Note 39 — NORSE POPULAR TALES

The following passage from The Fortalice of Faith of Alphonso Spina, written about the year 1458, will suffice to show how disgustingly the Devil, in the form of a goat, had supplanted the “Good Lady”: Quia nimium abundant tales perversae mulieres ine Delphinatu et Guasconia, ubi se asserunt concurrere de nocte in quâdam planitie deserta ubi est caper quidam in rupe, qui vulgariter dicitur el boch de Biterne et clued ibi conveniunt cum candelis accensis et adorant illum caprum osculpntes eum in ano suo. Ideo captae plures earum, ab inquisitoribus fidei et convictae comburuntur.” About the same time, too, began to spread the notion of formal written agreements between the Fiend and men who were to be his after a certain time, during which he was to help them to all earthly goods. This, too, came with Christianity from the East. The first instance was Theophilus, vicedominus of the Bishop of Adana, whose fall and conversion form the original of all the Faust Legends. See Grimm, D. M. 969, and “Theophilus in Icelandic, Low German, and other tongues, by G. W. Dasent, Stockholm, 1845.” There a complete account of the literature of the legend may be found. In almost all these early cases the Fiend is outwitted by the help of the Virgin or some other saint, and in this way the reader is reminded of the Norse Devil, the successor of the Giants, who always makes bad bargains. When the story was applied to Faust in the sixteenth century, the terrible Middle Age Devil was paramount, and knew how to exact his due.