the stone,
which instantly closed behind him, and Swedger never came back.' The
witchcraft of the Finn people is said to have led Vanlandi (Svegdir's
son) to his death by Mara (night-mare). Vanlandi's son too, Visbur,
fell a victim to sorcery. Such legends as these, and many others which
may be found in Sturleson's Heimskringla, have influenced our popular
stories whose interest turns on the skill with which some little Jack
or Thumbling overcomes his adversary by superior cunning.

Superstitions concerning dwarf-powers are especially rife in
Northumberland, where they used to be called Duergar, and they were
thought to abound on the hills between Rothbury and Elsdon. They
mislead with torches. One story relates that a traveller, beguiled at
night into a hut where a dwarf prepared a comfortable fire for him,
found himself when daylight returned sitting upon the edge of a deep
rugged precipice, where the slightest movement had caused him to be
dashed to pieces. [120] The Northumbrian stories generally, however,
do not bear the emphasis of having grown out of aboriginal conditions,
or even of having been borrowed for such. The legends of Scotland,
and of the South-West of England, appear to me much more suggestive of
original struggles between large races and small. They are recalled by
the superstitions which still linger in Norway concerning the Lapps,
who are said to carry on unholy dealings with gnomes.

In the last century the 'Brownie' was commonly spoken of in Scotland
as appearing in shape of 'a tall man,' and the name seems to refer
to the brown complexion of that bogey, and its long brown hair,
hardly Scottish. [121] It is generally the case that Second Sight,
which once attained the dignity of being called 'Deuteroscopia,'
sees a doomed man or woman shrink to the size of a dwarf. The 'tall
man' is not far off in such cases. 'In some age of the world more
remote than even that of Alypos,' says Hugh Miller, 'the whole of
Britain was peopled by giants--a fact amply supported by early English
historians and the traditions of the North of Scotland. Diocletian,
king of Syria, say the historians, had thirty-three daughters, who,
like the daughters of Danaus, killed their husbands on their wedding
night. The king, their father, in abhorrence of the crime, crowded
them all into a ship, which he abandoned to the mercy of the waves,
and which was drifted by tides and winds till it arrived on the coast
of Britain, then an uninhabited island. There they lived solitary,
subsisting on roots and berries, the natural produce of the soil,
until an order of demons, becoming enamoured of them, took them for
their wives; and a tribe of giants, who must be regarded as the true
aborigines of the country, if indeed the demons have not a prior claim,
were the fruit of these marriages. Less fortunate, however, than even
their prototypes the Cyclops, the whole tribe was extirpated a few ages
after by Brutus the parricide, who, with a valour to which mere bulk
could offer no effectual resistance, overthrew Gog-Magog and Termagol,
and a whole host of others with names equally terrible. Tradition
is less explicit than the historians in what relates to the origin
and extinction of the race, but its narratives of their prowess are
more minute. There is a large and ponderous stone in the parish
of Edderston which a giantess of the tribe is said to have flung
from the point of a spindle across the Dornoch Firth; and another,
within a few miles of Dingwall, still larger and more ponderous,
which was thrown by a person of the same family, and which still
bears the marks of a gigantic finger and thumb.' [122]

Perhaps we may find the mythological descendants of these Titans,
and also of the Druids, in the so-called 'Great Men' once dreaded
by Highlanders. The natives of South Uist believed that a valley,
called Glenslyte, situated between two mountains on the east side
of the island, was haunted by these Great Men, and that if any one
entered the valley without formally resigning themselves to the
conduct of those beings, they would infallibly become mad. Martin,
having remonstrated with the people against this superstition, was told
of a woman's having come out of the valley a lunatic because she had
not uttered the spell of three sentences. They also told him of voices
heard in the air. The Brownie ('a tall man with very long brown hair'),
who has cow's milk poured out for him on a hill in the same region,
probably of this giant tribe, might easily have been demonised at
the time when the Druids were giving St. Columba so much trouble,
and trying to retain their influence over the people by professing
supernatural powers. [123]

The man of the smaller stature, making up for his inferiority by
invention, perhaps first forged the sword, the coat of mail, and the
shield, and so confronted the giant with success. The god with the
Hammer might thus supersede the god of the Flint Spear. Magic art
seemed to have rendered invulnerable the man from whom the arrow
rebounded.

It would appear from King Olaf Tryggvason's Saga that nine hundred
years ago the Icelanders and the Danes reciprocally regarded each
other as giants and dwarfs. The Icelanders indited lampoons against
the Danes which allude to their diminutive size:--


The gallant Harald in the field
Between his legs lets drop his shield,
Into a pony he was changed, &c.


On the other hand, the Danes had by no means a contemptuous idea of
their Icelandic enemies, as the following narrative from Heimskringla
proves. 'King Harald told a warlock to hie to Iceland in some altered
shape, and to try what he could learn there to tell him: and he set
out in the shape of a whale. And when he came near to the land he
went to the west side of Iceland, north around the land, when he
saw all the mountains and hills full of land-serpents, some great,
some small. When he came to Vapnafiord he went in towards the land,
intending to go on shore; but a huge dragon rushed down the dale
against him, with a train of serpents, paddocks, and toads, that blew
poison towards him. Then he turned to go westward around the land as
far as Eyafiord, and he went into the fiord. Then a bird flew against
him, which was so great that its wings stretched over the mountains
on either side of the fiord, and many birds, great and small, with
it. Then he swam further west, and then south into Breidafiord. When
he came into the fiord a large grey bull ran against him, wading into
the sea, and bellowing fearfully, and he was followed by a crowd of
land-serpents. From thence he went round by Reikaness and wanted to
land at Vikarsted, but there came down a hill-giant against him with
an iron staff in his hands. He was a head higher than the mountains,
and many other giants followed him.' The most seductive Hesperian
gardens of the South and East do not appear to have been so thoroughly
guarded or defended as Iceland, and one can hardly call it cowardice
when (after the wizard-whale brought back the log of its voyage)
it is recorded: 'Then the Danish king turned about with his fleet
and sailed back to Denmark.'

It is a sufficiently curious fact that the Mimacs, aborigines of
Nova Scotia, [124] were found with a whale-story, already referred to
(p. 46), so much like this. They also have the legend of an ancient
warrior named Booin, who possessed the præternatural powers especially
ascribed to Odin, those of raising storms, causing excessive cold,
increasing or diminishing his size, and assuming any shape. Besides
the fearful race of gigantic ice-demons dreaded by this tribe, as
elsewhere stated (p. 84), they dread also a yellow-horned dragon called
Cheepichealm, (whose form the great Booin sometimes assumes). They
make offerings to the new moon. They believe in pixies, calling them
Wigguladum-moochkik, 'very little people.' They anciently believed in
two great spirits, good and evil, both called Manitoos; since their
contact with christians only the evil one has been so called.

The entire motif of the Mimac Demonology is, to my mind, that of
early conflicts with some formidable races. It is to be hoped that
travellers will pay more attention to this unique race before it
has ceased to exist. The Chinese theory of genii is almost exactly
that of the Mimacs. The Chinese genii are now small as a moth, now
fill the world; can assume any form; they command demons; they never
die, but, at the end of some centuries, ride to heaven on a dragon's
back. [125] Ordinarily the Chinese genii use the yellow heron as an
aerial courser. The Mimacs believe in a large præternatural water-bird,
Culloo, which devours ordinary people, but bears on its back those
who can tame it by magic.

Mr. Mayers, in his 'Chinese Reader's Manual,' suggests that the
designation of Formosa as 'Isles of the Genii' (San Shén Shan) by the
Chinese, has some reference to their early attempts at colonisation
in Japan. Su Fuh, a necromancer, who lived B.C. 219, is said to have
announced their discovery, and at the head of a troop of young men
and maidens, voyaged with an expedition towards them, but, when within
sight of the magic islands, were driven back by contrary winds.

Gog and Magog stand in London Guildhall, though much diminished
in stature, to suit the English muscles that had to bear them in
processions, monuments of the præternatural size attributed to
the enemies which the Aryan race encountered in its great westward
migrations. Even to-day, when the progress of civilisation is harassed
by untamed Scythian hordes, how strangely fall upon our ears the
ancient legends and prophecies concerning them!


Thus saith the Lord Jehovah:
Behold I am against thee, O Gog,
Prince of Rosh, of Meshech, and of Tubul:
And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee;
And I will cause thee to come up from the north parts,
And will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel:
And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand,
And will cause thine arrows to fall from thy right hand.
Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel,
Thou and all thy bands. [126]


In the Koran it is related of Dhulkarnein:--'He journeyed from south to
north until he came between the two mountains, beneath which he found
a people who could scarce understand what was said. And they said, O
Dhulkarnein, verily Gog and Magog waste the land; shall we, therefore,
pay thee tribute, on condition that thou build a rampart between us
and them? He answered, The power wherewith my Lord hath strengthened
me is better than your tribute; but assist me strenuously and I will
set a strong wall between you and them.... Wherefore when this wall
was finished, Gog and Magog could not scale it, neither could they
dig through it. And Dhulkarnein said, This is a mercy from my Lord;
but when the prediction of my Lord shall come to be fulfilled, he
will reduce the wall to dust.'

The terror inspired by these barbarians is reflected in the prophecies
of their certain irruption from their supernaturally-built fastnesses;
as in Ezekiel:--


Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm,
Thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land,
Thou and all thy bands,
And many people with thee;


and in the Koran, 'Gog and Magog shall have a passage open for them,
and they shall hasten from every high hill;' and in the Apocalypse,
'Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive
the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog,
to gather them in battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the
sea.' Five centuries ago Sir John Maundeville was telling in England
the legend he had heard in the East. 'In that same regioun ben the
mountaynes of Caspye, that men clepen Uber in the contree. Betwene the
mountaynes the Jews of 10 lynages ben enclosed, that men clepen Gothe
and Magothe: and they mowe not gon out on no syde. There weren enclosed
22 kynges, with hire peple, that dwelleden betwene the mountayns
of Sythe. There King Alisandre chacede hem betwene the mountaynes,
and there he thought for to enclose hem thorghe work of his men. But
when he saughe that he might not doon it, ne bringe it to an ende,
he preyed to God of Nature, that he wolde performe that that he had
begoune. And all were it so, that he was a Payneme, and not worthi to
ben herd, zit God of his grace closed the mountaynes to gydre: so that
thei dwellen there, all fast ylokked and enclosed with highe mountaynes
all aboute, saf only on o syde; and on that syde is the See of Caspye.'