660 
MISCELLANEA. 
times, they imagined to be the devil, who they thought had 
destroyed the prisoner, and was still roaring for his prey, seeking 
whom he might devour. In this dilemma, they resolved to call 
the minister of the parish to lay the de’il; and Rankin offered to 
run for him express. Having learned thetruth from Rankin, and 
none of the magistrates or baronshaving the courage to look Satan 
in the face, the minister easily succeeded in laying him. The 
terrified baillies and barot^happy to find that their prisoner had 
escaped from so formidable an enemy, inflicted no further punish¬ 
ment on the delinquent for his intromissions with the baron’s peas. 
Rankin sometime after practised a similar trick at the neigh¬ 
bouring parish of Saint Guivox. He tied the bell-rope to the 
tail of the minister’s cow, in the middle of the night, and when the 
irregular tolling of the bell brought out the inhabitants, the cow 
was mistaken for Beelzebub. Even the minister himself continued 
in that opinion, till the error w 7 as discovered about the rising of 
the sun. These extravagant tricks of a wild boy exposed the 
absurdity which then prevailed in that quarter, of calling out the 
clergy to conjure or lay the devil. His sooty highness seems to 
have been affronted at the inhabitants comparing him to a bull or 
a cow T ; for he has scarcely ever appeared personally in either of 
these parishes since these tricks were practised. 
Horses should not be over fed when not at work. 
Mr. Aiton gives a ludicrous but rather unfair illustration of, 
in his estimation, the absurdity of the above excellent maxim. 
“ Some people are so ignorant of the animal economy , as to imagine 
it is to no purpose to feed cows when they are not giving milk, or 
horses when not at work. I met some years ago with a reverend 
clergyman attending a funeral of one of his parishioners, mounted 
on a large meagre horse, and labouring hard with staff ’and spur 
to keep up with the procession. When requested to accompany 
the funeral to the place of interment, he said he intended to have 
done so, but found his horse unable to travel, which, he said, was 
to him surprising, as he had given him no less than three mea¬ 
sures of grain that morning. A gentleman present said, the 
animal did not seem to have gotten as much every day. The 
clergyman owned that he had given the horse no grain since 
last time he rode him, about three weeks before. Some farmers 
seem to have adopted the notion of this reverend gentleman as to 
their dairy cows, and give them no green or rich food when they 
are not in milk. But they will find, that, when their cows come 
again into milk, they will not, even on the best feeding which 
they can bestow, be much better able to yield milk than the 
clergyman’s horse was to ride, when he had received three 
measures of grain that morning.” 
