been born of a virgin of a black complexion a forerunner this, by hundreds of years, of the Black Madonnas in the Italian Churches.
Do those black Madonnas typify, mystically, the darkness of the unknown world beyond the grave whence the Heavenly Spouse emerges?
The Earls of Cleave were said to descend from a union between the heiress of Cleave and a being from the upper air, "who came to Cleave in a miraculous ship, drawn by a swan, and after begetting divers children, 'went away at Noon-day, in the sight of a World of People, in his Airy Ship.' '
The famous Robert le Diable, according to one tradition, was the child of an incubus.
The enchanter Merlin "son of an incubus and of a holy woman, became the center and the master of all nature," says Peyrat ****** ( T he Magic of the Middle Ages, Rydberg, 204,) the number of those adventurers during the Middle Ages who asserted themselves or others to be the bastards of devils and human beings. But if they had led a blameless life, evincing a firm belief in the dogmas of the Church, the danger of such a pedigree was not greater than the honor. The son of a fallen angel did not need to bend his head before a man of noble birth.
"But," it will be objected, "these stories are myths of ancient, or at most, mediaeval times. You don't find virgin-born children nowadays."
Stay:
In the establishment of Schweinfurth, that individual in Rockford, Illinois, who today claims to be the Christ, a woman a few years since bore a child, and steadfastly declared her belief that it was immaculately conceived. Trial it is said, before a jury of the women of Schweinfurth's establishment did not succeed in shaking the faith of these women in the possibility of such a thing.
In the Truthseeker of New York occurs this paragraph:
"Mrs. Helen Fields, of Wichita, Kansas, has given birth to a child whose father she avers is the Holy Ghost."
Moncure D. Conway, in his Demonology and Devil-Lore, I. 231,
