The conception of Hades as a monster swallowing men in death, was actually familiar to Christian thought. Thus, to take instances from different periods, the account of the Descent into Hades in the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus makes Hades speak in his proper personality, complaining that his belly is in pain, when the Saviour is to descend and set free the saints imprisoned in it from the beginning of the world; and in mediæval representations of this deliverance, the so-called 'Harrowing of Hell,' Christ is depicted standing before a huge fish-like monster's open jaws, whence Adam and Eve are coming forth first of mankind.[1] With even more distinctness of mythical meaning, the man-devouring monster is introduced in the Scandinavian Eireks-Saga. Eirek, journeying toward Paradise, comes to a stone bridge guarded by a dragon, and entering into its maw, finds that he has arrived in the world of bliss.[2] But in another wonder-tale, belonging to that legendary growth which formed round early Christian history, no such distinguishable remnant of nature-myth survives. St. Margaret, daughter of a priest of Antioch, had been cast into a dungeon, and there Satan came upon her in the form of a dragon and swallowed her alive:
'Maiden Mergrete tho Loked her beside,
And sees a loathly dragon, Out of an hirn glide:
His eyen were full griesly, His mouth opened wide,
And Margrete might no where flee There she must abide,
Maiden Margrete Stood still as any stone,
And that loathly worm, To her-ward gan gone
Took her in his foul mouth, And swallowed her flesh and bone.
Anon he brast – Damage hath she none!
Maiden Mergrete Upon the dragon stood;
Blyth was her harte, And joyful was her mood.'[3]
Stories belonging to the same group are not unknown to
1 'Apocr. Gosp.' Nicodemus, ch. xx.; Mrs. Jameson, 'History of our Lord in Art,' vol. ii. p. 258.
2 Eireks Saga, 3, 4, in 'Flateyjarbok,' vol. i., Christiania, 1859; Baring-Gould, 'Myths of the Middle Ages,' p. 238.
3 Mrs. Jameson, 'Sacred and Legendary Art,' vol. ii. p. 138.
