Woodcuts are wonderful things. They’re simple, striking images, and created via the oldest method of printmaking. With just a block of wood and a knife, anyone (within reason) could create images to accompany news stories, religious tracts or to create patterns for decoration or textiles.
Over the centuries, a few woodcuts have remained in the public consciousness, whether they be for important historical reasons, for their beauty or simply for their strangeness. One such woodcut is that of the Mowing Devil.
The story accompanying that of the Mowing-Devil is often cited in relation to UFO/UAP and early crop circle phenomena, with some researchers arguing that the woodcut demonstrates an example of 17th century alien visitation, rather than an unfortunate, ungodly, labour dispute.[1]
The Mowing-Devil, also known as ‘Strange News out of Hartford-shire’ is an English woodcut pamphlet from 1678, telling the moralistic tale of a farmer and his reticence to pay his worker.
According to the pamphlet, a Hertfordshire farmer was arguing with a poor mower and refused to pay the fee for mowing three half acres of oats, swearing that the mower was charging so much, he would pay the Devil himself to do the job, rather than pay the labourer.
That evening, the farmer’s field was ablaze, appearing to be completely engulfed in fire with no probable cause. However, the next morning, the farmer’s three half acres were perfectly mowed. Indeed, they were mown with such care and neatness that the farmer was sure that no human hands could have ever completed it. It appeared that only the Devil himself, or ‘some Infernal Spirit’ would have the capabilities to complete such meticulous work.
The harvested oats were all gathered and set within the field, but the farmer was too terrified to move them.
This particular pamphlet is held within the British library, and appears as one single sheet, with the transcript as follows:
The Mowing-Devil: Or, Strange NEWS out of Hartford-ſhire. Being a True Relation of a Farmer, who Bargaining with a poor Mower, about the Cutting down Three Half Acres of Oats upon the Mower’s asking too much, the Farmer ſwore, ‘That the Devil ſhould Mow it, rather than He.’ And lo it fell out, that that very Night, the Crop of Oats ſhew’d as if it had been all of a Flame, but next Morning appear’d ſo neatly Mow’d by the Devil, or ſome Infernal Spirit, that no Mortal Man was able to do the like. Alſo, How the ſaid Oats ly now in the Field, and the Owner has not Power to fetch them away.
However, a more expanded story was reproduced in the late 1678 publication, ‘Strange Signes from Heaven: Seene and Heard in Cambridge, Suffolke and Norfolke, in and Upon the 21 Day of May, 1648. Miraculous Wonders Seen at Barnstable, Kirkham, Cornwall and Little Britain, in London.’[2] It’s this longer story that so often piques the interest of contemporary researchers, owing to the possibilities of religious, historical and paranormal interpretation.
The story, in combination with the rather evocative, circular, illustration is subject to much scrutiny in relation to crop circle creation. In one incarnation of the tale, the crops were precisely cut ‘in round circles, and plac’t every straw with that exactness that it would have taken up above an age for any man to perform what he did that one night’. Few crop circles begin with a raging fire, and even fewer finish with the crops nicely harvested and left for the farmer to retrieve. But most specifically, what turns many crop circle aficionados away from the devil’s efforts is that the stalks were cut, rather than bent, and concerned oats, rather than the common crops of wheat and barley.
For all of its folkloric and supernatural interpretations, the tale of the Mowing Devil is a clear moralistic tale of the 17th century, reiterating the reality of God, and therefore the existence of devils. As such, man would do well to mind his careless use of such words, and behave in a more ‘Christianly’ manner, as ‘Men may dally with heaven, and criticize on hell, as wittily as they please, but that there are really such places, the wise dispensations of Almighty Providence, does not cease continually to evince.’
While the original story is terse, this expanded version is clearer in its religious dogma and moralistic tone, with such statements as ‘in the happy series of an interrupted prosperity, we may strut and plume ourselves over the miserable indigencies of our necessitated neighbours; yet there is a just God above, who weighs us not by our bags, nor measures us by our coffers; but looks upon all men indifferently, as the common sons of Adam.’
Much of the moral tale makes for standard and unremarkable reading – be kind to others, don’t be vain, consider those who have less than you, and what wealth you have today may not be yours tomorrow; be modest, be kind.
Was the Mowing Devil a simple religious tract with a disarming woodcut, or is it evidence of alien intervention, wrongly interpreted as the work of the devil, when we should have been looking to the skies?
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Further Reading:
https://curiousrambler.com/the-mowing-devil-and-the-crop-circle/
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20100404142736/http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/3114/full
[2]https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=oxFIAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=%22for+no+longer+ago+than+within+the+compass%22&source=bl&ots=Cz_qZTdniP&sig=ACfU3U3-yI_yFCwAHu2ibt21ZeqqEem7VA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5zYPzo8XnAhWuQRUIHaKGApYQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22for%20no%20longer%20ago%20than%20within%20the%20compass%22&f=false
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