Ancient Faiths And Modern: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist.Inman, Thomas
Religion
Ancient Faiths And Modern: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist.
Inman, Thomas
Religions
After a few preliminary remarks, we are told that the French incubi did
not attack virgins, but in the next paragraph is an account of a maiden
who was seduced by a demon in the form of her betrothed. This was in
Sardinia. An English fiend acted in a similar way, and from the congress
followed a frightful disease of which the poor girl died in three days.
This story is told by Thomas Walsingham, b. A.D. 1410. A Scotch lass
is the next victim reported, and to her the unclean spirit came nightly
under the guise of a fine young man. She became pregnant, and avowed
all. The parents then kept watch, and saw the devil near her in a
monstrous unhuman form. He would not go away till a priest came, then
the incubus made a frightful noise, burned the furniture, and went off
upwards, carrying the roof with him. Three days after a queer form was
born, more horrible than had ever been seen, so bad indeed, that the
midwives strangled it. For the credulous, what fact could be more
strongly attested than this? The reporter is Hector Boetius, b. 1470.
The next tale, having a locale in Bonn, occurred at a time when priests
married and had a family. The daughter of one who was closely watched
and locked up when left by herself, was found out by a demon, who took
upon him the form of a fine young man. Such an occurrence was thought
nothing uncommon then, inasmuch as Paul had told the Corinthians that
Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light (2 Cor. xi. 14). The
poor victim became enceinte and confessed the whole to her father, who,
fearing the devil, and anxious not to make a scandal, sent the daughter
away from home. The impudent fiend came to remonstrate, and killed the
wretched sire with a blow of his fist.--Quoted from _Caesarii Heistere
mirac_., lib. iii., c. 8. The next case occurs at Schinin, wherein
we are told (Hauppius _Biblioth portai, pract._, p. 454) that a woman
produced a baby without head or feet, with a mouth in the chest near to
the left shoulder, and an ear near the right one; instead of fingers it
had webs like frog's feet, it was liver coloured, and shaky as jelly, it
cried when the mother wanted to wash it, but somebody stifled and then
buried it. The mother, however, wanted it be exhumed and burned, for
it was the offspring of a fiend who had counterfeited her husband. The
thing was taken up and given to the hangman for cremation, but he could
neither burn it nor the rags which enwrapped it until the day after the
feast of Ascension.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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