Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/101

 Collectanea. 85

" You should have followed her, and she'd have shown you a treasure if you'd asked her in God's name what she wanted," said Mrs. Briton sagely ; and he wished he had.

" But, why did you think she was the devil ? " I asked him. " Oh, I s'pose 'twas just a wicked thought of mine," he said.

I gathered some stories from Mrs. Briton about a mythical person, supposed to have come from Kentchurch near by, who went by the name of Jack Kent. He is associated with the Druidical stones at Trelleck, and the cleft on the Skyrrid.

" They say that when Jacky was a little boy he made a compact with the devil, which enabled him to do anything he set his hand to.

" Once he was engaged by a farmer to scare crows ; but there was a fair going on in the town, and Jack didn't mean to miss it, so he called all the crows together from all the fields round, and when they were all collected he sent them into an old barn, with no roof to it. But Jack put the crows in there and said some- thing to them, and they couldn't get out, try as they might. So Jack, he went to the fair, but when he had been enjoying himself there a bit, he met his master. (Now his master had specially told him he was not to go to the fair, or else the crows would be after the crops.) So the farmer said, ' Hullo, Jack, what art doin' here ? Didn't I tell thee to look after th' crows ? ' But Jack says, ' T' crows be all right, master.' And he took the farmer to the old barn, and sure enough there was the crows, and they couldn't get out, altho' that barn had no roof, until Jack told them to.^

" Jack bested the devil in everything. One day they were walking through a turnip-field, and Jack made a bet that he could get more profit out of the field, if they shared it, than the devil could. (The turnips weren't above ground then, but Jack knew they were there.) Jack asked the Old Boy if he'd have Tops or Bottoms. He said ' Tops,' so Jack got the turnips and the Old Boy the greens.

" Next year the Devil took the bet again, an' this time he made sure he'd win, so he said he'd have Bottoms ; but Jack, he had took precautions, an' that field came up wheat, so he got the corn

' [Cf. Folklore jfournal, i., 370 (where Kent is misprinted Rent); also vol. ii., p. 10, and F. Hindes Groome's /« Gipsy Tents (Nimmo), p. 11, whose version of the story has been heard in Shropshire also. — Ed.]