Irish gods. The trolds obtained a character similar to that of
the more modern succubus, and have left their impression upon
Elizabethan English in the word "trull."

[Footnote 1: Maury, p. 189.]

28. The preceding very superficial outline of the growth of the belief
in evil spirits is enough for the purpose of this essay, as it shows
that the basis of English devil-lore was the annihilated mythologies of
the ancient heathen religions--Italic and Teutonic, as well as those
brought into direct conflict with the Jewish system; and also that the
more important of the Teutonic deities are not to be traced in the
subsequent hierarchy of fiends, on account probably of their temporary
or permanent absorption into the proselytizing system, or the refusal of
the new converts to believe them to be so black as their teachers
painted them. The gradual growth of the superstructure it would be
well-nigh impossible and quite unprofitable to trace. It is due chiefly
to the credulous ignorance and distorted imagination, monkish and
otherwise, of several centuries. Carlyle's graphic picture of Abbot
Sampson's vision of the devil in "Past and Present" will perhaps do more
to explain how the belief grew and flourished than pages of explanatory
statements. It is worthy of remark, however, that to the last,
communication with evil spirits was kept up by means of formulae and
rites that are undeniably the remnants of a form of religious worship.
Incomprehensible in their jargon as these formulae mostly are, and
strongly tinctured as they have become with burlesqued Christian
symbolism and expression--for those who used them could only supply the
fast-dying memory of the elder forms from the existing system--they
still, in all their grotesqueness, remain the battered relics of a dead
faith.

29. Such being the natural history of the conflict of religions, it will
not be a matter of surprise that the leaders of our English Reformation
should, in their turn, have attributed the miracles of the Roman
Catholic saints to the same infernal source as the early Christians
supposed to have been the origin of the prodigies and oracles of
paganism. The impulse given by the secession from the Church of Rome to
the study of the Bible by all classes added impetus to this tendency. In
Holy Writ the Reformers found full authority for believing in the
existence of evil spirits, possession by devils, witchcraft, and divine
and diabolic interference by way o