There is much truth in this, except that for the hobgoblins and fairies we may very well read ancient deities, for the ultimate effect of Christianity upon Pagan reverence was to turn it into contempt and abhorrence for good and bad deities alike. We can read this in the slender records of ancient worships whose traces are left in language. Thus _Bo_ is apparently one of the ancient root-words implying divinity; _Bod_, the goddess of fecundity; _Boivani_, goddess of destruction; _Bolay_, the giant who overcame heaven, earth and hell; _Bouders_, or _Boudons_, the genii guarding Shiva, and _Boroon_, a sea-god, are in Indian mythology. _Bossum_ is a good deity of Africa. _Borvo_ and _Bormania_ were guardians of hot springs, and with _Bouljanus_ were gods of old Gaul. _Borr_ was the father of Odin, and _Bure_ was Borr's sister. The _Bo_-tree of India is the sacred tree of wisdom. In Sumatra _boo_ is a root-word meaning good (as in _booroo_). _Bog_ is the Slavonic for god. These are given to shew a probable connection among wide-spread worships. [Illustration: SATAN AND A SOUL, DORCHESTER.] We are now chiefly concerned with the last instance. The Slavonic _Bog_, a god, is met in Saxon as a goblin, for the "boy" who came into the court of King Arthur and laid his wand upon a boar's head was clearly a "bog" (the Saxon _g_ being exchanged erroneously for _y_, as in _dag's aeg_, day's eye, etc). In Welsh, similarly, _Brog_ is a goblin, and we have the evil idea in _bug_. "Warwick was a bug that feared us all." --_Shakespeare. Henry IV., v., 2._ That is "Warwick was a goblin that made us all afraid." The Boggart is a fairy still believed in by Staffordshire peasants. We have yet _bugbear_, as the Russians have _Buka_, and the Italians _Buggaboo_, of similar meaning. As with the barbaric gods, so with the classic deities, who equally supplied material of which to make foul fiends. Bacchus, with the legs and sprouting horns of a goat, that haunter of vine-yards, then his fauns constructed on the same symbolic principle, gave rise to the satyrs. These, offering in their form disreputable points for reprobation, were found to be a sufficiently appropriate symbol of the Devil. The reasons of variety in the satyr figure are not far to seek, beyond the constant tendency of the mediæval artist to vary form while preserving essence. Every artist had his idea of the devil, either drawn from the rich depths of a Gothic imagination, from the descriptions accumulated by popular credulity, and most of all from that result of both--the Devil of the Mystery or Miracle Plays.