[2] The name of
the devil supposed to preside at the witches' sabbaths is sometimes
given as Hecat, Diana, Sybilla; sometimes Queen of Elfame,[3] or
Fairie.[4] Indeed, Shakspere's line in "The Comedy of Errors," had it
not been unnecessarily tampered with by the critics--
"A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough,"[5]
would have conclusively proved this identity of character.
[Footnote 1: Fairy Mythology of Shakspere, Hazlitt, p. 83.]
[Footnote 2: Daemonologie, p. 69. An instance of a fairy incubus is
given in the "Life of Robin Goodfellow," Hazlitt's Fairy Mythology, p.
176.]
[Footnote 3: Pitcairn, iii. p. 162.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid. i. p. 162, and many other places.]
[Footnote 5: Fairy has been altered to "fury," but compare Peele, Battle
of Alcazar: "Fiends, fairies, hags that fight in beds of steel."]
113. The real distinction between these two classes of spirits depends
on the condition of national thought upon the subject of
supernaturalism in its largest sense. A belief which has little or no
foundation upon indisputable phenomena must be continually passing
through varying phases, and these phases will be regulated by the nature
of the subjects upon which the attention of the mass of the people is
most firmly concentrated. Hence, when a nation has but one religious
creed, and one that has for centuries been accepted by them, almost
without question or doubt, faith becomes stereotyped, and the mind
assumes an attitude of passive receptivity, undisturbed by doubts or
questionings.
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