"the tale
Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly,
That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand
O'er some new-open'd grave, and, strange to tell,
Evanishes at crowing of the cock."

This superstition has not entirely died out in England, and a
correspondent of "Notes and Queries"[173] relates an amusing legend
current in Devonshire: "Mr. N. was a squire who had been so unfortunate
as to sell his soul to the devil, with the condition that after his
funeral the fiend should take possession of his skin. He had also
persuaded a neighbor to be present on the occasion of the flaying. On
the death of Mr. N. this man went, in a state of great alarm, to the
parson of the parish, and asked his advice. By him he was told to fulfil
his engagement, but he must be sure and carry a cock into the church
with him. On the night after the funeral the man proceeded to the
church, armed with the cock, and, as an additional security, took up his
position in the parson's pew. At twelve o'clock the devil arrived,
opened the grave, took the corpse from the coffin, and flayed it. When
the operation was concluded, he held the skin up before him and
remarked, 'Well, 'twas not worth coming for after all, for it is all
full of holes!' As he said this the cock crew, whereupon the fiend,
turning round to the man, exclaimed, 'If it had not been for the bird
you have got there under your arm, I would have your skin too!' But,
thanks to the cock, the man got home safe again." Various origins have
been assigned to this superstition, which Hampson[174] regards as a
misunderstood tradition of some Sabaean fable. The cock, he adds, which
seems by its early voice to call forth the sun, was esteemed a sacred
solar bird; hence it was also sacred to Mercury, one of the
personifications of the sun.

[173] 1st series, vol. iii. p. 404.

[174] "Medii OEvi Kalendarium," vol. i. p. 85.

A very general amusement, up to the end of the last century, was
cock-fighting, a diversion of which mention is occasionally made by
Shakespeare, as in "Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 3):

"His cocks do win the battle still of mine,
When it is all to nought."

And again Hamlet says (v. 2):

"O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit"--

meaning, the poison triumphs over him, as a cock over his beaten
antagonist. Formerly, cock-fighting entered into the occupations of the
old and young.[175