Tricksters. Lucifer, the Devil in the Middle Ages

I'm excited about this week's trickster theme which is... the trickster Devil in European folklore. That may come as a surprise to people who only know the Devil in a religious context where there are glimmers of his trickster identity, but he is more usually the embodiment of evil and an apocalyptic antagonist standing against God in the final battle. That is actually the focus of the book I'm going to start with here... but if you go to the chapter about the Devil in medieval folklore, he looks very different than in more religious contexts. Here's the book: Lucifer, the Devil in the Middle Ages by Jeffrey Burton Russell.

Russell is a historian, and this book is the third in a four-book series which documents the history of the Devil: The Devil, Satan, Lucifer (this book), and Mephistopheles. You can read more about Russell's life and career at Wikipedia.

The chapter about the Devil in medieval folklore is a survey of many different story types, and there is an especially intriguing discussion of Loki and how Christian notions of the Devil probably affected his representation in the writings of medieval (Christian) authors. The way that the Devil is often more trickster than the personification of evil in folklore is, I think, more of a problem for Russell's approach than he cares to admit, but to his credit he reports a wonderfully wide range of folktales and sources for the study of the Devil in these medieval stories.

The Devil's role in European folktales is not limited to the Middle Ages; you will find him in later folktale sources too. Take the Brothers Grimm for example, where the Devil makes several appearances. You can use the Internet Archive to do a search, so here are the references to the Devil in The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm in the Jack Zipes edition:

A famous example is the story of "The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs" where both the Devil and also the Devil's Grandmother appear; the Devil's Grandmother has been a character in Devil's folktales since the Middle Ages as Russell recognizes in his book. What the Devil and his Grandmother do in this story resembles what you would expect from a typical folklore giant like in "Jack and the Beanstalk,", the difference being that the hero's encounter with his opponent takes place in Hell, the Devil's abode.

This is a popular Grimm fairy tale, and I found two different children's books based on it at the Archive: 

The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs

by Nonny Hogrogian

The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs

by Sherry Meidell

So, that's a nice start to the week, and I'll be back with lots more about the trickster Devil in the days to come!

Lucifer, the Devil in the Middle Ages

by Jeffrey Burton Russell

The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

by Jack Zipes