The Devil’s Suit of Clothes

Hone recalled a tale from a manuscript in the British Museum. A tailor was stopped in the street by a stranger who asked to be measured for a suit, to be ready at the same spot a week later, and gave him cloth to make it from. Suspecting that his customer was the devil, the tailor went to a clergyman, who told him to make the suit but to keep every shred of the cloth and bring it all wrapped up with the clothes, and promised to go with him. When they came, the stranger abused the tailor for bringing a priest and vanished, leaving the clothes behind, and the tailor dared not sell the devil’s cloth to pay himself for his work.