Woodbridge Pharisee Belief

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calf shed

A gentleman-farmer, in the neighhourhood of Woodbridge, had a calf to sell, and happened to be by when his bailiff and a butcher were about to bargain for it. The calf was produced, and was apparently very hot: ‘Oh!’ said the butcher, ‘the Pharisees have been here; and ‘stru’s you are alive, have been riding that there poor calf all night.’ The butcher very gravely instructed my friend how to avert such consequences in future: which was, to get a stone with a hole in it, and hang it up in the calves’ crib, just high enough not to touch the calves backs when standing up: ‘for,’ added the compassionate man of knife and steel, ’it will brush the Pharisees off the poor beasts when they attempt to gallop ’em round.’ This was a master-butcher, a shrewd intelligent man, in 1832. It accounted to me for the suspension of a stone, weighing perhaps a pound, which I had many years observed in my farm stable, just higher than the horses’ backs. And although my men more than half deny it, I can discern that they have heard of the Pharisaic freaks, and more than half believe in them. Ed. Moor. Oriental Fragments, p. 456.

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