Offering fowls to evil spirits appears to have been an ancient and wide-spread practice. It was common to sacrifice a cock to the devil. Burns, in his "Address to the Deil," says--"Some cock or cat your rage must stop." Music and dancing are also associated in our popular superstitions with witches, evil spirits, and the devil. The devils, it is said, love music, but dread bells, and have a very delicate sense of smells. In the _True and Faithful Relation of what passed between Dr. Dee and some Spirits_, we learn that the devil appeared to the doctor "as an angel in a white robe, holding a bloody cross in his right hand, the same hand being also bloody," and in this guise he prayed, and "anabaptistically bewailed the wickedness of the world."[63] RAISING THE DEVIL. The boys at the Burnley Grammar-school are said to have succeeded on one occasion in raising the devil. They repeated the Lord's Prayer backwards, and performed some incantations by which, as it is said, Satan was induced to make his appearance through a stone flag on the floor of the school-house. After he had got his head and shoulders well out, the boys became alarmed, and began to hammer him down with the poker and tongs. With much ado they drove him back; but the _black mark_ he had left on the flag was shown in proof of his appearance until the school-house was repaired, a few years ago, when the floor was boarded over, and the flagstone disappeared. THE DEVIL & THE SCHOOLMASTER AT COCKERHAM. It is said that the arch Spirit of Evil once took up his abode in Cockerham, and so scared and disturbed the inhabitants of that quiet place, that at length in public meeting, to consider how to free themselves from this fiendish persecution, they appointed the schoolmaster, as the wisest and cleverest man in the place, to do his best to drive the devil away. Using the prescribed incantation at midnight, the pedagogue succeeded in raising Satan; but when he saw his large horns and tail, saucer eyes, and long claws, he became almost speechless. According to the recognised procedure in such cases, the devil granted him the privilege of setting three tasks, which if he (Satan) accomplished, the schoolmaster became his prey; if he failed, it would compel the flight of the demon from Cockerham. The first task, to count the number of dewdrops on certain hedges, was soon accomplished; and so was the second, to count the number of stalks in a field of grain. The third task was then proposed in the following words, according to a doggerel version of the tradition:-- "Now make me, dear sir, a rope of yon sand, Which will bear washing in Cocker, and not lose a strand." Speedily the rope was twisted of fine sand, but it would not stand washing; so the devil was foiled, and at one stride he stepped over the bridge over Broadfleet, at Pilling Moss. The metrical version of the legend is scarcely worth printing. OLD NICK.