Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/158

 with my tailed friend, whom I liked, notwithstanding his caudal appendage.

“Mr. X——, is it true that you are a Cornish-man?”

“Yes, my little man; born and bred in the West country.”

“I like you very much;—but—have you really got a tail?”

When the bookseller had recovered from the astonishment which I had produced by my question, he stoutly repudiated the charge.

“But you are a Cornishman?”

“To be sure I am.”

“And all Cornishmen have tails.”

I believe I satisfied my own mind that the good man had sat his off, and my nurse assured me that such was the case with those of sedentary habits.

It is curious that Devonshire superstition should attribute the tail to Cornishmen, for it was asserted of certain men of Kent in olden times, and was referred to Divine vengeance upon them for having insulted S. Thomas à Becket, if we may believe Polydore Vergil. “There were some,” he says, “to whom it seemed that the king’s secret wish was, that Thomas should be got rid of. He, indeed, as one accounted to be an enemy of the