Cornish Characters and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Cornish Characters and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography; Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
The remarkable thing about this incident is that the horse was quite
blind, yet it could go its accustomed road, and stop at accustomed
places, without seeing. By all the family this sagacious animal was
much prized, but Samuel's father felt for it a special regard; and the
attachment between the master and his faithful servant was, to all
appearance, mutual. Many years before, the poor beast, in a wretched
condition from starvation and ill-usage, had been turned out on a
common to die. The owner willingly sold it for little more than the
value of the hide; and his new possessor, having by care and kindness
restored it to health and strength, soon found that he had made a most
advantageous bargain. For more than twenty years he and his blind
companion travelled the road together. After the horse was past labour
it was kept in the orchard and tended with almost parental care.
Latterly it became unable to bite the grass, and the old man regularly
fed it with bread sopped in milk. In the morning it would put its head
over the orchard railing, towards its master's bedroom, and give its
accustomed neigh, whereupon old Mr. Drew would jump out of bed, open
the window, and call to the horse, "My poor old fellow, I will be
with thee soon." And when the animal died, he would not allow the skin
or shoes to be taken off, but had the carcase buried entire.
Samuel tells another story of instinct in brute beasts:--
"Our dairy was under a room which was used occasionally as a barn and
apple-chamber, into which the fowls sometimes found their way, and, in
scratching among the chaff, scattered the dust on the pans of milk
below, to the great annoyance of my mother-in-law. In this a favourite
cock of hers was the chief transgressor. One day in harvest she went
into the dairy, followed by her little dog, and finding dust again
thrown on the milk-pans, she exclaimed, 'I wish that cock were dead!'
Not long after, she being with us in the harvest field, we observed
the little dog dragging along the cock, just killed, which with an air
of triumph he laid at my mother-in-law's feet. She was dreadfully
exasperated at the literal fulfilment of her hastily uttered wish,
and, snatching a stick from the hedge, attempted to give the luckless
dog a beating. The dog, seeing the reception he was likely to meet
with, where he expected marks of approbation, left the bird and ran
off, she brandishing her stick and saying in a loud, angry tone, 'I'll
pay thee for this by and by.' In the evening she was about to put her
threat into execution, when she found the little dog established in a
corner of the room and a large one standing before it. Endeavouring to
fulfil her intention by first driving off the large dog, he gave her
plainly to understand that he was not at all disposed to relinquish
his post. She then sought to get at the small dog behind the other,
but the threatening gesture and fiercer growl of the large one
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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