Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, Second SeriesBottrell, William
General
Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, Second Series
Bottrell, William
Cornwall (England : County) -- Social life and customs; Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
To raise infernal spirits up, but fear.
Butler.
NOT long ago it was believed that Old Nick frequently
appeared in the form of a bull, and that he often
placed money to tempt the unwary. The following
story—told us of the late Sir Rose Price's huntsman—will
help to explain notions which are not
yet wholly exploded.
When the huntsman was a boy his parents lived in Nancledra,
and sent him daily to a school two or three miles off, till he was
about thirteen years old. He had his dinner sent with him, and
he often minched. One morning he wandered away over the
moors in search of birds' nests and rabbits' burrows. He had a
good pasty in his dinner-bag and the day passed pleasantly in
birds-nesting, searching for young rabbits, and playing about
a tin-stream, three miles or so up the Bottom, where he stayed
till the streamers left work. Then he took his course for home,
over hedges and ditches, wandering wherever his fancy led him,
till almost dark, when he found himself in a large hilly field not
far from Nancledra. In making a short cut for home he crossed
this field, and, when near the middle of it, he heard a bull
bellowing, and shortly saw a large black one making towards
him with tail up and head down; sometimes it would stop to tear
up the ground, and fling its horns as if to get in practice to toss
the boy; who being far from any hedges, there seemed no way
of escape from the field before the bull could overtake him. But,
luckily, within a few yards, there was a large rock, to which he
ran and climbed it, a moment only before the bull came to it.
The brute kept on, for a long time, going round and round the
rock, bellowing and tearing up the turf as if in a rage, till at
last, tired with his vain endeavours—as it seemed—to get at the
boy, it hoisted its tail like a flag-staff, galloped off, and vanished
in a minute.
[228]
The boy didn't venture from his fort for sometime after the
bull left. At length he 'cramed' down over a shelving side of
the rock on all fours, head foremost—it was too dark to see
where to put his feet. When he touched ground with his hand
he felt and took up what he thought, by the feel of it, to be a
penny-piece or a large button. He ran home and saw, by light
shining through a window, that he had found a penny. When
the way was clear, he made a place to hide it, in a hole over the
chimney-stool—the fire-place was a large open one for burning
furze and turf.
Next night, about the same hour as on the preceding, he went
on the rock, 'cramed' down again, and found two penny-pieces,
which he hoarded in the hole; and, night after night, he visited
the rock, found the money doubled each succeeding night, and
picked up silver money in other places where one would the least
expect to find it, till his hiding-place was nearly full in a few
weeks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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