Legends and Satires from Mediæval Literature — John Shaqi
Legends and Satires from Mediæval Literature
History
Legends and Satires from Mediæval Literature
Literature, Medieval
And whilst she was in prison, she prayed our Lord that the fiend that
had fought with her, He would visibly show him unto her. And then
appeared a horrible dragon and assailed her, and would have devoured
her, but she made the sign of the cross, and anon he vanished away. And
in another place it is said that he swallowed her into his belly, she
making the sign of the cross. And the belly brake asunder, and so she
issued out all whole and sound.
This swallowing and breaking of the belly of the dragon is said that it
is apocryphal.
After this the devil appeared to her in likeness of a man for to
deceive her. And when she saw him, she went to prayer and after arose,
and the fiend came to her, and took her by the hand and said: "It
sufficeth to thee that thou hast done, but now cease as to my person."
She caught him by the head and threw him to the ground and set her
right foot on his neck, saying: "Lie still, thou fiend, under the
feet of a woman." The devil then cried: "O blessed Margaret, I am
overcome. If a young man had overcome me I had not recked, but alas! I
am overcome of a tender virgin; wherefore I make the more sorrow, for
thy father and mother have been my good friends." She then constrained
him to tell why he came to her, and he answered that he came to her to
counsel her for to obey the desire and request of the provost. Then
she constrained him to say wherefore he tempted so much and so often
Christian people. To whom he answered that naturally he hated virtuous
men, and though we be oft put aback from them, yet our desire is much
to exclude them from the felicity that they fell from, for we may never
obtain ne recover our bliss that we have lost. And she then demanded
what he was, and he answered: "I am Veltis, one of them whom Solomon
closed in a vessel of brass. And after his death it happed that they of
Babylon found this vessel, and supposed to have founden great treasure
therein, and brake the vessel; and then a great multitude of us devils
flew out and filled full the air alway, awaiting and espying where we
may assail rightful men." And when he had said thus, she took off her
foot and said to him: "Flee hence, thou wretched fiend." And anon the
earth opened, and the fiend sank in. Then she was sure, for when she
had overcome the master, she might lightly overcome the minister.
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