ed and inappeasable
crying of his little daughter, that he commended her
to the demons." Whereupon she was immediately carried
off. Seven years after this, he learnt (from a man
placed by a similar imprecation in the power of the
demons, who used him as a vehicle) that his daughter
was in the interior of a neighboring mountain, and
might be recovered if he would demand her. So he
ascended to the summit of the mountain, and there
claimed his child. She straightway appeared in
miserable plight, "arida, tetra, oculis vagis, ossibus
et nervis et pellibus vix haerentibus," etc. By the
judicious care, however, of her now cautious parent
she was restored to physical and moral respectability.
For some valuable observations on this story see
Liebrecht's edition of the "Otia Imperialia," pp.
137-9. In the German story of "Die sieben Raben"
(Grimm, No. 25) a father's "hasty word" turns his six
sons into ravens.]

When devils are introduced into a story of this class, it always
assumes a grotesque, if not an absolutely comic air. The evil spirits
are almost always duped and defeated, and that result is generally due
to their remarkable want of intelligence. For they display in their
dealings with their human antagonists a deficiency of intellectual
power which almost amounts to imbecility. The explanation of this
appears to be that the devils of European folk-lore have nothing in
common with the rebellious angels of Miltonic theology beyond their
vague denomination; nor can any but a nominal resemblance be traced
between their chiefs or "grandfathers" and the thunder-smitten but
still majestic "Lucifer, Son of the Morning." The demon rabble of
"Popular Tales" are merely the lubber fiends of heathen mythology,
beings endowed with supernatural might, but scantily provided with
mental power; all of terrific manual clutch, but of weak intellectual
grasp. And so the hardy mortal who measures his powers against theirs,
even in those cases in which his strength has not been intensified by
miraculous agencies, easily overcomes or deludes the slow-witted
monsters with whom he strives--whether his antagonist be a Celtic or
Teutonic Giant, or a French Ogre, or a Norse Troll, or a Greek Drakos
or Lamia, or a Lithuanian Laume, or a Russian Snake or Koshchei or
Baba Yaga, or an Indian Rakshasa or Pisacha, or any other member of
the man