Demoniacal snails

It is curious that in folk-lore the esnail should be always so unceremoniously treated. It will not pull in its horn you should say, "I'll kill your father and mother the morn," and if it will not "come out of its hole," "I'll beat your body as black as coal."

And could anything be in worse taste than the following:--

Snail, snail, shoot out your horn.
Your father andmother are dead.
Brother and sister are in the back yard
Begging for barley bread.

It is odd that it should be so rated at. But it is, all the world over, and as Gubernatis says, "the snail of popular superstition is demoniacal."

-- Good Words for October.
In the Dundee Evening Telegraph, 2nd October 1893.