it has no gall-bladder. It is curious to compare this piece of Border Folk-lore with that of Devonshire, where it is said that the devil can assume all shapes except those of the lamb and the dove. A little girl, on the borders of Dartmoor, told this to one of my relations, adding, “He can’t make himself look like they, because of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.’[1]
Mr. G. Henderson’s Popular Rhymes of Berwickshire tells us of a remarkable piece of service formerly done to the Evil One. “Cloutie’s croft,” he says, “or the gudeman’s field, consisted of a small portion of the best land, set apart by the inhabitants of most Scottish villages as a propitiatory gift to the devil, on which property they never ventured to intrude. It was dedicated to the devil’s service alone, being left untilled and uncropped, and it was reckoned highly dangerous to break up by tillage such pieces of ground.”[2]
A little anecdote has been related to me by the minister of ———, on the Tweedside, which shows that the Evil Spirit is held to have power of molesting good Christians in wild lonely places. A country minister, after attending a meeting of his presbytery, had to return home alone, and very late, on a dark evening. While riding in a gloomy part of the road, his horse stumbled, and the good man was suddenly flung to the ground. A loud laugh followed, so scornful and so weird, that the minister felt no doubt of the quarter whence it proceeded. However, with a stout heart, he remounted without delay, and continued his journey, crying out, “Ay, Satan, ye may laugh; but, when I fall, I can get up again; when ye fell, ye never rose”—on which a deep groan was heard. This was firmly believed to have been
- ↑ A Sussex boy once told me, that, if a letter were placed under the pillow at night offering to the devil to sell one’s soul, the letter would be gone in the morning, and half-a-crown found in its place.—S. B. G.
- ↑ In several parishes in Devonshire is a patch of land hedged in, which is called Gallitrap (i. e. Gallows-trap), and considered uncannie. There is such a piece in the parish of Lew Trenchard. The superstition connected with it is that it is a gallows-trap, for if anyone “feyed” to be hung enters the field, he cannot leave it again, but must wander round and round it, without power to find the gate, or climb the fence, till the parson and the magistrate are sent for; the first to take the spell off him, the second to see to his being hung.—S. B. G.
