with their descriptions among the islanders of the Antilles, where they are the ghosts of the dead, vanishing when clutched;[1] in New Zealand, where ancestral deities 'form attachments with females and pay them repeated visits,' while in the Samoan Islands such intercourse of mischievious inferior gods caused 'many supernatural conceptions;'[2] and in Lapland, where details of this last extreme class have also been placed on record.[3] From these lower grades of culture the idea may be followed onward. Formal rites are specified in the Hindu Tantra, which enable a man to obtain a companion-nymph by worshipping her and repeating her name by night in a cemetery.[4] Augustine, in an instructive passage, states the popular notions of the visits of incubi, vouched for, he tells us, by testimony of such quantity and quality that it may seem impudence to deny it; yet he is careful not to commit himself to a positive belief in such spirits.[5] Later theologians were less cautious, and grave argumentation on nocturnal intercourse with incubi and succubi was carried on till, at the height of mediæval civilization, it is found accepted in full belief by ecclesiastics and lawyers. Nor is it to be counted as an ugly but harmless superstition, when for example it is set forth in the Bull of Pope Innocent VIII. in 1484, as an
- ↑ 'Vita del Amm. Christoforo Colombo,' ch. xiii.; and 'Life of Colon,' in Pinkerton, vol. xii. p. 84.
- ↑ Taylor, 'New Zealand,' pp. 149, 389. Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 119.
- ↑ Högström, 'Lapmark,' ch. xi.
- ↑ Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. ii. p. 151. See also Borri, 'Cochin-China,' in Pinkerton, vol. ix. p. 823.
- ↑ Augustin. 'De Civ. Dei,' xv. 23: 'Et quoniam creberrima fama est, multique se expertos, vel ab eis qui experti essent, de quorum fide dubitandum non esset, audisse confirmant, Silvanos et Faunos, quos vulgo incubos vocant, improbos sæpe extitisse mulieribus, et earum appetisse ac peregisse concubitum; et quosdam dæmones, quos Dusioe Galli nuncupant, hanc assidue immunditiam et tentare et efficere; plures talesque asseverant, ut hoc negare impudentiæ videatur; non hinc aliquid audeo definire, utrum aliqui spiritus ... possint etiam hanc pati libidinem; ut ... sentientibus feminibus misceantur.' See also Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 449, 479; Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' p. 332; Cockayne, 'Leechdoms of Early England,' vol. i. p. xxxviii., vol. ii. p. 345.
