Myths and Legends of Our Own Land | Page 9

and the fays are gone.

POKEPSIE
The name of this town has forty-two spellings in old records, and with
singular pertinacity in ill-doing, the inhabitants have fastened on it the
longest and clumsiest of all. It comes from the Mohegan words Apo-
keep-sink, meaning a safe, pleasant harbor. Harbor it might be for
canoes, but for nothing bigger, for it was only the little cove that was so
called between Call Rock and Adder Cliff,--the former indicating
where settlers awaiting passage hailed the masters of vessels from its
top, and the latter taking its name from the snakes that abounded there.
Hither came a band of Delawares with Pequot captives, among them a
young chief to whom had been offered not only life but leadership if he
would renounce his tribe, receive the mark of the turtle on his breast,
and become a Delaware. On his refusal, he was bound to a tree, and
was about to undergo the torture, when a girl among the listeners
sprang to his side. She, too, was a Pequot, but the turtle totem was on
her bosom, and when she begged his life, because they had been
betrothed, the captors paused to talk of it. She had chosen well the time
to interfere, for a band of Hurons was approaching, and even as the talk
went on their yell was heard in the wood. Instant measures for defence
were taken, and in the fight that followed both chief and maiden were
forgotten; but though she cut the cords that bound him, they were
separated in the confusion, he disappearing, she falling captive to the
Hurons, who, sated with blood, retired from the field. In the fantastic
disguise of a wizard the young Pequot entered their camp soon after,

and on being asked to try his enchantments for the cure of a young
woman, he entered her tent, showing no surprise at finding her to be the
maiden of his choice, who was suffering from nothing worse than
nerves, due to the excitement of the battle. Left alone with his patient,
he disclosed his identity, and planned a way of escape that proved
effective on that very night, for, though pursued by the angry Hurons,
the couple reached "safe harbor," thence making a way to their own
country in the east, where they were married.

DUNDERBERG
Dunderberg, "Thunder Mountain," at the southern gate of the Hudson
Highlands, is a wooded eminence, chiefly populated by a crew of imps
of stout circumference, whose leader, the Heer, is a bulbous goblin clad
in the dress worn by Dutch colonists two centuries ago, and carrying a
speaking-trumpet, through which he bawls his orders for the blowing of
winds and the touching off of lightnings. These orders are given in Low
Dutch, and are put into execution by the imps aforesaid, who troop into
the air and tumble about in the mist, sometimes smiting the flag or
topsail of a ship to ribbons, or laying the vessel over before the wind
until she is in peril of going on beam ends. At one time a sloop passing
the Dunderberg had nearly foundered, when the crew discovered the
sugar-loaf hat of the Heer at the mast-head. None dared to climb for it,
and it was not until she had driven past Pollopel's Island--the limit of
the Heer's jurisdiction--that she righted. As she did so the little hat spun
into the air like a top, creating a vortex that drew up the storm-clouds,
and the sloop kept her way prosperously for the rest of the voyage. The
captain had nailed a horse-shoe to the mast. The "Hat Rogue" of the
Devil's Bridge in Switzerland must be a relative of this gamesome
sprite, for his mischief is usually of a harmless sort; but, to be on the
safe side, the Dutchmen who plied along the river lowered their peaks
in homage to the keeper of the mountain, and for years this was a
common practice. Mariners who paid this courtesy to the Heer of the
Donder Berg were never molested by his imps, though skipper
Ouselsticker, of Fishkill,--for all he had a parson on board,-- was once
beset by a heavy squall, and the goblin came out of the mist and sat
astraddle of his bowsprit, seeming to guide his schooner straight toward
the rocks. The dominie chanted the song of Saint Nicolaus, and the

goblin, unable to endure either its spiritual potency or the worthy
parson's singing, shot upward like a ball and rode off on the gale,
carrying with him the nightcap of the parson's wife, which he hung on
the weathercock of Esopus steeple, forty miles away.

ANTHONY'S NOSE
The Hudson Highlands are suggestively named Bear Mountain, Sugar
Loaf, Cro' Nest, Storm King, called by the Dutch Boterberg,