Banks rashly encouraged the notion that
his nag was supernaturally endowed. An alarm was raised that Marocco
was possessed by the Evil One. To relieve misgivings and escape
reproach, Banks made his horse pay homage to the sign of the cross,
and called upon all to observe that nothing satanic could have been
induced to perform this act of reverence. A rumour at one time
prevailed that the horse and his master had both, as "subjects of the
Black Power of the world," been burned at Rome by order of the Pope.
More authentic accounts, however, show Banks as surviving to Charles
I.'s time, and thriving as a vintner in Cheapside. But it is to be
gathered from Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," that of old
certain performing horses suffered miserably for their skill. In a
little book, "Le Diable Bossu," Nancy, 1708, allusion is made to the
burning alive at Lisbon, in 1707, of an English horse, whose master
had taught him to know the cards; and Grainger, in his "Biographical
History of England," 1779, states that, within his remembrance, "a
horse, which had been taught to perform several tricks, was, with its
owner, put into the Inquisition.
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