The Devil's Bride

Here's a great story that happened in Salisbury, New Hampshire. It was supposedly recorded in the diary of one Asa Reddington, a soldier in the Revolutionary War.

The story goes something like this. One evening a farmer in Salisbury was inspecting his farm after a thunderstorm when he saw tall man slip out of the barn and walk into the thickening gloom. The farmer went inside to investigate, where he found a local elderly woman of sitting on the barn floor. She was known to be the town drunk, and indeed next to her was a large empty liquor jug.

The woman said, "You have to help me! I came into this barn to take escape the storm, and the Devil crept in here after me. He made me promise to marry him, and in six days he's coming to take me away on our honeymoon!"

The farmer was skeptical of her story since he could clearly see she was inebriated. However, word of her plight spread around town and Parson Seales, the local minister, agreed to help her battle Satan.

The day arrived when the Devil was supposed to take his bride. Parson Seales and twelve ministers from nearby towns brought the woman to an apple orchard, where they tied her securely to a chair. The ministers formed a circle around her, and began to pray. Devout members of the church formed a second circle around the ministers.

As they ministers prayed, a strong wind arose, shaking the apple trees. A large black cat leapt down from one of the trees, spitting and hissing. Was it the Unholy One himself? Strange things happened - the woman's chair rocked back and forth violently, and one of the ministers felt himself punched by an invisible hand. The dress of one church member was even lifted over her head by the wind -  or by some unseen demon.

Undeterred, the ministers continued praying until  the violent wind and supernatural shenanigans stopped. The black cat had long since disappeared, and the weather became calm and peaceful.

"We have been successful!" Parson Seales said. "The Devil has been denied his bride!"

The old woman became a faithful churchgoer after this and always praised Parson Seales for his great faith and courage. One Sunday morning, however, the congregation noticed that she was not present for the service. A search party was formed, and the woman's body was located at the bottom of a nearby well.

Some people in Salisbury felt the Devil had finally taken his bride. Others, more skeptical, pointed out that an empty liquor jug had been found next to the well.

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I found two contradictory versions of this story. The version in Eva Speare's New Hampshire Folk Tales, which is older,  makes it pretty clear the whole situation was concocted by the drunk woman, and doesn't mention that she dies in a well. The other version I found, in Lewis Taft's Profile of Old New England, plays up the supernatural aspects and includes the final shocking death. Taft also says the story took place in Salisbury, Massachusetts, which I think is incorrect. Richard Dorson's Jonathan Draws the Long Bow mentions a rock formation in Salisbury, NH called the Devil's Chair. I wonder if it is related somehow to this story?

Hannah Duston Part II - Was She Helped by a Fairy?

OK, here's the follow up to my initial post about Hannah Duston.

One of the big mysteries surrounding Hannah is how she managed to murder and scalp 10 of her captors while they slept. Wouldn't someone have screamed and woken everyone else? A few years ago I found one possible answer to this question in Eva Speare's 1932 collection, New Hampshire Folk Tales.

According to one Mrs. J. G. MacMurphy of Derry, New Hampshire, a benevolent fairy queen named Tsienneto (Neto for short) lived in Derry's Beaver Lake. Neto took pity on Hannah when she and her captors stopped by the lake as they were heading away from Haverhill, and promised to "accompany her unseen by her captors and to supply all her needs." Neto followed Hannah and the Indians up the Merrimac river, and eventually cast a spell over the Indians so they would sleep soundly while Hannah killed them. Afterwards, Neto helped Hannah and her companions return safely to Haverhill.

Hmmmm. I don't know if I'm entirely satisfied by Mrs. MacMurphy's explanation.

The local Indians certainly believed in beings that are similar to European fairies. But why would a local native American fairy help a Puritan English settler against local Indians? The Puritans wanted to eradicate native supernatural beliefs. Would Neto really help someone who was probably anti-fairy?

I've never seen this story anyplace except Eva Speare's book, so it's possible Mrs. MacMurphy made Tsienneto up. However...

There is a Tsienneto Road in Derry (although there's no proof its named after a fairy) and the Hollow Hills ghost site mentions a different Tsienneto story from another Eva Speare book, Stories of New Hampshire. In that story, Tsienneto saves someone named John Stark from being shot. I'm assuming it's Revolutionary War hero John Stark, who is famous for coining the phrase "Live Free or Die."

Maybe there's something to this Tsienneto legend after all. I'll have to find Stories of New Hampshire. In the meantime, please let me know if you have any information about Tsienneto!

An Impractical Cure for a Cough

I've had a nasty cough this week. It's either an allergy attack, or it's a mild cold being aggravated by the hot dirty air that's been blanketing Boston.

I'm a firm believer in modern medicine, but out of curiousity I looked through some of my folklore books for an old-fashioned cure. Here's the best (meaning most convoluted and impractical) one I found, from Eva Speare's 1932 book New Hampshire Folk Tales. It's technically for whooping cough, but sometimes that feels like what I have! It's also another case of horse magic, which I wrote about before.

If a child had whooping cough, it was believed that if you saw a man riding a piebald horse and you should ask him for a remedy, if his instructions were followed the child would be cured.

So, a woman whose children have whooping cough sees a man riding by on a piebald horse and asks him for a cure. He's confused, since he doesn't know anything about medicine (or about this piebald horse superstition). He says:

Er, hang it, I don't know. Take a harrow tooth and steep it in skim milk.

Huh. I was a little puzzled when I first read this because: 1. I didn't know what a harrow tooth was, and 2. I was surprised they had skim milk in the 19th century. I found out that a harrow is a farm implement that is used to pull up weeds (a little bit like a plough), and a tooth is one of the blades.

So, the man on the piebald horse is basically instructing the woman to take a piece of a farm implement that's been dragged through the dirt behind a horse, stick it in milk, and (I suppose) make her kids drink the milk. This seems like it would make the children sicker, but according to the story it works. The kids are cured of their cough.

I'm going to stick to cures I can purchase at Walgreens, but I suppose they didn't have decongestants 150 years ago.