Travelling tailors in the Guernsey countryside worked by the day in their customers' houses and were welcome as storytellers, though, MacCulloch says drily, not always particular about the truth, and not always able to walk past a tavern on the way home. This one was walking back from work one evening when he met a sinister man, dressed all in black and riding a black horse, who asked if he was a tailor and ordered a pair of trousers to be collected from his house at noon the next day.
The tailor ran after him to say he needed a measurement. "Bah! what does that matter?" said the stranger, but he got down from his horse to be measured, and the tailor saw there were no legs to be seen. With the horrible suspicion that this was the Devil, and his own legs shaking, he stammered that the trousers would be ready. "Look to yourself if they are not," said the rider, and rode off.
The tailor went straight to his rector, who told him to make the trousers and promised to be present when they were collected. The next day at noon the rector arrived a few minutes early, and then the Devil knocked at the door. As he took the trousers, the tailor heard him say: "If a man of God had not been present in this house, I would have carried you off also." The Gazette's correspondent went on to scold readers who believed such things. MacCulloch left that part out and kept the story. The tailor is not named, so the map point is placed at parish level in Torteval.
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