pantomime. The great fun for the people was to see
him well belaboured by the saints with clubs or cudgels, and to hear him
howl with pain as he limped off, maimed by the blow of some vigorous
anchorite. St. Dunstan generally served him the glorious trick for which
he is renowned, catching hold of his nose with a pair of red-hot pincers,
till

"Rocks and distant dells resounded with his cries."

Some of the saints spat in his face, to his very great annoyance; and
others chopped pieces off of his tail, which, however, always grew on
again. This was paying him in his own coin, and amused the populace
mightily, for they all remembered the scurvy tricks he had played them and
their forefathers. It was believed that he endeavoured to trip people up
by laying his long invisible tail in their way, and giving it a sudden
whisk when their legs were over it;--that he used to get drunk, and swear
like a trooper, and be so mischievous in his cups as to raise tempests and
earthquakes, to destroy the fruits of the earth, and the barns and
homesteads of true believers;--that he used to run invisible spits into
people by way of amusing himself in the long winter evenings, and to
proceed to taverns and regale himself with the best, offering in payment
pieces of gold which, on the dawn of the following morning, invariably
turned into slates. Sometimes, disguised as a large drake, he used to lurk
among the bulrushes, and frighten the weary traveller out of his wits by
his awful quack. The reader will remember the lines of Burns in his
address to the "De'il," which so well express the popular notion on this
point:

"Ae dreary, windy, winter night,
The stars shot down wi' sklentin light,
Wi' you mysel, I got a fright
Ayont the lough;
Ye, like a rash-bush, stood in sight
Wi' waving sough.

The cudgel in my nieve did shake,
Each bristled hair stood like a stake,
When wi' an eldritch stour, 'quaick! quaick!'
Among the springs
Awa' ye squattered, like a drake,
On whistling wings."

In all the stories circulated and believed about him, he was represented
as an ugly, petty, mischievous spirit, who rejoiced in playing off all
manner of fantastic tricks upon poor humanity. Milton seems to have been
the first who succeeded in giving any but a ludicrous description of him.
The sublime pride, which is the quintessence of evil, was unconceived
before his time.