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First published at 1879.Three Friars, says a legend, hid themselves near the WitchSabbath orgies that they might count the devils; but the Chief ofthese, discovering the friars, said—‘Reverend Brothers, our armyis such that if all the Alps, their rocks and glaciers, were equallydivided among us, none would have a pound’s weight.’ This wasin one Alpine valley. Any one who has caught but a glimpse ofthe world’s Walpurgis Night, as revealed in Mythology andFolklore, must agree that this courteous devil did not overstatethe case. Any attempt to catalogue the evil spectres which havehaunted mankind were like trying to count the shadows castupon the earth by the rising sun. This conviction has grownupon the author of this work at every step in his studies of thesubject.In 1859 I contributed, as one of the American ‘Tracts for theTimes,’ a pamphlet entitled ‘The Natural History of the Devil.’Probably the chief value of that essay was to myself, and this inthat its preparation had revealed to me how pregnant withinterest and importance was the subject selected. Subsequentresearches in the same direction, after I had come to reside inEurope, revealed how slight had been my conception of thevastness of the domain upon which that early venture wasmade. In 1872, while preparing a series of lectures for theRoyal Institution on Demonology, it appeared to me that the bestI could do was to print those lectures with some notes andadditions; but after they were delivered there still remained withme unused the greater part of materials collected in manycountries, and the phantasmal creatures which I had evokedwould not permit me to rest from my labours until I had dealtwith them more thoroughly.
