It is unthinkingly said and often, that America is not old enough to have
developed a legendary era, for such an era grows backward as a nation
grows forward. No little of the charm of European travel is ascribed to
the glamour that history and fable have flung around old churches,
castles, and the favored haunts of tourists, and the Rhine and Hudson are
frequently compared, to the prejudice of the latter, not because its
scenery lacks in loveliness or grandeur, but that its beauty has not been
humanized by love of chivalry or faerie, as that of the older stream has
been. Yet the record of our country's progress is of deep import, and as
time goes on the figures seen against the morning twilight of our history
will rise to more commanding stature, and the mists of legend will invest
them with a softness or glory that shall make reverence for them
spontaneous and deep. Washington hurling the stone across the Potomac may
live as the Siegfried of some Western saga, and Franklin invoking the
lightnings may be the Loki of our mythology. The bibliography of American
legends is slight, and these tales have been gathered from sources the
most diverse: records, histories, newspapers, magazines, oral
narrative--in every case reconstructed. The pursuit of them has been so
long that a claim may be set forth for some measure of completeness.
But, whatever the episodes of our four historic centuries may furnish to
the poet, painter, dramatist, or legend-building idealist of the future,
it is certain that we are not devoid of myth and folk-lore. Some
characters, prosaic enough, perhaps, in daily life, have impinged so
lightly on society before and after perpetrating their one or two great
deeds, that they have already become shadowy and their achievements have
acquired a color of the supernatural. It is where myth and history
combine that legend is most interesting and appeals to our fancy or our
sympathy most strongly; and it is not too early for us to begin the
collation of those quaint happenings and those spoken reports that gain
in picturesqueness with each transmission. An attempt has been made in
this instance to assemble only legends, for, doubtful as some historians
profess to find them, certain occurrences, like the story of Captain
Smith and Pocahontas, and the ride of General Putnam down Breakneck
Stairs, are taught as history; while as to folk-lore, that of the Indian
tribes and of the Southern negro is too copious to be recounted in this
work. It will be noted that traditions do not thrive in brick and
brownstone, and that the stories once rife in the colonial cities have
almost as effectually disappeared as the architectural landmarks of last
century. The field entered by the writer is not untrodden. Hawthorne and
Irving have made paths across it, and it is hoped that others may deem
its farther exploration worthy of their efforts.