We have seen how our Lord and the saints succeeded to Odin and his children in the stories which told of their wanderings on earth to warn the wicked, or to help the good; we have seen how the kindliness and helpfulness of the ancient goddesses fell like a royal mantle round the form of the Virgin Mary. We have seen, too, on the other hand, how the procession of the Almighty God degenerated into the infernal midnight hunt. We have now to see what became of the rest of the power of the goddesses, of all that might which was not absorbed into the glory of the blessed Virgin. We shall not have far to seek. No reader of early medieval chronicles and sermons can fail to have been struck with many passages which ascribe majesty and power to beings of woman's sex. Now it is a heathen goddess as Diana; now some half-historical character as Bertha; now a mythical being as Holda; now Herodias; now Satia; now Domina Abundia, or Dame Habonde.[1] A very short investigation will serve
- ↑ Here are a few of these passages which might be much extended:—Burchard of Worms, p. 194, a. "credidisti ut aliqua femina sit quæ hoc facere possit quod quædam a diabolo deceptæ se affirmant necessario et ex præcepto facere debere; id est cum dæmonum turbâ in similitudinem mulierum transformatâ, quam vulgaris stultitia Holdam vocat, certis noctibus equitare debere super quasdam bestias, et in eorum se consortio annumeratam esse.
"Illud etiam non omittendum, quod qusedam sceleratæ mulieres retro post Sathanam converse, dæmonum illusionibus et phantasmatibus seductæ credunt se et profitentur nocturnis horis cum Dianâ paganorum dea, vel cum Herodiade et innumera multitudine mulierum equitare super quasdam bes-
