''The Mowing-Devil: or, Strange News out of Hartford-shire'' is the title of an English woodcut

pamphlet A pamphlet is an unbound book (that is, without a hard cover or binding). Pamphlets may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths, called a ''leaflet'' or it may consist of a ...

published in 1678. The pamphlet tells of a farmer in

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

who, refusing to pay the price demanded by a labourer to mow his field, swore he would rather the Devil mowed it instead. According to the pamphlet, that night his field appeared to be in flame. The next morning, the field was found to be perfectly mowed, "that no mortal man was able to do the like". This pamphlet, and the accompanying illustration, are often cited by crop circle researchers as among the first recorded cases of

crop circles A crop circle, crop formation, or corn circle is a pattern created by flattening a crop, usually a cereal. The term was first coined in the early 1980s by Colin Andrews. Crop circles have been described as all falling "within the range of the ...

. Crop circle researcher Jim Schnabel does not consider it to be a historical precedent because it describes the stalks as being cut, while modern crop circles involve the wheat, barley or, less commonly, other plants being bent.

Transcription

References

{{reflist

External links

archive of transcription of the entire work (scroll to end
Pamphlets 1678 books Alleged extraterrestrial beings Supernatural legends Agriculture in Hertfordshire