he peasant sought the advice of his neighbours,
who suggested that he should take it on a pilgrimage to a neighbouring
shrine of the Mother of God. While he was crossing a brook on the way
an impish voice from under the water called out to the infant, whom he
was carrying in a basket. The brat answered from within the basket,
"Ho, ho!" and the peasant was unspeakably shocked. When the voice from
the water proceeded to ask the child what it was after, and received
the answer from the hitherto inarticulate babe that it was going to be
laid on the shrine of the Mother of God, to the end that it might
prosper, the peasant could stand it no longer, and flung basket and
baby into the brook. The changeling and the little devil played for a
few moments with each other, rolling over and over, and crying, "Ho,
ho, ho!" and then they disappeared together. Luther says that these
devilish brats may be generally known by their eating and drinking too
much, and especially by their exhausting their mother's milk, but they
may not develop any certain signs of their true parentage until
eighteen or nineteen years old. The Princess of Anhalt had a child
which Luther imagined to be a changeling, and he therefore advised its
being drowned, alleging that such creatures were only lumps of flesh
animated by the devil or his angels. Some one spoke of a monster which
infested the Netherlands, and which went about smelling at people like
a dog, and whoever it smelt died. But those that were smelt did not
see it, albeit the bystanders did. The people had recourse to vigils
and masses. Luther improved the occasion to protest against the
"superstition" of masses for the dead, and to insist upon his
favourite dogma of faith as the true defence against assaults of the
devil.

Among the numerous stories of Satanic compacts, we are told of a monk
who ate up a load of hay, of a debtor who bit off the leg of his
Hebrew creditor and ran off to avoid payment, and of a woman who
bewitched her husband so that he vomited lizards. Luther observes,
with especial reference to this last case, that lawyers and judges
were far too pedantic with their witnesses and with their evidence;
that the devil hardens his clients against torture, and that the
refusal to confess under torture ought to be of itself sufficient
proof of dealings with the Prince of Darkness. "Towards such," says
he, "we would show no mercy; I would burn them myself." Black magic or
witchcraft he p