This, too, is the proper place to explain the conclusion of that
intensely heathen tale, 'the Master-Smith', No. xvi. We have already
seen how the Saviour and St Peter supply, in its beginning, the place
of Odin and some other heathen god. But when the Smith sets out with
the feeling that he has done a silly thing in quarrelling with the
Devil, having already lost his hope of heaven, this tale assumes a
still more heathen shape. According to the old notion, those who were
not Odin's guests went either to Thor's house, who had all the
thralls, or to Freyja, who even claimed a third part of the slain on
every battle-field with Odin, or to Hel, the cold comfortless goddess
already mentioned, who was still no tormentor, though she ruled over
nine worlds, and though her walls were high, and her bolts and bars
huge; traits which come out in 'the Master-Smith', No. xvi, when the
Devil, who here assumes Hel's place, orders the watch to go back and
lock up _all the nine locks on the gates of Hell_--a lock for
each of the goddesses _nine_ worlds--and to put a padlock on
besides. In the twilight between heathendom and Christianity, in that
half Christian half heathen consciousness, which this tale reveals,
heaven is the preferable abode, as Valhalla was of yore, but rather
than be without a house to one's head after death, Hell was not to be
despised; though, having behaved ill to the ruler of one, and
actually quarrelled with the master of the other, the Smith was
naturally anxious on the matter. This notion of different abodes in
another world, not necessarily places of torment, comes out too in
'Not a Pin to choose between them', No. xxiv, where Peter, the second
husband of the silly Goody, goes about begging from house to house in
Paradise.

For the rest, whenever the Devil appears in these tales, it is not at
all as the Arch-enemy, as the subtle spirit of the Christian's faith,