The Anatomy of Melancholy

These are the beings that dance on heaths and village greens, as Lavater and Trithemius think. Olaus Magnus adds that they leave those green circles we commonly find in open fields. Others attribute the circles to a falling meteor or some chance patch of exceptional fertility in the soil: nature amusing herself in this way. Old women and children sometimes see these beings.

Jeroni Pau, in his description of the Spanish city of Barcelona, relates how they have often been seen near the town, around springs and hills. “Sometimes,” says Trithemius, “they lead simple people into their mountain hiding places, showing the astonished visitors marvellous wonders, ringing bells, spectacles, and the like.” Gerald of Wales gives the example of a Welsh monk who was deceived in this way.

Paracelsus lists many places in Germany where they commonly walk about in little coats some two feet long. There is a larger kind, which we call hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows. In those superstitious times they would grind grain for a bowl of milk, cut wood, or do any sort of menial work. In former ages they would repair old ironwork in the Aeolian Islands of Lipari, and they have often been seen and heard.

Tholosanus calls them Trulli and Getuli, and says that in his day they were common in many parts of France. Dithmar Blefken, in his description of Iceland, reports as a certainty that almost every household still has some such familiar spirit. Felix Malleolus, in On the Cruelty of Demons, similarly affirms that these trolls, or Telchines, are very common in Norway and are seen doing menial work: drawing water, says Weyer, book 1, chapter 32, preparing food, and similar tasks.

There is another sort that frequents abandoned houses, which the Italians call foliots. Cardan considers them mostly harmless. They make strange noises at night, sometimes howl pitifully and then laugh, produce great flames and sudden lights, throw stones, rattle chains, shave people, open and shut doors, knock down platters, stools and chests, and sometimes appear as hares, crows, black dogs, and the like.

Read about them in the Jesuit Peter Thyraeus’s treatise On Haunted Places, part 1, chapter 4. He holds that they are devils, the souls of the damned seeking revenge, or souls from purgatory seeking relief. For examples, consult Sigismund Scherertz’s On Apparitions, part 1, chapter 1, which he says he drew chiefly from Luther. There are many instances.

Pliny the Younger recalls such a house at Athens, which the philosopher Athenodorus rented, although no one dared live in it for fear of devils. Augustine, City of God, book 22, chapter 8, tells a similar story of the tribune Hesperius’s house at Zubeda, near their city of Hippo. It was troubled by evil spirits, to his great loss, “with suffering inflicted on his animals and servants.”

Many such instances can be read in Nider’s Ant-Hill, book 5, chapters 12, 3, and elsewhere. I am uncertain whether I may call these the Zim and Ophim of which Isaiah 13:21 speaks. For more, see the same Scherertz, On Apparitions, book 1, chapter 4; he is full of examples.