Scott may be correct in his assertion that many of these fairy-myths owe their origin to the existence of a diminutive autochthonic race that was conquered by the invading Celts, and the remnants of which lurked about the mountains and forests, and excited in their victors a superstitious reverence on account of their great skill in metallurgy; but this will not explain the retention of many of the old god-names; as that of the Dusii, the Celtic nocturnal spirits, in our word “deuce,” and that of the Nikr or water-spirits in “nixie” and old “Nick."[1] These words undoubtedly indicate the accomplishment of the “facilis descensus Averno” by the native deities.  Elves, brownies, gnomes, and trolds were all at one time Scotch or Irish gods.  The trolds obtained a character similar to that of the more modern succubus, and have left their impression upon Elizabethan English in the word “trull.”

[Footnote 1:  Maury, p. 189.]

28.  The preceding very superficial outline of the growth of the belief in evil spirits is enough for the purpose of this essay, as it shows that the basis of English devil-lore was the annihilated mythologies of the ancient heathen religions—­Italic and Teutonic, as well as those brought into direct conflict with the Jewish system; and also that the more important of the Teutonic deities are not to be traced in the subsequent hierarchy of fiends, on account probably of their temporary or permanent absorption into the proselytizing system, or the refusal of the new converts to believe them to be so black as their teachers painted them.  The gradual growth of the superstructure it would be well-nigh impossible and quite unprofitable to trace.  It is due chiefly to the credulous ignorance and distorted imagination, monkish and otherwise, of several centuries.  Carlyle’s graphic picture of Abbot Sampson’s vision of the devil in “Past and Present” will perhaps do more to explain how the belief grew and flourished than pages of explanatory statements.  It is worthy of remark, however, that to the last, communication with evil spirits was kept up by means of formulae and rites that are undeniably the remnants of a form of religious worship.  Incomprehensible in their jargon as these formulae mostly are, and strongly tinctured as they have become with burlesqued Christian symbolism and expression—­for those who used them could only supply the fast-dying memory of the elder forms from the existing system—­they still, in all their grotesqueness, remain the battered relics of a dead faith.

29.  Such being the natural history of the conflict of religions, it will not be a matter of surprise that the leaders of our English Reformation should, in their turn, have attributed the miracles of the Roman Catholic saints to the same infernal source as the early Christians supposed to have been the origin of the prodigies and oracles of paganism.  The impulse given by the secession from the Church of Rome to the study of the Bible by all classes added