The Cockerham schoolmaster appears to have lacked originality, for in the Scottish legend of 'Michael Scott' it is recorded that when the fairies crowded round his dwelling crying for work, he bade them twine ropes of sand to reach the moon, and tradition has it that traces of their unsuccessful attempts may yet be found. A more recent instance is told in a sketch of Dr. Linkbarrow, a Westmoreland wizard, who lived about a hundred years ago, quoted from the Kendal Mercury by Mr. Sullivan, in his Cumberland and Westmoreland, Ancient and Modern. The Doctor, who was disturbed at church by a terrible storm, hurried home, and on the way met the devil, who asked for work. He immediately set him to make 'thumb symes' of river sand. Imitating the Israelites, perhaps not unconsciously—for Satan's knowledge of Scripture is proverbial—the Evil One asked for straw, which was refused him. On his arrival at home, the Doctor found his servant prying into his black-letter book, which imprudence had caused the storm and Satan's pilgrimage.
Several similar stories, illustrating the danger of tampering with books of magic, are told in Normandy. In one of them it is recorded that the servant of a village curé, moved by curiosity, read a page or two of one of his master's volumes, when suddenly Satan appeared. The domestic fled, but the Evil One captured him, and was making away with him when the curé arrived and simply read a few other words from the book, upon which Satan dropped his prey. In another one Satan keeps his victim three years, but at length is obliged to let him go.
In the last story of this kind, however, which has come under my notice—a French one by the way—the incautious student has scarcely read a line of the open book when Satan appears and strangles him. The sorcerer, quietly returning home, sees devils perched on the house, and, surprised, beckons them to approach. One does so, and tells him the story, and he thereupon rushes to his study and finds the student stretched dead upon the floor. Afraid of being accused of murder, he orders the devil who had assassinated the scholar to pass into the body of his victim. The demon obeys, and goes to promenade in the street at the point most frequented by the students, but suddenly, upon another order, he quits the body, and the corpse falls in the midst of the terrified promenaders.
In Cornwall, instead of the devil, it is the ghost of Tregeagle, the wizard, that is doomed to make trusses of sand in Genvor Cove, and to bear them to the top of Escol's Cliff. Having once succeeded in carrying a truss, after having first brought water from a neighbouring stream and frozen the sand, he is now condemned to make the trusses without water.
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Another version of this story, which is still told in the lonely farm-houses of the district, gives the scholars the credit of having raised the devil during the absence of their master. Similar tasks were given to the infernal visitor by a sharp-witted lad, who feared lest his should be the soul the Evil One threatened to take back with him; and not many years ago a flag, said to have been broken by the outwitted Satan in his passage across the floor, used to be triumphantly exhibited to any daring and irreverent sceptic who expressed doubts as to the truthfulness of the narrative.
At Burnley Grammar School a black mark on a stone was at one time exhibited in proof of a state visit of the same kind, and a similar ignominious flight.
The Grammar School of Middleton, near Manchester, also can boast of the patronage of the Evil One; and Samuel Bamford has recorded that in his youth a hole in the school flags was shown as an impression of the Satanic hoof. The Middleton legend credits the lads with the unenviable honour of having called up the fiend and afterwards innocently wishing him to withdraw, which he sternly declined to do without having received his usual fee of a soul. As at Cockerham, he was requested to make a rope of sand; and he was rapidly completing the task, when, to the joy of the urchins, the schoolmaster came upon the scene, and quickly exorcised the visitor, who, in his disgusted and disordered flight, broke down nearly half of the building.
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