Tales Of Puritan Land - Charles M. Skinner
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
OF
OUR OWN LAND
By
Charles M. Skinner
Vol. 4.
TALES OF PURITAN LAND
CONTENTS:
Evangeline
The Snoring of Swunksus
The Lewiston Hermit
The Dead Ship of Harpswell
The Schoolmaster had not reached Orrington
Jack Welch's Death Light
Mogg Megone
The Lady Ursula
Father Moody's Black Veil
The Home of Thunder
The Partridge Witch
The Marriage of Mount Katahdin
The Moose of Mount Kineo
The Owl Tree
A Chestnut Log
The Watcher on White Island
Chocorua
Passaconaway's Ride to Heaven
The Ball Game by the Saco
The White Mountains
The Vision on Mount Adams
The Great Carbuncle
Skinner's Cave
Yet they call it Lover's Leap
Salem and other Witchcraft
The Gloucester Leaguers
Satan and his Burial-Place
Peter Rugg, the Missing Man
The Loss of Weetamoo
The Fatal Forget-me-not
The Old Mill at Somerville
Edward Randolph's Portrait
Lady Eleanore's Mantle
Howe's Masquerade
Old Esther Dudley
The Loss of Jacob Hurd
The Hobomak
Berkshire Tories
The Revenge of Josiah Breeze
The May-Pole of Merrymount
The Devil and Tom Walker
The Gray Champion
The Forest Smithy
Wahconah Falls
Knocking at the Tomb
The White Deer of Onota
Wizard's Glen
Balanced Rock
Shonkeek-Moonkeek
The Salem Alchemist
Eliza Wharton
Sale of the Southwicks
The Courtship of Myles Standish
Mother Crewe
Aunt Rachel's Curse
Nix's Mate
The Wild Man of Cape Cod
Newbury's Old Elm
Samuel Sewall's Prophecy
The Shrieking Woman
Agnes Surriage
Skipper Ireson's Ride
Heartbreak Hill
Harry Main: The Treasure and the Cats
The Wessaguscus Hanging
The Unknown Champion
Goody Cole
General Moulton and the Devil
The Skeleton in Armor
Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket
Love and Treason
The Headless Skeleton of Swamptown
The Crow and Cat of Hopkins Hill
The Old Stone Mill
Origin of a Name
Micah Rood Apples
A Dinner and its Consequences
The New Haven Storm Ship
The Windham Frogs
The Lamb of Sacrifice
Moodus Noises
Haddam Enchantments
Block Island and the Palatine
The Buccaneer
Robert Lockwood's Fate
Love and Rum
TALES OF PURITAN LAND
EVANGALINE
The seizure by England of the country that soon afterward was
rechristened Nova Scotia was one of the cruellest events in history. The
land was occupied by a good and happy people who had much faith and few
laws, plenty to eat and drink, no tax collectors nor magistrates, in
brief, a people who were entitled to call themselves Acadians, for they
made their land an Arcady. Upon them swooped the British ships, took them
unarmed and unoffending, crowded them aboard their transports,--often
separating husband and wife, parents and children,--scattered them far
and wide, beyond hope of return, and set up the cross of St. George on
the ruins of prosperity and peace. On the shore of the Basin of Minas can
still be traced the foundations of many homes that were perforce deserted
at that time, and among them are the ruins of Grand Pre.
Here lived Evangeline Bellefontaine and Gabriel Lajeunesse, who were
betrothed with the usual rejoicings just before the coming of the
English. They had expected, when their people were arrested, to be sent
away together; but most of the men were kept under guard, and Gabriel was
at sea, bound neither he nor she knew whither, when Evangeline found
herself in her father's house alone, for grief and excitement had been
more than her aged parent could bear, and he was buried at the shore just
before the women of the place were crowded on board of a transport. As
the ship set off her sorrowing passengers looked behind them to see their
homes going up in flame and smoke, and Acadia knew them no more. The
English had planned well to keep these people from coming together for
conspiracy or revenge: they scattered them over all America, from
Newfoundland to the southern savannas.
Evangeline was not taken far away, only to New England; but without
Gabriel all lands were drear, and she set off in the search for him,
working here and there, sometimes looking timidly at the headstones on
new graves, then travelling on. Once she heard that he was a _coureur des
bois_ on the prairies, again that he was a voyageur in the Louisiana
lowlands; but those of his people who kept near her inclined to jest at
her faith and urged her to marry Leblanc, the notary's son, who truly
loved her. To these she only replied, "I cannot."
Down the Ohio and Mississippi she went--on a raft--with a little band of
those who were seeking the French settlements, where the language,
religion, and simplicity of life recalled Acadia. They found it on the
banks of the Teche, and they reached the house of the herdsman Gabriel on
the day that he had departed for the north to seek Evangeline. She and
the good priest who had been her stay in a year of sorrow turned back in
pursuit, and for weary months, over prairie and through forest, skirting
mountain and morass, going freely among savages, they followed vain
clues, and at last arrived in Philadelphia. Broken in spirit then, but
not less sweet of nature for the suffering that she had known, she who
had been named for the angels became a minister of mercy, and in the
black robe of a nun went about with comforts to the sick and poor. A
pestilence was sweeping through the city, and those who had no friends
nor attendants were taken to the almshouse, whither, as her way was,
Evangeline went on a soft Sabbath morning to calm the fevered and
brighten the hearts of the dying.
Some of the patients of the day before had gone and new were in their
places. Suddenly she turned white and sank on her knees at a bedside,
with a cry of "Gabriel, my beloved!" breathed into the ears of a
prematurely aged man who lay gasping in death before her. He came out of
his stupor, slowly, and tried to speak her name. She drew his head to her
bosom, kissed him, and for one moment they were happy. Then the light
went out of his eyes and the warmth from his heart. She pressed his
eyelids down and bowed her head, for her way was plainer now, and she
thanked God that it was so.
THE SNORING OF SWUNKSUS
The original proprietor of Deer Isle, off the coast of Maine--at least,
the one who was in possession one hundred and thirty years ago--had the
liquid name of Swunksus. His name was not the only liquid thing in the
neighborhood, however, for, wherever Swunksus was, fire-water was not
far. Shortly before the Revolution a renegade from Boston, one Conary,
moved up to the island and helped himself to as much of it as he chose,
but the longer he lived there the more he wanted. Swunksus was willing
enough to divide his domain with the white intruder, but Conary was not
satisfied with half. He did not need it all; he just wanted it. Moreover,
he grew quarrelsome and was continually nagging poor Swunksus, until at
last he forced the Indian to accept a challenge, not to immediate combat,
but to fight to the death should they meet thereafter.
The red man retired to his half of the island and hid among the bushes
near his home to await the white man, but in this little fastness he
discovered a jug of whiskey that either fate or Conary had placed there.
Before an hour was over he was "as full and mellow as a harvest moon,"
and it was then that his enemy appeared. There was no trouble in finding
Swunksus, for he was snoring like a fog horn, and walking boldly up to
him, Conary blew his head off with a load of slugs. Then he took
possession of the place and lived happily ever after. Swunksus takes his
deposition easily, for, although he has more than once paraded along the
beaches, his ghost spends most of the time in slumber, and terrific
snores have been heard proceeding from the woods in daylight.
THE LEWISTON HERMIT
On an island above the falls of the Androscoggin, at Lewiston, Maine,
lived a white recluse at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The
natives, having had good reason to mistrust all palefaces, could think no
good of the man who lived thus among but not with them. Often they
gathered at the bank and looked across at his solitary candle twinkling
among the leaves, and wondered what manner of evil he could be planning
against them. Wherever there are many conspirators one will be a gabbler
or a traitor; so, when the natives had resolved on his murder, he,
somehow, learned of their intent and set himself to thwart it. So great
was their fear of this lonely man, and of the malignant powers he might
conjure to his aid, that nearly fifty Indians joined the expedition, to
give each other courage.
Their plan was to go a little distance up the river and come down with
the current, thus avoiding the dip of paddles that he might hear in a
direct crossing. When it was quite dark they set off, and keeping headway
on their canoes aimed them toward the light that glimmered above the
water. But the cunning hermit had no fire in his cabin that night. It was
burning on a point below his shelter, and from his hiding-place among the
rocks he saw their fleet, as dim and silent as shadows, go by him on the
way to the misguiding beacon.
Presently a cry arose. The savages had passed the point of safe sailing;
their boats had become unmanageable. Forgetting their errand, their only
hope now was to save themselves, but in vain they tried to reach the
shore: the current was whirling them to their doom. Cries and death-songs
mingled with the deepening roar of the waters, the light barks reached
the cataract and leaped into the air. Then the night was still again,
save for the booming of the flood. Not one of the Indians who had set out
on this errand of death survived the hermit's stratagem.
THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL
At times the fisher-folk of Maine are startled to see the form of a ship,
with gaunt timbers showing through the planks, like lean limbs through
rents in a pauper's garb, float shoreward in the sunset. She is a ship of
ancient build, with tall masts and sails of majestic spread, all torn;
but what is her name, her port, her flag, what harbor she is trying to
make, no man can tell, for on her deck no sailor has ever been seen to
run up colors or heard to answer a hail. Be it in calm or storm, in-come
or ebb of tide, the ship holds her way until she almost touches shore.
There is no creak of spars or whine of cordage, no spray at the bow, no
ripple at the stern--no voice, and no figure to utter one. As she nears
the rocks she pauses, then, as if impelled by a contrary current, floats
rudder foremost off to sea, and vanishes in twilight. Harpswell is her
favorite cruising-ground, and her appearance there sets many heads to
shaking, for while it is not inevitable that ill luck follows her visits,
it has been seen that burial-boats have sometimes had occasion to cross
the harbor soon after them, and that they were obliged by wind or tide or
current to follow her course on leaving the wharf.
THE SCHOOLMASTER HAD NOT REACHED ORRINGTON.
The quiet town of Orrington, in Maine, was founded by Jesse Atwood, of
Wellfleet, Cape Cod, in 1778, and has become known, since then, as a
place where skilful farmers and brave sailors could always be found. It
also kept Maine supplied for years with oldest inhabitants. It is said
that the name was an accident of illiteracy, and that it is the only
place in the world that owes its title to bad spelling. The settlers who
followed Atwood there were numerous enough to form a township after ten
years, and the name they decided on for their commonwealth was
Orangetown, so called for a village in Maryland where some of the people
had associations, but the clerk of the town meeting was not a college
graduate and his spelling of Orange was Orring, and of town, ton. His
draft of the resolutions went before the legislature, and the people
directly afterward found themselves living in Orrington.
JACK WELCH'S DEATH LIGHT
Pond Cove, Maine, is haunted by a light that on a certain evening, every
summer, rises a mile out at sea, drifts to a spot on shore, then whirls
with a buzz and a glare to an old house, where it vanishes. Its first
appearance was simultaneous with the departure of Jack Welch, a
fisherman. He was seen one evening at work on his boat, but in the
morning he was gone, nor has he since shown himself in the flesh.
On the tenth anniversary of this event three fishermen were hurrying up
the bay, hoping to reach home before dark, for they dreaded that uncanny
light, but a fog came in and it was late before they reached the wharf.
As they were tying their boat a channel seemed to open through the mist,
and along that path from the deep came a ball of pallid flame with the
rush of a meteor. There was one of the men who cowered at the bottom of
the boat with ashen face and shaking limbs, and did not watch the light,
even though it shot above his head, played through the rigging, and after
a wide sweep went shoreward and settled on his house. Next day one of his
comrades called for him, but Tom Wright was gone, gone, his wife said,
before the day broke. Like Jack Welch's disappearance, this departure was
unexplained, and in time he was given up for dead.
Twenty years had passed, when Wright's presumptive widow was startled by
the receipt of a letter in a weak, trembling hand, signed with her
husband's name. It was written on his death-bed, in a distant place, and
held a confession. Before their marriage, Jack Welch had been a suitor
for her hand, and had been the favored of the two. To remove his rival
and prosper in his place, Wright stole upon the other at his work, killed
him, took his body to sea, and threw it overboard. Since that time the
dead man had pursued him, and he was glad that the end of his days was
come. But, though Tom Wright is no more, his victim's light comes yearly
from the sea, above the spot where his body sank, floats to the scene of
the murder on the shore, then flits to the house where the assassin lived
and for years simulated the content that comes of wedded life.
MOGG MEGONE
Hapless daughter of a renegade is Ruth Bonython. Her father is as unfair
to his friends as to his enemies, but to neither of them so merciless as
to Ruth. Although he knows that she loves Master Scammon--in spite of his
desertion and would rather die than wed another, he has promised her to
Mogg Megone, the chief who rules the Indians at the Saco mouth. He,
blundering savage, fancies that he sees to the bottom of her grief, and
one day, while urging his suit, he opens his blanket and shows the scalp
of Scammon, to prove that he has avenged her. She looks in horror, but
when he flings the bloody trophy at her feet she baptizes it with a
forgiving tear. What villainy may this lead to? Ah, none for him, for
Bonython now steps in and plies him with flattery and drink, gaining from
the chief, at last, his signature--the bow totem--to a transfer of the
land for which he is willing to sell his daughter. Ruth, maddened at her
father's meanness and the Indian's brutality, rushes on the imbruted
savage, grasps from his belt the knife that has slain her lover, cleaves
his heart in twain, and flies into the wood, leaving Bonython stupid with
amazement.
Father Rasles, in his chapel at Norridgewock, is affecting his Indian
converts against the Puritans, who settled to the southward of him fifty
years before. To him comes a woman with torn garments and frightened
face. Her dead mother stood before her last night, she says, and looked
at her reprovingly, for she had killed Mogg Megone. The priest starts
back in wrath, for Mogg was a hopeful agent of the faith, and bids her
go, for she can ask no pardon. Brooding within his chapel, then, he is
startled by the sound of shot and hum of arrows. Harmon and Moulton are
advancing with their men and crying, "Down with the beast of Rome! Death
to the Babylonish dog!" Ruth, knowing not what this new misfortune may
mean, runs from the church and disappears.
Some days later, old Baron Castine, going to Norridgewock to bury and
revenge the dead, finds a woman seated on the earth and gazing over a
field strewn with ashes and with human bones. He touches her. She is
cold. There has been no life for days. It is Ruth.
THE LADY URSULA
In 1690 a stately house stood in Kittery, Maine, a strongly guarded place
with moat and drawbridge (which was raised at night) and a moated grange
adjacent where were cattle, sheep, and horses. Here, in lonely dignity,
lived Lady Ursula, daughter of the lord of Grondale Abbey, across the
water, whose distant grandeurs were in some sort reflected in this manor
of the wilderness. Silver, mahogany, paintings, tapestries, waxed floors,
and carven chests of linen represented wealth; prayers were said by a
chaplain every morning and evening in the chapel, and, though the main
hall would accommodate five hundred people, the lady usually sat at meat
there with her thirty servants, her part of the table being raised two
feet above theirs.
It was her happiness to believe that Captain Fowler, now absent in
conflict with the French, would return and wed her according to his
promise, but one day came a tattered messenger with bitter news of the
captain's death. She made no talk of her grief, and, while her face was
pale and step no longer light, she continued in the work that custom
exacted from women of that time: help for the sick, alms for the poor,
teaching for the ignorant, religion for the savage. Great was her joy,
then, when a ship came from England bringing a letter from Captain Fowler
himself, refuting the rumor of defeat and telling of his coming. Now the
hall took on new life, reflecting the pleasure of its mistress; color
came back to her cheek and sparkle to her eye, and she could only control
her impatience by more active work and more aggressive charities. The day
was near at hand for the arrival of her lover, when Ursula and her
servants were set upon by Indians, while away from the protection of the
manor, and slain. They were buried where they fell, and Captain Fowler
found none to whom his love or sorrow could be told.
FATHER MOODY'S BLACK VEIL
In 1770 the Reverend Joseph Moody died at York, Maine, where he had long
held the pastorate of a church, and where in his later years his face was
never seen by friend or relative. At home, when any one was by, on the
street, and in the pulpit his visage was concealed by a double fold of
crape that was knotted above his forehead and fell to his chin, the lower
edge of it being shaken by his breath. When first he presented himself to
his congregation with features masked in black, great was the wonder and
long the talk about it. Was he demented? His sermons were too logical for
that. Had he been crossed in love? He could smile, though the smile was
sad. Had he been scarred by accident or illness? If so, no physician knew
of it.
After a time it was given out that his eyes were weakened by reading and
writing at night, and the wonder ceased, though the veiled parson was
less in demand for weddings, christenings, and social gatherings, and
more besought for funerals than he had been. If asked to take off his
crape he only replied, "We all wear veils of one kind or another, and the
heaviest and darkest are those that hang about our hearts. This is but a
material veil. Let it stay until the hour strikes when all faces shall be
seen and all souls reveal their secrets."
Little by little the clergyman felt himself enforced to withdraw from the
public gaze. There were rough people who were impertinent and timid
people who turned out of their road to avoid him, so that he found his
out-door walks and meditations almost confined to the night, unless he
chose the grave-yard for its seclusion or strolled on the beach and
listened to the wallowing and grunting of the Black Boars--the rocks off
shore that had laughed on the night when the York witch went up the
chimney in a gale. But his life was long and kind and useful, and when at
last the veiled head lay on the pillow it was never to rise from
consciously, a fellow-clergyman came to soothe his dying moments and
commend his soul to mercy.
To him, one evening, Father Moody said, "Brother, my hour is come and the
veil of eternal darkness is falling over my eyes. Men have asked me why I
wear this piece of crape about my face, as if it were not for them a
reminder and a symbol, and I have borne the reason so long within me that
only now have I resolved to tell it. Do you recall the finding of young
Clark beside the river, years ago? He had been shot through the head. The
man who killed him did so by accident, for he was a bosom friend; yet he
could never bring himself to confess the fact, for he dreaded the blame
of his townsmen, the anguish of the dead man's parents, the hate of his
betrothed. It was believed that the killing was a murder, and that some
roving Indian had done it. After years of conscience-darkened life, in
which the face of his dead friend often arose accusingly before him, the
unhappy wretch vowed that he would never again look his fellows openly in
the face: he would pay a penalty and conceal his shame. Then it was that
I put a veil between myself and the world."
Joseph Moody passed away and, as he wished, the veil still hid his face
in the coffin, but the clergyman who had raised it for a moment to
compose his features, found there a serenity and a beauty that were
majestic.
THE HOME OF THUNDER
Some Indians believe that the Thunder Bird is the agent of storm; that
the flashes of his eyes cause lightning and the flapping of his
cloud-vast wings make thunder. Not so the Passamaquoddies, for they hold
that Katahdin's spirit children are Thunders, and in this way an Indian
found them: He had been seeking game along the Penobscot and for weeks
had not met one of his fellow creatures. On a winter day he came on the
print of a pair of snow-shoes; next morning the tracks appeared in
another part of the forest, and so for many days he found them.
After a time it occurred to him to see where these tracks went to, and he
followed them until they merged with others in a travelled road, ending
at a precipice on the side of Katahdin (Great Mountain).
While lost in wonder that so many tracks should lead nowhere, he was
roused by a footfall, and a maiden stepped from the precipice to the
ledge beside him. Though he said nothing, being in awe of her stateliness
and beauty, she replied in kind words to every unspoken thought and bade
him go with her. He approached the rock with fear, but at a touch from
the woman it became as mist, and they entered it together.
Presently they were in a great cave in the heart of Katahdin, where sat
the spirit of the mountain, who welcomed them and asked the girl if her
brothers had come. "I hear them coming," she replied. A blinding flash, a
roar of thunder, and there stepped into the cave two men of giant size
and gravely beautiful faces, hardened at the cheeks and brows to stone.
"These," said the girl to the hunter, "are my brothers, the Thunder and
the Lightning. My father sends them forth whenever there is wrong to
redress, that those who love us may not be smitten. When you hear
Thunder, know that they are shooting at our enemies."
At the end of that day the hunter returned to his home, and behold, he
had been gone seven years. Another legend says that the stone-faced sons
of the mountain adopted him, and that for seven years he was a roaming
Thunder, but at the end of that time while a storm was raging he was
allowed to fall, unharmed, into his own village.
THE PARTRIDGE WITCH
Two brothers, having hunted at the head of the Penobscot until their
snow-shoes and moccasins gave out, looked at each other ruefully and
cried, "Would that there was a woman to help us!" The younger brother
went to the lodge that evening earlier than the elder, in order to
prepare the supper, and great was his surprise on entering the wigwam to
find the floor swept, a fire built, a pot boiling, and their clothing
mended. Returning to the wood he watched the place from a covert until he
saw a graceful girl enter the lodge and take up the tasks of
housekeeping.
When he entered she was confused, but he treated her with respect, and
allowed her to have her own way so far as possible, so that they became
warm friends, sporting together like children when the work of the day
was over. But one evening she said, "Your brother is coming. I fear him.
Farewell." And she slipped into the wood. When the young man told his
elder brother what had happened there--the elder having been detained for
a few days in the pursuit of a deer--he declared that he would wish the
woman to come back, and presently, without any summons, she returned,
bringing a toboggan-load of garments and arms. The luck of the hunters
improved, and they remained happily together until spring, when it was
time to return with their furs.
They set off down the Penobscot in their canoe and rowed merrily along,
but as they neared the home village the girl became uneasy, and presently
"threw out her soul"--became clairvoyant--and said, "Let me land here. I
find that your father would not like me, so do not speak to him about
me." But the elder brother told of her when they reached home, whereon
the father exclaimed, "I had feared this. That woman is a sister of the
goblins. She wishes to destroy men."