There were also persons in the middle ages who in the same spirit adopted parts of pagan mythologies, and moulded fancies of their own according to the prevailing forms of popular superstition. Not only do we find the Italians borrowing their patron saints from the _dii presides_ and the _dii patrones_ of their pagan fathers, and, sometimes, transforming the statue of a heathen god into the image of a Christian saint, but we also find people, in other parts of Christendom, accommodating to their own use certain fables current among the barbaric nations. The Scandinavian mythology gives great prominence to the exploits of Odin: sometimes he is called Nikar, and appears as a destroying spirit raising storms on the Scandinavian lakes and rivers, and teasing the fishermen, by hanging up their boats on the summits of the fir-trees. This fabled deity appears in the hagiology of the middle ages under the name of St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors, supposed to have power over the storm and tempest. Mementoes of this superstition still remain in churches situate near the sea, and dedicated to this saint of the ocean, whom many a seaman still invokes, as he catches a glimpse of the distant church rising above the shore. Beside instances in which mythological fables were thus adopted, and, if we may use the term, thus Christianized, there are proofs of the spirit of pagan superstition having moulded the conceptions formed of invisible beings by the ecclesiastical teachers of the dark ages. Satan is commonly represented by them under forms which they could have borrowed only from such a source. The monster with horns and tail was evidently the creation of the fancy under the influence of legendary superstitions. One cannot help smiling at the grotesque scenes painted by the saints, in which the Spirit of Evil is introduced as the chief actor. He is said to have teased St. Gudula by blowing out her candle, on her way to church, at the hour of cock-crowing; but this story is surpassed by another related respecting the arch-enemy and St. Britius. "Once, whilst St. Martin was saying mass, St. Britius, whose name hath retained a place in the Protestant calendar, officiated as deacon, and behind the altar he espied the devil busily employed in writing down on a slip of parchment, as long as a proctor's bill, all the sins which the congregation were actually committing. Now St. Martin's congregation was anything but serious; they buzzed and giggled, and the men looked upwards, and the women did not look down, and were guilty of so many transgressions, that the devil soon filled one side of his parchment with short-hand notes from top to bottom, and was forced to turn it. This side was also soon covered with writing. The devil was now in sad perplexity; he could not stomach losing a sin, he could not trust his memory, and he had no more parchment about him. He therefore clenched one end of the scroll with his claws and took the other