In this class [of fairies] must also be placed the mischievous goblin who prowls about the county in the guise of a shaggy foal; sometimes deluding people into mounting him, and then vanishing with a shout of fiendish laughter. ‘It’s a common tradition in villages,’ says John Clare, ‘that the devil often appears in the form of a shagg’d foal; and a man in our parish firmly believes that he saw him in that character one morning early in harvest.’Sternberg, 144