But the victory over the pagan deity was not a complete one. Constant association of St. Nicholas custom with earlier worship of Artemis was not without its influence on the popular conception of the Christian saint. One is tempted to assume the malevolent and insidious work of the pagan deity aiming to corrupt the character of the benevolent bishop. In any event from Artemis as well as from Poseidon St. Nicholas inherited attributes which serve to explain some of the elements in his complex personality. It is to be remembered that Artemis of Ephesus was not only a spring deity but also in part a sea and a river goddess. Hence her epithet, “Potamia.” Both associations, that with spring, and especially that with the sea, Artemis shares with St. Nicholas.[100] Artemis-Cybele is often represented as a sea monster with the tail of a fish. There are traces of a similar grotesque popular conception of St. Nicholas in the Sicilian popular legend with the hero named Nicolo-Pesce. This conception of St. Nicholas is much in evidence in western Europe and serves to explain the connection of St. Nicholas with a conception widely prevalent there, of a water spirit or god. Among Teutonic peoples, particularly, this water spirit is widely known with various names, such as Nix, Nickel, Nickelman, Nick, Nökke. Millers are said to be particularly afraid of this spirit and to throw different things into the water on the sixth day of December, St. Nicholas’ day, to propitiate it.[101] In the character of Nikur, a Protean water sprite (Edda, _Doemesaga_, 3), he inhabits the lakes and rivers of Scandinavia, where he raises sudden storms and tempests and leads mankind into destruction.[102] Danish peasantry, in earlier times, conceived of the Nökke (Nikke) as a monster with human head, dwelling both in fresh and in salt water. Where anyone was drowned, they said, _Nökken tag ham bort_, “the Nökke took him away.” The Icelandic Neck, a kelpie or water spirit, appears in the form of a fine horse on the seashore. If anyone is foolish enough to mount him, he gallops off and plunges into the water with his burden.[103] In France there is known a similar water monster, and there, paradoxical as it may seem, it has taken the name of the benevolent St. Nicholas. It is a terrible monster that seizes fishermen who walk without permission by the water side at nightfall. It has claws and tears the faces of the children that remain too late on the beach.[104]