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Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 04 : Tales of Puritan Land
Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 04 : Tales of Puritan Land
Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 04 : Tales of Puritan Land
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Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 04 : Tales of Puritan Land

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Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 04 : Tales of Puritan Land

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    Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 04 - Charles M. (Charles Montgomery) Skinner

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales Of Puritan Land, by Charles M. Skinner

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: Tales Of Puritan Land Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Volume 4.

    Author: Charles M. Skinner

    Release Date: October 22, 2006 [EBook #6609]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF PURITAN LAND ***

    Produced by David Widger

    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,

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