Allegheny Episodes: Folk Lore and Legends Collected in Northern and Western Pennsylvania and Some Forgotten Pennsylvania Heroines
9781465501912
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
It is a good thing to make resolves, but a better thing, once having made them, to keep them. On two previous occasions the compiler of the present volume has stated his resolve in prefaces to issue no more books of the kind, but has gone ahead and prepared more. Probably the motive that brought into existence the first volume can be urged in extenuation for the eleventh, namely, the desire to preserve the folk-lore of the Pennsylvania Mountains. The contents of the present volume, like its predecessors, were gathered orally from old people and others, and written down as closely as possible to the verbal accounts. In order to escape ill feeling, as in the case with the earlier volumes, some names of persons and places, and dates have been changed. This has been done with the greatest reluctance, and only where absolutely necessary. The characters are real persons, and most of them appear under their rightful names. Many of the legends or incidents run counter to the accepted course of history, but tradition is preserved for what it is worth, and the reader can draw his own conclusions. While some of these tales end unhappily, the proportion is not greater than in life as we know it, and the general ascendency of right over wrong shines through the gloomiest passages. Life could not exist, or the world go on, unless the majority of events ended fortuitously; it is that happy preponderance which makes “hope spring eternal,” and is so often rewarded by a realization of the heart’s desire. The various phases of the supernatural in the ensuing pages depicts probably a more normal condition of our relationship with the unseen world than the crude and clumsy mediumship found in the big cities, and may present a rational explanation of life “behind the dark curtain.” There is certainly a spiritual life, and a purely spiritual God, and all the events of the soul are regulated by divine laws, which have only too frequently been confused with the physical life so subject to chance and reversion back to chaos. The origins of Pennsylvania folk-lore seem to the writer like a happy blending of Indian and European elements which would have gradually, had backwoods conditions continued, developed into a definitely Pennsylvanian mythology. The fact that the writer had so many more legends in form of notes, which otherwise would have been mislaid and come to nothing, prompted him to break his resolve and prepare the present volume. And, for good or ill, he has many more, dealing with other parts of the State. What shall be their fate? Are they worthy of perpetuation as folk-lore? Apart from the general idea of preserving legendary matter for future generations, there is the added reason that the heroic lines of some of the characters appealed to him, and, to save them from the oblivion of the “forgotten millions,” their careers have been herein recorded.
