Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/301

Rh display of beautiful tracery and statues. The adjoining buttress is surmounted by a witch on the back of a devil, popularly noted to represent the tradition of the devil looking over Lincoln. 'The monks supposed that the devil, who could not but take notice of such a stately structure for divine worship in his ranges, did look upon it with a sour and malicious countenance, from whence they deduced a proverb to express the ill aspect of envious and malicious men at such good things as they don't like —
 * 'He looks as the devil over Lincoln.'

"The exposed situation of the cathedral and the rather dissolute life of some of the clergy some centuries ago gave rise to the following legend : "The wind and the devil being on a friendly tour together arrived at Lincoln Minster, when the latter addressed his friend thus : 'Just wait outside here whilst I go in and have a chat with the dean and chapter.' 'All right,' says the wind, and he has been waiting there ever since. Most certainly the wind, on the calmest and sultriest day, may always there be felt if not seen, but what can be the inference from the devil's long stay with his friends inside, eh ?" Here the devil's intimate alliance with the wind suggests that he has taken the place of Odin, who was a heathen "Prince of the Powers of the Air," greatly honoured by the sea-rovers from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, who settled in Eastern England. It, therefore, seems natural enough to find that a similar story is told in Copenhagen. In H. Marryat's Residence in Jutland, the Danish Isles, and Copenhagen, vol. i., p. 152, we are told: "There is wind enough in Copenhagen, Heaven knows ! but at the corner of the Place by the Frue Kirke more than anywhere, and I will tell you why. The devil and the wind went out one day together, and when they came to the corner of this place, said the devil to the wind, 'Wait a little for me, for I have an errand in the bishop's palace.' He went in, but found himself so much at home he forgot to come out again ; so the wind is there still waiting for him." In Nottinghamshire a story of a different type connects the fiend with Lincoln Minster. A correspondent of mine who is greatly interested in folklore says : "There was a large stone, similar to those at Lindholme, in my native parish (Hickling,