SOURCE: "Demonological Background of 'Donnerhugel's Narrative' and 'Wandering Willie's Tale'," in Studies in Philology, Vol. XXX, No. 3, July, 1933, pp. 604-17.

In the following essay, Parsons discusses the folkloric and legendary sources that inform "Donnerhugel's Narrative" and "Wandering Willie's Tale."

Superstitious material often supplied the grist for the literary mill in the early part of the nineteenth century. I propose to illustrate this process of turning folklore and marvelous legends into literature by an analysis of Sir Walter Scott's "Donnerhugel's Narrative" and "Wandering Willie's Tale," short stories included in Anne of Geierstein and Redgauntlet much in the fashion of the interpolated tale of the eighteenth-century novel.

I

As Scott went back to old chronicles for the central episode of "DonnerhugePs Narrative" and changed the incident considerably in order to make it fit its new setting, I shall preface my discussion of the tale by remarks on the novelist's use...