I can remember my grandfather telling me as a kid while out on one of our forays into the field, about a place named "The Huey or Yuey Rock". The Huey Rock was a place where there was a hole in a rock where lived what the "Old Timers" termed a "huey bug". They said that at this hole in the rock if you would bang the rock or the surrounding ground or if you were to say into the hole, "Huey come up." The huey bug would crawl out of the entrance of the hole. What nature of insect the huey bug actually was - be it beetle, grub worm or whatever - is not known and probably will never be determined at this late date.
Being that the folks who inhabited the country in earlier centuries were farmers and their farms were rather often situated in very remote places, it is not surprising that they kept and repeated a whole plethora of legends about their farm life and the animals they raised. One familiar creature to us all is the milk snake. This reptile is a member of the king snake group of snakes. They, like the black rat snake, were always considered friends of the farmer because they ate the rodents which competed with farmers by eating feed grain and seeds. By so doing the milk snakes and rat snakes, due to the decreased population of rodents, also reduced the possibility of visitations of copperheads and rattlesnakes, as they would likewise come in search of rats and mice. But the old folks used to say that the milk snake got its name because it would actually suckle the cows as they awaited the farmers to milk them.
There is another snake which they called the "hoop snake". Pronounced with the Elizabethan English form of a long "u" sound (like huup), this snake was so named because it supposedly would grasp its tail in its mouth and simply roll away from an enemy when threatened much like a runaway wagon wheel. Just as with the creatures discussed in the previous article, the locals insist that this creature indeed existed. The hoop snake was not peculiar to just the Hudson Valley region as it is mentioned in folklore all over the nation. I often asked what kind of snake the hoop snake was, such as a black rat snake or black racer. Some said that it was a kind of snake in itself and others said that it was a copperhead which had this habit.
The mud snake inhabits swamps and bogs from the lower Middle Atlantic States southward along the coast. Very large in size (to six feet in length), its dimensions alone offer it a deterrence against attack. It has a curious barb at the end of its tail which, as legend offers, is poisonous. This snake is alleged to stab its barb into a man and inject him with venom and poisoning the victim just as effectively as does a water moccasin's bite. It is also said that if it jabs a tree with this barb the tree will die. Within its naturally-occurring range it is also known as the hoop snake.
The Old-Timers must have had some reason to believe in this just as they did the other creatures I've earlier discussed. I don't think it was just a rural joke that was played on visiting city people either - although there were plenty of these too. I suspect that someone may have witnessed a snake traveling down a steep embankment in great haste and caused by gravity and momentum it may have appeared to have been rolling or some such series of events or phenomena. The witnesses may have reported this to acquaintances who in turn passed it along to others and eventually the story managed to take on a life of its own.
There is also a legend about a snake which defends itself (or attacks, depending upon who is telling the story) by coiling itself around a man and whipping him with his tail while constricting the man's waist and chest. This is thought to be a large snake like the black rat or black racer in this part of the country. In other areas it is blamed on other large snakes like the bull snake or gopher snake.
Incidentally, as far as the black racer is concerned, one legend about it is that, as its name implies, it can cover a lot of ground in a short time. But it has been said that the black racer can "run" faster than a horse. While they are quick and I have seen them hurrying away from my presence, there is simply no way that they could outrun a horse which can run at 40 miles per hour.
I recount the numerous times which I've explained to newcomers or visitors who are curious about what kind of snakes are indigenous to the region, that copperheads and black rat snakes will often flick their tails rapidly in dry grass or leaves and create a sound which mimics the familiar rattle of the rattlesnake. Many times I will receive looks of disdain or amusement as if I was making up a story. Even when I explain the antics of the familiar hog-nosed snake which puffs up and hisses like a cobra to scare its tormentors and when that doesn't work it simply rolls over and plays dead, more often than not those listening will return with incredulous looks as if they thought I was just pulling their leg. Yet these are all well-known behavior characteristics of these species.
Then again, I often have nearly had arguments with people who don't believe that there are black bear and even rattlesnakes present in this geographic region. I once had a man call me a liar and tell me that "Everyone knows that rattlesnakes are only in the desert!". If that was so I wonder why they call them timber rattlesnakes. As far as I know there isn’t much timber out in the desert. He also chided me for giving the public false information. I fully expected him to write a letter of complaint to my superiors over the incident because he was visibly angry with me despite my insistence of veracity.
Oh well. When you think of it, those people who believe that rattlesnakes are only in the desert or who don't believe that black bears inhabit the area, or who refuse to believe that snakes other than rattlesnakes can imitate the rattling-sound, are all practicing their own brand of delusion and folklore and will pass it along to others.
I think, indeed it's practically self explanatory, that creatures which evoke fear in man such as reptiles and spiders, somehow have an effect on man's psychological need to provide answers about the mysterious. In other words, for those who know very little about snakes or spiders, they will create their own theories and explanations about them even though they may be totally incorrect. But for them it provides an answer and offers them a feeling that they somehow understand the creatures better. This is the same kind of mystical-thinking which many have had throughout history that created much of our mythology. Thusly, the legends about the full moon, eclipses, bats flying into your hair, and cats having the power of hypnotism, all must have arisen from this form of introspection. Naturally, others who have the same fears will listen to these explanations and it resonates with a degree of factuality simply because they "sound logical", so they are repeated again and again and before you know it, it becomes fact. For those who don't know the answers, they formulate their own answers.
I imagine that some doctoral student somewhere must have studied this phenomenon in detail, but I have never read of any such report or dissertation. It would make for fascinating reading. Although the origins of folklore and the process by which they are created are of great interest to me, when I start to get too deeply involved in their genesis, the fun of learning about them begins to wear thin and fade. So enough social psychology for one day and back to the legends and folklore.
I once asked an Old-Timer if they had many deer or bear in the area back when he was a young man. He said that they were pretty scarce in those days. This makes sense because by the late 1800s most of the trees in the Hudson Valley had been cut down for fuel due to the many iron blast furnaces and forges and the brick industry in Haverstraw, N.Y. which needed to be fed. Deer are a woodland animal and don't stick around after their home is gone. He then added that they used to have what he called "pig bears" when he was young. It was explained that these were little bears smaller than the usual black bears which we see today. I asked if a pig bear was just a small black bear and he insisted that it was different. He added that their coon dogs would scare them out of their lairs and chase them while they were out raccoon hunting. It seemed to me that this animal lived in stone walls or burrows and sort of foraged around by digging and scratching for its living much as a pig grubs around for tubers and roots. This in some respects sounds more like a wolverine than any kind of bear, except that it seemed to be non-aggressive which is starkly contrasted by the wolverine's well-known reputation for being the orneriest critter anywhere in the world. It defends its territory with great ferocity and would hardly run away from a mere pack of coon dogs as the pig bear was said to do.
Wolverines are known to fight a mountain lion or grizzly bear over a fresh kill. Wolverines were never supposed to have been in this area either (but they did exist as far east as Ohio in Colonial times). Out in Michigan (the Wolverine State) the wolverine is also called by some the skunk bear because it resembles a small bear and it has a strong musky odor. Badgers bear some of these characteristics too, but not closely enough to accredit this to them either. So who knows what the pig bear was. Perhaps they were just immature black bears which had been encountered, as they are known for their desire to avoid man and dogs.
Then there was a creature the old folks called the wompus. About all I can remember of what they said about it was that "it walked heavy like a woodchuck", whatever that meant. I think it must have been something like the killyloo (or killykaloo) bird which flew backwards to keep its backside cool in the Summertime or the mugwump which sat on a fence with its mug hanging over one side and its wump hanging over the other. What they didn't think of in those days. It must have been very entertaining to sit around and hear them spin their yarns. I was fortunate to have heard some of them.
Once again we hear from Dr. Finnvald Hedin whom I mentioned in the first article of this series. He recently sent me a clipping about the Norse trolls. It looks like they are causing some trouble in Iceland these days. For those who may not have read the earlier article in this series I'll digress a bit. Earlier Dr. Hedin told us that the Scandinavians believe that certain beings called the "Tomte" owned all the land and they allowed humans to continue to use the land provided that they take good care of it and use it properly. If they don't I guess they take umbrage and do something about it. The article explains that there is a lot of development going on in Iceland. The owners - or rather, the occupiers, since the Tomte are the real owners - are giving the authorities a lot of resistance because they are afraid that the trolls and other such "beings" will rebel and start causing problems if the urban sprawl doesn't cease and desist. It seems as though they are being blamed for a variety of accidents and disasters which have been occurring over there.
The term they use for these creatures is "Hidden Folk" and refers to not only trolls but others as well. There are numerous such beings in their legends each possessing different personalities. Some are benign, some are mischievous, and others are more cantankerous and downright nasty. When I first heard about them from Finnvald I assumed that they were just amusing tales that the Scandinavians spread, but judging by this, at least some hold these beings to actually exist, perhaps supernaturally, but to them they do exist on some level.
In Iceland they have gone as far as having the National Highway Authority draw up maps which denote where the Hidden Folk are alleged to reside in relation to proposed highways and other developments. Someone named Erla Stefansdottur is considered an "authority" on these beings and is called upon as a consultant quite often by the government to deal with complaints from the populace when they claim that their property has been experiencing sabotage by these creatures. She describes incidents when the public has gone to great lengths to placate these beings. Please bear in mind that I'm reading this from a newspaper clipping and it's not from a tabloid-type press either.
To continue, a government official by the name of Valdimar Hofstein, reports that he often has to investigate reports that Hidden Folk will not allow a road to be built because it will disturb their home under a rock which they call a Grastein. If attempted, the project will suffer consequences in the nature of equipment breaking down, tools missing, employees falling ill, and so forth. Hofstein says that the most common solution to this is to move the stone to a safe place or to divert construction around the object. He also says that one particularly troublesome case required him to hire a psychic medium to negotiate with the Hidden Folk. I kid you not folks, this is what the newspaper says. Anyone who doubts my veracity will be supplied with a copy of it upon request.
The next time there's an unpopular subdivision or shopping mall under proposal in our region, maybe someone should use as an argument that if it is constructed, the "Hidden Folk" or the "Spirits of the Forest" will wreak havoc and cause much sabotage. Although I'm opposed to the unlimited development that has gone on around here for many years, I think I'll leave that for someone else to do.
I know the Dutch brought with them legends and superstitions about trolls whom live under bridges and in the mountains. Washington Irving (who lived in the vicinity of Tarrytown) wrote of elves playing the game of Nine Pins and awakening Rip Van Winkle from his twenty-year slumber. I'd like to hear of other legends from this region which are related to such things. If anyone out there knows of any, please come forward.
Trolls and elves not withstanding, when I'm listening or reading about animal folklore I often think back to when the first explorers returned to Europe and told of the animals they found here. Can you imagine what the listeners must have thought the first time they heard about some of them? Just for one example take the beaver. Can you place yourselves in the shoes of the listeners when they were told that over in the New World they have a rodent which weights 50 or 60 pounds, cuts down trees, has a flat tail that it smacks the water with, and builds dams? What a preposterous-sounding animal that must be to anyone first hearing about it. But yet it exists.
The Viking Sagas recount that when they first encountered the Indians (they called them Skraelings), the Indians were petrified of the cattle they brought with them because they mooed, bellowed, were large, had horns, and they thought they were some sort of monster. Then when they learned that these animals gave milk (which the natives hadn't seen since they were at their mothers' breasts) and gulped it down hungrily only to become deathly ill a short while later (because they were lactose intolerant), this not only furthered their belief that cattle were evil beasts, but that the Vikings had poisoned them. Needless to say, the relationship between the Norse and the Indians deteriorated very quickly after this incident, and all because of a basic cultural misunderstanding.
The great explorer Marco Polo was called "The Great Liar" for some centuries because of the nature of the tales he returned to Europe with. He said that, among many other things, in China they ate plentifully a member of the nightshade family of plants, namely tomatoes. In Europe the nightshades were all known to be highly poisonous. But in China they did indeed eat tomatoes copiously (and made catsup from it). It took a long time but they eventually caught on in Marco Polo's Italy and we now enjoy all those great Italian recipes because of it. It wasn't until other explorers repeated his journey and verified his information before he was finally given proper recognition for his work. Unfortunately for Polo, it didn't arrive until long after he was dead and had been greatly vilified during his lifetime.
The platypus was not accepted as factual until this century. Again, here we have an animal that has a bill like a duck, a flat tail like a beaver, and lays leathery eggs yet it is a mammal. How preposterous! Yet it's there. Then there are the mountain gorilla and the pygmy hippopotamus which weren't recognized by science until the late 19th or early 20th Centuries. The narwhal whale which bears a unicorn-like horn boldly festooned upon its nose also was considered a seafarer's tall tale for centuries. So it's all in the eye of the beholder.
And finally, lest we not forget about the coelacanth which was thought to have been extinct for many millions of years until one was seen by a western scientist at an open-air fish market in Madagascar during the 1930s. The natives were amazed at his astonishment because they were used to catching them in their nets and considered them common. Since then many others have been caught and recently they have been found in the eastern Indian Ocean near Indonesia too, which proved that they were not just a relict species confined to a small area of ocean.
I'm not at all interested in labeling and dismissing such folklore as tall tales just to scoff at them as some are fond of doing. Nor do I indulge in over-analyzing them because that tends to make it more of a labor than a love. I just have fun learning about them all and in the process I discover a lot about the cultures who tell these stories. So what if there aren't any unicorns or Jersey Devils. Some of those once legendary creatures which actually do exist are just as strange as those mentioned in folklore, proving that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Those people who sternly and pompously refuse to even converse about these creatures are missing out on a lot of enjoyment and discovery of a different nature. And every once in a while one of these legendary critters turns out to actually exist, or to have prematurely been pronounced as extinct, causing much embarrassment to those who laughed too early. But I still think I'll have to wait a bit before I'm met at my office door by a Tyrannosaurus rex.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bille, Matthew A. 1995. Rumors Of Existence: Newly Discovered, Supposedly Extinct, and Unconfirmed Inhabitants of the Animal Kingdom. Blaine, Washington. Hancock House Publishers.

Boland, Charles. 1961. They All Discovered America. Garden City, New York. Doubleday and Company Inc.

Coleman, Loren and Clark, Jerome. 1999. Cryptzoology From A To Z: An Encyclopaedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, and Other Authentic Monsters. New York, New York. Simon and Schuster.

Heuvelmanns, Dr. Bernard. 1966. On The Track of Unknown Animals. New York, New York. Hill and Wang Publishers.

Mackal, Dr. Roy P. 1980. Searching For Hidden Animals: An Inquiry Into Zoological Mysteries. Garden City, New York. Doubleday and Company Inc.

Mathewson, Robert. 1960. Reptiles and Amphibians. New York, New York. Wonder Books Inc.

Miller, Marc E.W. 1998. Legends Continue: Adventures in Cryptzoology. Kempton, Illinois. Adventures Unlimited Publishers.

Zim, Dr. Herbert S. 1956. Reptiles and Amphibians. New York, New York. Golden Nature Guides Inc.

Copyright (C) 1999 AJS