Goodman’s Croft.

A strip of ground or corner of a field formerly left untilled, in Scotland, in the belief that unless some such place were left, the spirit of evil would damage the crop.

“Scotchmen still living remember the corner of a field being left for the goodman’s croft.”—Tylor: Primitive Culture, ii. 370.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.