A Villain's Cremation
: THE HUDSON AND ITS HILLS: Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land
Bramley's Mountain, near the present village of Bloomfield, New York, on
the edge of the Catskill group, was the home of a young couple that had
married with rejoicing and had taken up the duties and pleasures of
housekeeping with enthusiasm. To be sure, in those days housekeeping was
not a thing to be much afraid of, and the servant question had not come
up for discussion. The housewives did the work themselves, and the
tent of skins stretched around a frame of poles, and their furniture
consisted principally of furs strewn over the earth floor; but they loved
each other truly. The girl was thankful to be taken from her home to
live, because, up to the time of her marriage, she had been persecuted by
a morose and ill-looking fellow of her tribe, who laid siege to her
affection with such vehemence that the more he pleaded the greater was
her dislike; and now she hoped that she had seen the last of him. But
that was not to be. He lurked about the wigwam of the pair, torturing
himself with the sight of their felicity, and awaiting his chance to
prove his hate. This chance came when the husband had gone to Lake
Delaware to fish, for he rowed after and gave battle in the middle of the
pond. Taken by surprise, and being insufficiently armed, the husband was
killed and his body flung into the water. Then, casting an affectionate
leer at the wife who had watched this act of treachery and malice with
speechless horror from the mountain-side, he drove his canoe ashore and
set off in pursuit of her. She retreated so slowly as to allow him to
keep her in sight, and when she entered a cave he pressed forward
eagerly, believing that now her escape was impossible; but she had
purposely trapped him there, for she had already explored a tortuous
passage that led to the upper air, and by this she had left the cavern in
safety while he was groping and calling in the dark. Returning to the
entrance, she loosened, by a jar, a ledge that overhung it, so that the
door was almost blocked; then, gathering light wood from the dry trees
around her, she made a fire and hurled the burning sticks into the prison
where the wretch was howling, until he was dead in smoke and flame. When
his yells and curses had been silenced she told a friend what she had
done, then going back to the lake, she sang her death-song and cast
herself into the water, hoping thus to rejoin her husband.
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