‘Next night the gen’leman came in his carriage and four, and he went into the cottage and axed the maid to come wi’ he, as she’d sworn and promised. She said, “I will, but you must give me a bit o’ time to dress myself.” He said, “I’ll give you till thickey candle be burnt out.”
‘Now, when he had said this, the old woman blew the candle out and rinned away as fast as she could, right on end to Bridgerule, and the pars’n he tooked the can’l and walled it up in the side o’ the church; you can see where it be to this day (it is the rood loft staircase upper door, now walled up). Well, when the gen’leman saw he was done, he got into his carriage and drove away, and he drove till he corned to Affaland Moor, and then all to wance down went the carriage and horses and all into a sort o’ bog there, and blue flames came up all round where they went down.’
The conversion of a dead lover into the devil is obviously a Christianised modification of a very ancient belief, that the dead do come and claim female companions. In all likelihood there lingered on a tradition of some gentleman having been engulfed in the morass of Affaland.
One more story, and that very significant,
