In the heroic ages a divine origin is ascribed to such persons as were most remarkable for their endowments either of body or of mind; but this may far more probably be traced to adulation in the poets, than to contemporary belief at any time prevailing among the people; whereas the opposite superstition was really believed in the middle ages, and traces of it are still to be found. It is remarkable that the Fairies who in the popular belief of this country are never represented as malignant upon any other occasion, act an evil part in the supposed case of Changelings. So it is with the Trolls also of our Scandinavian kinsmen, (though this race of beings is in worse repute;) the children whom they substitute for those whom they steal are always a plague to the nurse and to the parents. In Germany such children were held to be young Devils, but whether Mac-Incubi, Mac-Succubi, or O'Devils by the whole blood is not clearly to be collected from Martin Luther, who is the great authority upon this subject. He is explicit upon the fact that the Nix or Water Fiend, increases the population by a mixed breed; but concerning the Killcrops, as his countrymen the Saxons call them, whom the Devil leaves in exchange, when he steals children for purposes best known to himself, Luther does not express any definite opinion, farther than that they are of a devilish nature: how fathered, how mothered the reader is left to conjecture as he pleases. “Eight years since,” said Luther, at “Dessaw I did see and touch a changed child, which was twelve years of age; he had his eyes and all members like another child; he did nothing but feed, and would eat as much as two clowns or threshers were able to eat. When one touched it, then it cried out. When any evil happened in the house, then it laughed and was joyful; but when all went well, then it cried, and was very sad. I told the Prince of Anhalt, that if I were Prince of that country, so would I venture _homicidium_ thereon, and would throw it into the river Moldaw. I admonished the people dwelling in that place devoutly to pray to God to take away the Devil; the same was done accordingly, and the second year after the Changeling died.