Page:Devil stories - an anthology.djvu/336

 NOTES "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven" (Luke x, 18). All rebellious deities, who were universally supposed to have fallen from heaven, have crooked or crippled legs. Hephaestos, Vulcan, Loki and Wieland, each has a broken leg. This idea has probably been derived from the crooked lightning flashes. The devil's mother in the mediaeval German mystery-plays walks on crutches. Asmodeus, the Persian demon Aeshma daeva, also had a lame foot. In Le Sage's book Le Diable hoiteux Asmodeus appears as a limping gentleman, who uses two sticks as crutches. According to rabbinical tradition this demon broke his leg when he hurried to meet King Solomon. In addition to his broken leg the devil inherited the goat-foot from Pan, the bull-foot from Dionysius and the horse-foot from Loki. The Ethiopic devil's right foot is a claw, and his left a hoof.

The devil is erroneously represented in this story as very lazy. Industry, it has been said, is the great Satanic virtue. "If we were all as diligent and as conscientious as the devil," observed an old Scotch woman to her minister, "it wad be muckle better for us."

The highest peak of a mountain is always consecrated to St. Michael. The Mont St.-Michel on the Norman Coast played a conspicuous part in the wars of the sons of William the Conqueror. Maupassant uses it as the background for several of the chapters of his novel Notre Coeur (1890). The mountain also figures in his story "Le Horla" (1886).

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