aga
(or supernatural snake-being) ate up the rice, and
then "entering her hole, sat there, resolved to bite
the woman if she should curse her, but not otherwise."
When the woman returned, and found her meal had been
stolen, she did not lose her temper, but only said,
"May the stomach of the eater be cooled!" When the
Naga heard this, she emerged from her hole and said,
"Well done! I now regard you as my daughter," etc.
(From the "Indian Antiquary," Bombay, No. 1, 1872, pp.
6, 7.)]

Sometimes the demon of the _legenda_ bears a close resemblance to the
snake of the _skazka_. Thus, an evil spirit is described as coming
every night at twelve o'clock to the chamber of a certain princess,
and giving her no rest till the dawn of day. A soldier--the fairy
prince in a lower form--comes to her rescue, and awaits the arrival of
the fiend in her room, which he has had brilliantly lighted. Exactly
at midnight up flies the evil spirit, assumes the form of a man, and
tries to enter the room. But he is stopped by the soldier, who
persuades him to play cards with him for fillips, tricks him in
various ways, and fillips him to such effect with a species of
"three-man beetle," that the demon beats a hasty retreat.

The next night Satan sends another devil to the palace. The result is
the same as before, and the process is repeated every night for a
whole month. At the end of that time "Grandfather Satan" himself
confronts the soldier, but he receives so tremendous a beating that he
flies back howling "to his swamp." After a time, the soldier induces
the whole of the fiendish party to enter his knapsack, prevents them
from getting out again by signing it with a cross, and then has it
thumped on an anvil to his heart's content. Afterwards he carries it
about on his back, the fiends remaining under it all the while. But at
last some women open it, during his absence from a cottage in which he
has left it, and out rush the fiends with a crash and a roar. Meeting
the soldier on his way back to the cottage, they are so frightened
that they fling themselves into the pool below a mill-wheel; and
there, the story declares, they still remain.[485]

This "legend" is evidently nothing more than an adaptation of one of
the tales about the dull demons of olden times, whom the Christian
story-teller has transformed into Satan and his subject fiends.

By way of a conclusion to this chapter