Satan in corporeal shape than in past
centuries, nevertheless man has not been able to rise altogether above
the notion that there are such mortal creatures as witches and
warlocks, and such immortal visible visitants to our sublunary world
as spirits and the devil. Not only is there a general belief in the
existence of ghosts, but we have people asserting that they possess
the faculty of making spirits of the dead answer them at pleasure.
Learned men (men in high position) have written lengthy arguments in
favour of the spiritual theory.

Signs and omens are observed, faith in miracles have not died out,
charms are not considered valueless, curses and evil wishes make a
large proportion of our population tremble, dreams are believed in.
Indeed nearly all, if not all, the various aspects and phases of
superstition of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries
are, to a certain extent, believed in in the nineteenth century. We
make no mere random statement, but are stating facts falling under our
own notice and that of reliable witnesses.

Fear of the supernatural is confirmed by the dread one has of passing
a graveyard at night. Among the English, Scotch, and Irish people the
tales of their forefathers are remembered. Who has forgotten his
nursery tales? Who does not remember the stories of aged friends as
they sat round the winter fire? We have somewhere read of our nursery
tales under eight heads. First, of a hero waging successful war with
monsters; (2nd), of a neglected individual mysteriously raised into
position, like "Cinderella;" (3rd), of one thrown into a magic trance,
like the "Sleeping Beauty;" or (4th) of a person overpowered by a
monster, as in the case of "Little Red Riding Hood." "Blue Beard,"
says the writer from whom we have just quoted, is a specimen of a
group of tales, in which (5th) the hero or heroine is forbidden to do
something, but disobeys. "Beauty and the Beast" and "The White Cat"
are examples of a large group in which (6th) a brilliant being is
transformed, by means of a spell, into the form of a lower animal. A
number of stories, such as "Fortunatus and his Companions," turn upon
(7th) the possession of magic implements or spells. The concluding
group consists (8th) of moral tales. But these eight groups are far
too few to supply examples of either ancient or modern superstition.
Hahn endeavoured to group the folk-tales of Europe under forty heads,
and Baring Gould has followe