Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 04 : Tales of Puritan LandSkinner, Charles M. (Charles Montgomery)
General
Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 04 : Tales of Puritan Land
Skinner, Charles M. (Charles Montgomery)
Folklore -- United States
Eastern traditions concerning Hiawatha differ in many respects from those
of the West. In the East he is known as Glooskap, god of the
Passamaquoddies, and his marks are left in many places in the maritime
provinces and Maine. It was he who gave names to things, created men,
filled them with life, and moved their wonder with storms. He lived on
the rocky height of Blomidon, at the entrance to Minas Basin, Nova
Scotia, and the agates to be found along its foot are jewels that he made
for his grandmother's necklace, when he restored her youth. He threw up a
ridge between Fort Cumberland and Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, that he might
cross, dry shod, the lake made by the beavers when they dammed the strait
at Blomidon, but he afterward killed the beavers, and breaking down their
dam he let the lake flow into the sea, and went southward on a hunting
tour. At Mount Desert he killed a moose, whose bones he flung to the
ground at Bar Harbor, where they are still to be seen, turned to stone,
while across the bay he threw the entrails, and they, too, are visible as
rocks, dented with his arrow-points. Mount Kineo was anciently a cow
moose of colossal size that he slew and turned into a height of land, and
the Indians trace the outline of the creature in the uplift to this day.
Little Kineo was a calf moose that he slew at the same time, and Kettle
Mountain is his camp-caldron that he flung to the ground in the ardor of
the chase.
THE OWL TREE
One day in October, 1827, Rev. Charles Sharply rode into Alfred, Maine,
and held service in the meeting-house. After the sermon he announced that
he was going to Waterborough to preach, and that on his circuit he had
collected two hundred and seventy dollars to help build a church in that
village. Would not his hearers add to that sum? They would and did, and
that evening the parson rode away with over three hundred dollars in his
saddlebags. He never appeared in Waterborough. Some of the country people
gave tongue to their fear that the possession of the money had made him
forget his sacred calling and that he had fled the State.
On the morning after his disappearance, however, Deacon Dickerman
appeared in Alfred riding on a horse that was declared to be the
minister's, until the tavern hostler affirmed that the minister's horse
had a white star on forehead and breast, whereas this horse was all
black. The deacon said that he found the horse grazing in his yard at
daybreak, and that he would give it to whoever could prove it to be his
property. Nobody appeared to demand it, and people soon forgot that it
was not his. He extended his business at about that time and prospered;
he became a rich man for a little place; though, as his wealth increased,
he became morose and averse to company.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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