Bat
There is an Oriental belief that the bat is specially adapted to occult uses. In the Tyrol it is believed that the man who wears the left eye of a bat may become invisible, and in Hesse he who wears the heart of a bat bound to his arm with red thread will always be lucky at cards. (See Chagrin).
Bataille, Dr.: Author of Le Diable au XIX. Siècle. Under the pseudonym of Dr. Hecks he purports to have witnessed the secret rites and orgies of many diabolic societies, but a merely perfunctory examination of his work is sufficient to brand it as wholly an effort of the imagination. Bathym, also called Marthim, a duke of the Infernal Regions. He has the appearance of a robust man, says Wierius, but his body ends in a serpent's tail. He bestrides a steed of livid colour. He is well versed in the virtues of herbs and precious stones. He is able to transport men from one place to another with wondrous speed. Thirty legions obey his behests.
Baton, the Devil's: There is preserved in the marche d' Ancâne, Tolentino, a bâton which it is said that the devil used.
Battle of Loquifer, The: a tale incorporated in the
Charlemagne saga, supposed to have been written about the twelfth century. Its hero is Renouart, the giant brother-in-law of William of Orange, and the events take place on the sea. Renouart and his barons are on the shore at Porpaillart, when a Saracen fleet is seen. He is persuaded to enter one of the ships, which immediately set sail; and he is told by Isembert, a hideous monster, that the Saracens mean to flay him alive. Renouart, armed only with a huge bar of wood, kills this creature, and makes the Saracens let him go, while they return to their own country. It is arranged that Renouart will fight one Loquifer, a fairy giant and leader of the Saracens ; and on the issue of this combat the war will depend. They meet on an island near Porpaillart. Loquifer is in possession of a magical balm, which heals all his wounds immediately, and is concealed in his club; but Renouart, who is assisted by angels, at length succeeds in depriving Loquifer of his club, so that his strength departs. Renouart slays him, and the devil carries off his soul. The romance goes on to tell of a duel between William of Orange and Desrame, Renouart's father, in which the latter is slain. Renouart is comforted by fairies, who bear him to Avalon Beaumont where he has many adventures. He is finally wrecked, but is rescued by mermaids, and awakes to find himself on the sands at Porpaillart, from which spot he had been taken to Avalon.
Bauer, George : who Latinized his name (a boor or husbandman) into "Agricola," was born in the province of Misnia, in 1494. An able and industrious man, he acquired a considerable knowledge of the principles of medicine, which led him, as it led his contemporaries, to search for the elixir vitæ and the Philosopher's Stone. A treatise on these interesting subjects, which he published at Cologne in 1531, secured him the favour of Duke Maurice of Saxony, who appointed him the superintendent of his silver-mines at Chemnitz. In this post he obtained a practical acquaintance with the properties of metals which dissipated his wild notions of their possible transmutation into gold; but if he abandoned one superstition he adopted another, and from the legends of the miners imbibed a belief in the existence of good and evil spirits in the bowels of the earth, and in the creation of explosive gases and fire-damp by the malicious agency of the latter. Bauer died in 1555.