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
He started well, but on arriving at the magic circle the plough shied and
the wooden landside--or chip, as it was called--came off. It was replaced
and the team started again. In a moment the oxen stood unyoked, while the
chip jumped off and whirled away out of sight. On this, most of the
people edged away in the direction of home, and directly there came from
the north a crow that perched on a dead tree and cawed. John Hopkins,
owner of the land, cried to the bird, "Squawk, you damned old Pat
Jenkins!" and the crow took flight, dropping the chip at Reynolds's feet,
at the same moment turning into a beldam with a cocked hat, who descended
upon the rock. Before the men could reach her she changed into a black
cat and disappeared in the ground. Hunting and digging came to naught,
though the pursuers were so earnest and excited that one of them made the
furrow in the rock with a welt from his shovel. After that few people
cared to go near the place, and it became overgrown with weeds and trees
and bushes.
THE OLD STONE MILL
If the round tower at Newport was not Benedict Arnold's wind-mill, and
any one or two of several other things, it is probably a relic of the
occupancy of this country by Thorwald and his Norsemen. After coasting
Wonderstrands (Cape Cod), in the year 1007, they built a town that is
known to historians--if not in their histories--as Norumbega, the lost
city of New England. It is now fancied that the city stood on the Charles
River, near Waltham, Massachusetts, where a monument may be erected, but
it is also believed that they reached the neighborhood of Newport, Rhode
Island. After this tower--popularly called the old stone mill-was built,
a seer among the Narragansetts had a vision in which he foresaw that when
the last remnant of the structure had fallen, and not one stone had been
left on another, the Indian race would vanish from this continent. The
work of its extermination seems, indeed, to have begun with the
possession of the coast by white men, and the fate of the aborigines is
easily read.
ORIGIN OF A NAME
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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