The Mowing-Devil: or, Strange News out of Hartford-shire

Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...

is the title of an English woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

 pamphlet

Pamphlet

A pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...

 published in 1678.

The pamphlet tells of a farmer who, refusing to pay the price demanded by a labourer to mow his field, swore that he would rather that the Devil

Devil

The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...

 mowed it instead.

According to the pamphlet, that night his field appeared to be in flame. The next morning, the field was found to be perfectly mowed - unnaturally perfect, in fact.

This pamphlet, and the accompanying illustration, is often cited by crop circle reasearchers as among the first recorded cases of crop circles.