its operations could be stopped at any moment by holding a saintly relic to the god or devil Apollo’s nose.  There is a fable that St. Gregory, in the course of his travels, passed near the oracle, and his extraordinary sanctity was such as to prevent all subsequent utterances.  This so disturbed the presiding genius of the place, that he appealed to the saint to undo the baneful effects his presence had produced; and Gregory benevolently wrote a letter to the devil, which was in fact a license to continue the business of prophesying unmolested.[3] This nonsensical fiction shows clearly enough that the oracles were not generally looked upon as extinguished by Christianity.  As the result of a similar policy we find the names and functions of the pagan gods and the earlier Christian saints confused in the most extraordinary manner; the saints assuming the duties of the moribund deities where those duties were of a harmless or necessary character.[4]

[Footnote 1:  Rise and Influence of Rationalism, i. p. 31.]

[Footnote 2:  Maury, p. 244, et seq.]

[Footnote 3:  Scot, book vii. ch. i.]

[Footnote 4:  Middleton’s Letter from Rome.]

26.  The Church carried out exactly the same principles in her missionary efforts amongst the heathen hordes of Northern Europe.  “Do you renounce the devils, and all their words and works; Thonar, Wodin, and Saxenote?” was part of the form of recantation administered to the Scandinavian converts;[1] and at the present day “Odin take you” is the Norse equivalent of “the devil take you.”  On the other hand, an attempt was made to identify Balda “the beautiful” with Christ—­a confusion of character that may go far towards accounting for a custom joyously observed by our forefathers at Christmastide but which the false modesty of modern society has nearly succeeded in banishing from amongst us, for Balda was slain by Loke with a branch of mistletoe, and Christ was betrayed by Judas with a kiss.

[Footnote 1:  Milman, History of Latin Christianity, iii. 267; ix. 65.]

27.  Upon the conversion of the inhabitants of Great Britain to Christianity, the native deities underwent the same inevitable fate, and sank into the rank of evil spirits.  Perhaps the juster opinion is that they became the progenitors of our fairy mythology rather than the subsequent devil-lore, although the similarity between these two classes of spirits is sufficient to warrant us in classing them as species of the same genus; their characters and functions being perfectly interchangeable, and even at times merging and becoming indistinguishable.  A certain lurking affection in the new converts for the religion they had deserted, perhaps under compulsion, may have led them to look upon their ancient objects of veneration as less detestable in nature, and dangerous in act, than the devils imported as an integral portion of their adopted faith; and so originated this class of spirits less evil than the other.  Sir Walter