Northern mythology

270 EPITOME OF GERMAN MYTHOLOGY.
adoration paid to them only a delusion
of the devil, who,
under their form, had seduced men to his worship, and
even believed that the images of the
gods and the sacred
trees were possessed by the evil one. Thus they did not
regard the heathen deities as so many perfect non-entities,
but ascribed to them a real existence, and, to a certain
degree, stood themselves in awe of them. Hence their
religion
was represented to the heathens as a work of the
devil, and the new converts were, in the first place, required
to renounce him and his service.
In this manner the idea
naturally impressed itself on the minds of the people that
these gods were only so many devils ;
and if any person, in
the first period of Christianity, was brought to doubt the
omnipotence of the God of the Christians, and relapsed
into idolatry, the majority regarded such apostasy as a submission
to the devil. Hence the numerous stories of compacts
with the evil one, at which the individual, who so
devoted himself, must abjure his belief in God, Christ, and
the Virgin Mary, precisely as the
newly converted Christian
renounced the devil. That the devil in such stories
frequently stood in the place of a heathen god is evident
from the circumstance, that offerings must be made to him
in crossways, those ancient places of sacrifice^.
But heathenism itself entertained the belief in certain
beings hostile alike to gods and men, and at the same
time possessed of extraordinary powers, on account of
which their aid frequently appeared desirable. We shall
presently see how in the Popular Tales the devil is often
made to act the part which more genuine traditions assign
to the giant race, and how he not unfrequently occupies
the place of kind, beneficent spirits^.
^ Miiller, p. 109. Hence the expressions " diabolo sacrificare," " diaboli
in amorem vinum bibere." A black hen was offered to the devil.
See vol. iii. p. 256. Harrys, i. No. 55. Temme, Sagen Pommerns, No. 233.
2 MuUer, p. 110.