And sure enough old Crockern did it. After a few years Dartmoor beat the scientific farmer. He had tried to drain its bogs, it had drained his purse. He had scratched its back, and it had torn out his pocket.
There existed formerly a belief on Dartmoor that it was hunted over at night in storm by a black sportsman, with black fire-breathing hounds, called the "Wish Hounds." They could be heard in full cry, and occasionally the blast of the hunter's horn on stormy nights.
One night a moorman was riding home from Widecombe. There had been a fair there; he had made money, and had taken something to keep out the cold, for the night promised to be one of tempest. He started on his homeward way. The moon shone out occasionally between the whirling masses of thick vapour. The horse knew the way better perhaps than his master. The rider had traversed the great ridge of Hameldon, and was mounting a moor on which stands a circle of upright stones—reputedly a Druid circle, and said to dance on Christmas Eve—when he heard a sound that startled him—a horn, and then past him swept without sound of footfall a pack of black dogs.
The moorman was not frightened—he had taken in too much Dutch courage for that—and when a minute after the black hunter came up, he shouted to him, "Hey! huntsman, what sport? Give us some of your game."
"Take that," answered the hunter, and flung him something which the man caught and held in his arm. Then the mysterious rider passed on. An hour elapsed before the moorman reached his home. As he had jogged on he had wondered what sort of game he had been given. It was too large for a hare, too small for a deer. Provokingly, not once since the encounter had the moon flashed forth. Now that he was at his door he swung himself from his horse, and still carrying the game, shouted for a lantern.
The light was brought. With one hand the fellow took it, then raised it to throw a ray on that which he held in his arm—the game hunted and won by the Black Rider. It was his own baby, dead and cold. This story was told by the blacksmith at Moreton Hampstead to G. P. Bidder, the calculating boy, who as a lad was fond of playing about the old man's forge. From one of Mr. Bidder's daughters I had the tale.
It would be unjustifiable to pass over the Pixies, or Pysgies as they are generally termed, who are the little spirits supposed specially to haunt Dartmoor, although indeed they leave their traces, and perform their pranks elsewhere. To be "pysgie-led" is to go astray and become so bewildered as not to be able to find the way at all. How entirely one may go wrong even with the best appliances, the following experience will show.
One morning, my friend Mr. R. Burnard, with one of the officers of the Ordnance Survey, another gentleman and myself, started from the Duchy Hotel, Princetown, with the object of visiting an unregistered stone row on Conies Down Tor, which at our request the Survey was about to include in their map. We started at 9.30 a.m., of course provided with compasses and surveying apparatus. There was a bit of fog as we left the hotel door, but as we heard the larks singing aloft we expected it to clear. Mr. Burnard and the officer got ahead of us, and disappeared in the mist before we had gone a hundred yards—and we saw them no more that day.
Beyond the Prisons there is a short cut across the enclosures made by the convicts, into the main Tavistock and Moreton road; we took that, and on reaching the road struck by Fitz's Well due north, or nearly so, for Black Dunghill (Blackadun-hill). Then I knew that by going due north we must strike the Lych Way, the track by which corpses were formerly carried from the centre and east side of the moor for interment at Lydford. This Lych Way is fairly well marked.
The mist became thicker; we walked on, hoping on reaching Conies Down Tor to find our friends there. But after a bit I got completely lost; we came on a dip or pan in which were sheep, but no stream; that I could in no way account for, so we set our faces to the wind, which I knew when we started blew from the south, and about one o'clock we reached Princetown again, drenched to the skin. But the Ordnance Survey officer and Mr. Burnard had taken another route, had arrived at Mis Tor, and then by a swerve to the right along Mis Tor pan—one ghastly, boggy tract to be avoided—essayed to strike the Lych Way and reach Conies Down Tor. But in the mist they went so absolutely astray, notwithstanding their scientific appliances, that when about one o'clock they reached a stream flowing north they supposed that they had hit on the Ockment and would come out at Okehampton. Nor was it till a brawling stream came foaming down on the right, and the river took a twist south-west, that it dawned on them that they were on the Tavy. About five o'clock they reached, sopped as sponges and utterly fagged, a little tavern at Mary Tavy, where, in their prostration, they asked for a bottle of champagne. The hostess stared. "Plaize, surs, be he sum'ut to ate? Us hav'n't got nort but eggs and a rasher."