But later, in the same place, blood again fell from the sky.
28
_Notes and Queries_, 7-8-508:
A correspondent who had been to Devonshire writes for information as to
a story that he had heard there: of an occurrence of about thirty-five
years before the date of writing:
Of snow upon the ground--of all South Devonshire waking up one morning
to find such tracks in the snow as had never before been heard
of--"clawed footmarks" of "an unclassifiable form"--alternating at huge
but regular intervals with what seemed to be the impression of the point
of a stick--but the scattering of the prints--amazing expanse of
territory covered--obstacles, such as hedges, walls, houses, seemingly
surmounted--
Intense excitement--that the track had been followed by huntsmen and
hounds, until they had come to a forest--from which the hounds had
retreated, baying and terrified, so that no one had dared to enter the
forest.
_Notes and Queries_, 7-9-18:
Whole occurrence well-remembered by a correspondent: a badger had left
marks in the snow: this was determined, and the excitement had "dropped
to a dead calm in a single day."
_Notes and Queries_, 7-9-70:
That for years a correspondent had had a tracing of the prints, which
his mother had taken from those in the snow in her garden, in Exmouth:
that they were hoof-like marks--but had been made by a biped.
_Notes and Queries_, 7-9-253:
Well remembered by another correspondent, who writes of the excitement
and consternation of "some classes." He says that a kangaroo had escaped
from a menagerie--"the footprints being so peculiar and far apart gave
rise to a scare that the devil was loose."
We have had a story, and now we shall tell it over from contemporaneous
sources. We have had the later accounts first very largely for an
impression of the correlating effect that time brings about, by
addition, disregard and distortion. For instance, the "dead calm in a
single day." If I had found that the excitement did die out rather soon,
I'd incline to accept that nothing extraordinary had occurred.