A Hand-Me-Down Harvest; Every Lake Has a Monster

<v Woman 1>[inaudible recording] <v Woman 1>When you look at traditional lore in Vermont, you find a large body of material <v Woman 1>quite apart from the ballads, folk songs and fiddle tunes collected in the <v Woman 1>30s, 40s and 50s in New England by Helen Hartness Flanders. <v Man 1>When Mrs. Flanders first began her collection in the 30s, <v Man 1>almost no one respectable was collecting folklore. <v Man 1>About the only thing that you could collect was a very small contingent <v Man 1>of songs that were known as a child ballad. <v Man 1>They didn't collect superstitions or costumes or legends or tales or beliefs because <v Man 1>that wasn't really thought to be the proper thing for anyone to do. <v Man 1>Uh but legends are closely connected to songs in that they very often <v Man 1>are located pretty closely in time and in place. <v Man 1>And the chief purpose of the legend, it seems to me, is to

<v Man 1>give some historical information. <v Man 1>To preserve some kind of historical event. <v Man 1>Also, uh it is a way to <v Man 1>demonstrate what the consequences of certain historical <v Man 1>events can or may well be. <v Man 1>Now, in the town of Fairfield, there is a <v Man 1>pond named on the map, Fairfield pond. <v Man 1>But, the local name is quite different from the name topographer <v Man 1>gives it. <v Woman 2>Around the 1840s there came to that vicinity, <v Woman 2>a man by the name of Eugene Clifford, who was a deserter <v Woman 2>from the British Army. <v Woman 2>And he met and married a young widow who had a 50 acre farm <v Woman 2>along the shore of Fairfield Pond.

<v Woman 2>But he soon tired of her because he had met <v Woman 2>a young widow on the other side of the lake who also had a small <v Woman 2>farm. But on October 15th, 1842, <v Woman 2>he came home from work that day early and he said to his wife, <v Woman 2>I'm going to take you and the baby for a boat ride. <v Woman 2>So she hurredly placed a shawl, a woolen shawl <v Woman 2>around her baby and across her own shoulders she put a silken shawl, <v Woman 2>which she had brought from Ireland. <v Woman 2>So she took the baby, she climbed into the forward part of the boat, <v Woman 2>and he started paddling. <v Woman 2>He paddled around a point of the land 'til he was out of sight of the shore <v Woman 2>and his neighbors. <v Woman 2>After several hours went by, he was seen returning <v Woman 2>with just him in the boat. <v Woman 2>He sat hunched over and as he rowed ashore, the neighbors

<v Woman 2>saw that he was crying, so they begun to question <v Woman 2>him as to why he was crying and where was his wife and <v Woman 2>child. <v Woman 2>Now he said that the baby became cold and so <v Woman 2>his wife took her prized possession of her silken shawl, <v Woman 2>off of her shoulders, and as she placed it around her little baby babe, <v Woman 2>she toppled with the baby into the water. <v Woman 2>And he said they both drowned and he said in spite of all his efforts, <v Woman 2>he could not save them. <v Woman 2>So all the neighbors searched all the dark and all next day, <v Woman 2>'til late afternoon before they found the bodies. <v Woman 2>Not too far from shore, but while plans were bein' <v Woman 2>made for a funeral, one of the people remembered <v Woman 2>there were two shawls when they left to go in the boat. <v Woman 2>So they questioned Mr. Clifford about the shawls and he said,

<v Woman 2>how should I know how they are? <v Woman 2>So they begun to be suspicious of him. <v Woman 2>And then their theory that he had murdered his wife and child were stonger. <v Woman 2>When they recalled that a week or so before that when they were sittin' <v Woman 2>around the ?pot bellied stove? <v Woman 2>in the store, he had asked them this question, <v Woman 2>if my wife and child should die, would I inherit my wife's <v Woman 2>farm free and clear? <v Woman 2>So they arrested him and they placed him in the care <v Woman 2>of a keeper. But of course, the evidence was only circumstantial. <v Woman 2>But that night, the day before the funeral, uh Mrs. uh <v Woman 2>Abigail Marven, who was a close friend of Mrs. Clifford, had <v Woman 2>a dream. <v Woman 2>She dreamed that if she uh went down a certain road and crossed <v Woman 2>a certain fence and went through a woods to a point

<v Woman 2>on the shore of the palm, there would be a hollow tree there. <v Woman 2>And in that hollow tree, there would be a flat stone. <v Woman 2>And underneath the flat stone, they would find the shawls. <v Woman 2>So she talked her neighbor into going with her and they went along <v Woman 2>this road, which was so clear in her mind from the dream. <v Woman 2>Cross the fence and through the woods to the edge of the pond. <v Woman 2>And there was a hollow tree. <v Woman 2>So they looked in and there was a flat stone and <v Woman 2>on liftin' the stone out, she and her neighbor discovered the two <v Woman 2>shawls. <v Woman 2>In the court room the next day after the funeral, when <v Woman 2>she described how she knew the shawls were there through her dream, <v Woman 2>there was complete silence in the courtroom. <v Woman 2>Now, Mr. Clifford was convicted of atrocious murder

<v Woman 2>of his wife and child. <v Woman 2>And so today, this is how Fairfield Pond is sometime <v Woman 2>called Dream Lake. <v Man 1>It is to me exceedingly interesting that this place should be called Dream Lake <v Man 1>and that this belief in dreams that is so popular in Scotland and Ireland <v Man 1>should come across the water and reappear here with such <v Man 1>vitality. <v Woman 1>Stories are often preserved in song, which makes sense because the rhythm <v Woman 1>and the lyric and the rhyme of the song makes them much easier to remember so <v Woman 1>that while Dream Lake is a legend, Springfield Mountain is remembered in song. <v Man 2>[recording playing] <v Man 2>?inaudible? This song has got a lot of different ways of singin' it. <v Man 2>Some think it was from a ?inaudible? <v Man 2>family, some think it was from somebody else. <v Man 2>But eh the way I sing it, it's uh [inaudible singing].

<v Man 1>Tells the story of a young man who was bitten on <v Man 1>the heel by a snake. <v Man 1>He was 21 years old. <v Man 1>He was Lieutenant Myrick's only son. <v Man 1>Lieutenant Myrick, being a man who fought in the American Revolution <v Man 1>and the song indeed has been known since the late <v Man 1>18th century.

<v Man 1>Well, there is a Springfield Mountain in Vermont. <v Man 1>And not very far away is the town of Myricks <v Man 1>in Massachusetts. <v Man 2>[inaudible singing] <v Woman 1>And there are many, many versions of one story or one song and Springfield Mountain <v Woman 1>is a good example of this. The boy may go out to start his hang on a Friday, which <v Woman 1>traditionally is a very bad day to start anything. <v Woman 1>Or he may be hang on Sunday, which of course, breaks the religious taboo that you <v Woman 1>shouldn't work on Sunday. <v Woman 1>And you may get a more generalized version where he simply goes, hang on <v Woman 1>a summer's day.

<v Woman 3>Um, I learned this one from my father. <v Woman 3>[singing] On Springfield, Mountain, <v Woman 3>there he dwelled, a lovely youth I know him well, one summer morning, he <v Woman 3>did go down to the meadow for ?tomorrow?. <v Woman 3>Dear Rudy ooh, dear Rudy hey, dear Rudy ooh, dear Rudy hey, dear Rudy ooh, <v Woman 3>dear Rudy hey. He had not mowed ?inaudible? <v Woman 3>round the field when a poison serpent bit his heel. <v Woman 3>They brought him home to Molly dear, and oh, it made <v Woman 3>her feel so queer. Dear Rudy ooh, dear Rudy hey, <v Woman 3>dear Rudy ooh, dear Rudy hey. <v Woman 3>Now, Molly had 2 ruby lips with which the poison <v Woman 3>she did sip. But Molly had a hollow tooth <v Woman 3>and so the poison got them both. <v Woman 3>Dear Rudy ooh, dear Rudy hey, dear Rudy ooh, dear Rudy hey.

<v Woman 1>Songs and stories are often attached to specific places, <v Woman 1>but sometimes there are more than one of these places. <v Woman 1>For example, Springfield Mountain could be in Vermont or there's also a Springfield <v Woman 1>Mountain in Massachusetts. <v Woman 1>However, it was important uh to make these legends or tales <v Woman 1>or songs local. <v Woman 1>And uh the story of Emily's ghost is another good example <v Woman 1>of a story or a tale that is attached to a particular place. <v Woman 1>And this is attached to a ?bridge and stall?. <v Man 3>People love ghost stories. <v Man 3>They survive you'll find them all over the country. <v Man 3>People don't really know if there ghosts or not. <v Man 3>There the believers who argue they are, the nonbelievers who try to debunk <v Man 3>any ghost story that comes along. <v Man 3>So it's a gray area in our culture.

<v Man 3>The believers, obviously, if they believe in ghosts, <v Man 3>need to have stories that prove that there are ghosts. <v Man 3>Folk traditionals supply it. <v Man 3>Stories such as the st- uh Tale of Emily's Bridge is a good example. <v Man 4>Emily is all we know of her name, <v Man 4>the ghost of a young woman who inhabits a covered bridge on Gold Brook, <v Man 4>which is in this dull, hollow section of stone. <v Man 4>The bridge was built, oh, probably 1840, 1850, <v Man 4>tucked back in the woods right where you'd expect to find a little covered bridge. <v Man 4>But as the story goes, Emily was a young lady <v Man 4>destined to be married on the following day. <v Man 4>Who was said to have been crossing the bridge when a team of <v Man 4>runaway horses were coming down the hill and uh <v Man 4>forced her to jump.

<v Man 4>And she jumped and was killed on the rocks below the bridge. <v Man 3>Here we've got a covered bridge in a dark valley. <v Man 3>At night it's a scary looking place. <v Man 3>It's an ideal place for a ghost legend to develop. <v Man 3>People tell the story, this happened nearby, this happened down the road. <v Man 3>This is the cover bridge we know about. <v Man 3>Listen to this story. And we have it. <v Man 3>The legend survives as long as the landmark is there. <v Man 4>Uh many people have said they have seen or had things happen to them. <v Man 4>Be walking through the bridge on a warm summer day and feel a cold breeze, <v Man 4>have a hat blown off. <v Man 4>Uh simple things like that. <v Man 4>I have seen things in the bridge myself that I don't <v Man 4>uh I don't know how to explain. <v Man 4>It was almost midnight. <v Man 4>And I'm sitting in the bridge and a friend of mine heard voices, <v Man 4>he heard- then he said, let's get out of here.

<v Man 4>So we took off in the car and went up the roadways. <v Man 4>And he said to me, did you hear that noise? <v Man 4>And I said, no. And I said, what was it? <v Man 4>And he said, it was someone saying, Help me. <v Man 4>Help me. <v Man 4>And at which point I said, well, let's go back and find out. <v Man 4>Maybe somebody does need help. <v Man 4>And we went back and this time we were sitting and the bridge going the opposite <v Man 4>direction. So where he had heard the voices is now on my side of the car <v Man 4>and I looked out the driver's window and there right on the- right <v Man 4>in the middle of the bridge, right on the wall where I could just about reach and touch <v Man 4>it was a very brilliant flash of light. <v Man 4>Six or eight very quick flashes like a strobe light going off. <v Man 4>I- no way they could have been coming from inside the car. <v Man 4>And unless somebody was hanging from the rafters above the car, I don't think it <v Man 4>could have been done even with the flashlight and have 'em quite so intense and so quick. <v Man 4>So I do believe that there is a ghost.

<v Man 4>I want to believe that it's Emily's ghost in the bridge. <v Man 4>Um someday I'd like to talk to her, find out exactly what happened. <v Man 3>Teenagers now go and park there at night. <v Man 3>They tell the stories. I can imagine. <v Man 3>You know, the young fellow in the car telling the girl with him the story. <v Man 3>She's frightened. She's scared. It's a perfect situation that he wants. <v Man 3>It's also warning the girl, don't go down there and park at night. <v Man 3>We have this beautiful dilemma contained in this story. <v Man 3>The story itself entertains on one level. <v Man 3>It gives a warning on another level. <v Man 3>The stories work. What was the kernel of truth? <v Man 3>Was there a death there at one time? <v Man 3>We don't know, but it's the telling of the story that's <v Man 3>important. <v Man 3>Uh it's a logical explanation when no other explanation can be found. <v Man 3>People who do not believe in ghosts- something happens <v Man 3>that they can't explain.

<v Man 3>How do they answer it? Well, they have no way. <v Woman 1>In the scientific world of today, the possibility that ghosts and monsters <v Woman 1>exist is pretty intriguing, and some people believe that where <v Woman 1>there's smoke, there's fire. If there's a story of a ghost or a sighting <v Woman 1>of a monster, that something must be feeding this. <v Woman 1>Th- these things exist, others tend to look for a more scientific <v Woman 1>explanation, uh perhaps, that ghosts of the <v Woman 1>past left such a dramatic stain um on the <v Woman 1>environment that these ghosts live on, or that a monster, <v Woman 1>uh maybe some kind of prehistoric creature that when all its other kind <v Woman 1>disappeared, that it somehow escaped extinction. <v Man 3>Virtually every lake of any size in the United States has a monster in it. <v Man 3>Vermont has two lakes that have monsters. <v Man 3>Lake Memphremagog has one.

<v Man 3>And of course, the most famous, of course, is the Champ, the Lake Champlain Monster. <v Man 4>I've been uh boating on Lake Champlain for the last five years and <v Man 4>I've been seeing the odd newspaper report and been hearing <v Man 4>the odd comments by tourists uh on some <v Man 4>sea monsters, sea serpent that they dub Champ. <v Man 4>And my very first impression of that was, uh no, <v Man 4>there's such a thing can't exist. <v Man 4>It's got to be alternative reasons. <v Man 4>However, as weeks go by in the summer, more and more reports <v Man 4>come in from eyewitnesses, uh reliable people, doctors, <v Man 4>nurses, lawyers, 17 nuns crossing the ferry <v Man 4>from Essex that have all seen at the same time, uh <v Man 4>police constables, preachers. <v Man 4>And I I I still could not convince myself that something could exist like that uh

<v Man 4>in our modern times. <v Man 4>At 9 September of 1980, on the <v Man 4>Plattsburgh side, a couple was enjoying some <v Man 4>uh hamburgers, by the beach and all of a sudden they heard some splashing offshore. <v Man 4>They looked around and the only way to describe their sighting was Dino, the dinosaur. <v Man 4>There's been a photograph taken by Sandra Mansi in 1977 <v Man 4>off the shores of St. Albans of Champ. <v Man 4>It's not something that has just happened in a year or two ago. <v Man 4>It's for generations that people have <v Man 4>reported sightings. <v Harold>This had happened back in May of 1960, late as the <v Harold>20th of May, if I recall correctly. <v Harold>Mrs. Pat and I were living on a little street up here in <v Harold>East Haddock, Vermont and we decided to go for a camping trip.

<v Harold>So we packed a picnic and our camping duffel. <v Harold>And ample time we had to travel to South en route to <v Harold>the point where not so many years ago there was three picnic <v Harold>tables on the left, right across from the lake. <v Harold>We decided at that time we should have some dinner. <v Harold>Well uh, the day was perfect for observing anything <v Harold>on Lake Champlain. <v Harold>This was right across Dylan ?inaudible? bay towards the north ?inaudible? <v Harold>and I were looking at the time and no mirror was ever smoother <v Harold>than the Lake of Champlain was at that time, there wasn't a ripple on it. <v Harold>My wife was ?inaudible?, leave something to be desired. <v Harold>Said there's something. <v Harold>Makin' a motion out on the lake. <v Harold>She said how. <v Harold>Well, I said probably some birds jumpin for fly.

<v Harold>Well, [clears throat] another minute of doin', she said there's somethin' movin' out <v Harold>there, Harold. <v Harold>So I turn around and look, my God <v Harold>?almighty? I says that is a Champlain monster. <v Man 3>In folk tradition, if we go back centuries, <v Man 3>uh there was a constant ambivalence about worlds that we <v Man 3>couldn't see. And one world was the world under water. <v Man 3>There were things under the water that we just didn't know about. <v Man 3>Well, in a sense, that happened here in Vermont with the size of Lake Champlain, a <v Man 3>tradition grew up that there was a monster in there. <v Man 3>What's interesting about the tradition in the 19th century, it's more <v Man 3>of a tall tale tradition. <v Man 3>The accounts that appear in the newspapers are obvious tall tales <v Man 3>and not belief legends at all. <v Man 3>Latter part of the 19th century. We have some outsiders come in <v Man 3>who have heard the stories, observe phenomena on the lake,

<v Man 3>that they can't explain. <v Man 3>Again, we're dealing with people uh who already are conditioned to <v Man 3>believe maybe there is a monster. <v Man 3>Something happens that they can't explain. <v Man 3>The monster explains it beautifully for them. <v Man 3>If you are prepared to believe that maybe a monster is out there. <v Man 3>And so you see something which your eye is not prepared to interpret. <v Man 3>You've got to explain it. <v Man 3>You've got the Lake Champlain monster. <v Harold>This uh creature. <v Harold>Had three distinct uh humps up into the air, <v Harold>apparently, as far as I could guess, two or three feet high. <v Harold>One behind the other. Not down flat on the water, but up in the air <v Harold>vertically. <v Harold>His uh his head at that distance, even with binoculars, <v Harold>wasn't uh magnified enough so that I could tell you how many front teeth he <v Harold>had or what color his eyes are or anything of that sort of thought.

<v Harold>But I could see enough to indicate to me that the head was <v Harold>not shaped exactly like of snakes. <v Harold>No ground snake at least. <v Harold>Well, there's quite a bit larger and uh <v Harold>in all probability, as far as I could guess, he was between 20 and 30 feet long. <v Harold>If he straightened out into a straight line. <v Harold>Well, ?inaudible? <v Harold>and part of the time I sat facing the road. <v Harold>And part of the time I sat looking at that beast out there. <v Harold>He had started from the shore of the lake a little farther south down <v Harold>the bay, and was going diagonally above north east, <v Harold>and he had gone very, very slowly he wasn't making much progress at all. <v Harold>He was out for a nice, comfortable swim. <v Harold>And before we decided to leave him and head on for our camping trip, <v Harold>he made up his mind he'd better get back home to supper or something. <v Harold>As he slowly turned around and headed back towards where he

<v Harold>came from. <v Man 4>Many people come forth and say it is sturgeon because the lake is known to have very <v Man 4>large sturgeon in the mid summer months sturgeon mate, swim <v Man 4>together, swim close to the surface, which would account for a sighting <v Man 4>of humps. <v Man 4>It does not account for the sighting of long necks. <v Man 4>And to be able to stick a neck six feet out of the water of which are <v Man 4>60 percent of 170 sightings. <v Man 4>It takes quite a body behind it to lift that neck out of the water. <v Man 4>So we dig back into our archives and we come on a creature called <v Man 4>the Plesiosaur, which is a an extinct reptile. <v Man 4>Another theory has it that this is a ?Zubadan?, which is an extinct <v Man 4>whale. <v Man 3>The Vermont House passed a resolution this year <v Man 3>uh this spring saying Champ is a protected creature, but if you

<v Man 3>look at the resolution very carefully, it's kind of tongue in cheek. <v Man 3>A lot of times when people hear folk narratives being presented, <v Man 3>particularly legends, the first question they ask is, well, did that really <v Man 3>happen? Is there a Lake Champlain monster? <v Man 3>And we're really missing to ask that question, we're missing the point to a great extent <v Man 3>of folklore. We don't ask whether a Steinbeck novel was true, <v Man 3>whether a Faulkner novel is true. <v Man 3>But yet we ask are stories about the Lake Champlain monster true. <v Man 3>We're looking at an art form, an oral art form, and <v Man 3>even historical legends, legends such as the tale of Fairfield <v Man 3>Pound or Dream Lake is presenting folk <v Man 3>view of history, which may be or may not be <v Man 3>the same as standard history. <v Man 3>Folk history focuses on those things that a community considers

<v Man 3>important. Believed history is as important <v Man 3>in folk community as actual history. <v Man 3>In fact, we can't separate them. And it's testimony to folklore <v Man 3>and how it survives and how it continues to survive. <v Woman 1>There's no question that folklore feeds popular lore, and Champ is a very good <v Woman 1>example of this. Here he's gone well beyond folk belief and captured <v Woman 1>everybody's imagination. He's made the papers. <v Woman 1>He's become a lure to tourists. <v Woman 1>He's uh talked about on the radio. <v Woman 1>And of course, people living on either side of the lake [music plays] have also made the <v Woman 1>most of it. <v Woman 1>

<v Bob Maker>Bob Maker for the Emerald City of Oz. <v Bob Maker>We're on a small craft on Lake Champlain and we're about to rendezvous with Champ, the <v Bob Maker>Lake Champlain monster. [seagulls calling] <v Champ>Oh! <v Bob Maker>Here comes champ now. <v Champ>Hey, buddy. <v Bob Maker>Hi, Champ. Would you like to tell the people why you've gone public? <v Champ>Oh, I was ?inaudible? Emerald City. You know what I mean? <v Champ>I've been sleeping on water since I was knee high to a brontosaurus. <v Champ>Those old spooks come along and show me just how beautiful all my bedrooms can be, all <v Champ>their gorgeous furniture makin' my eyes ?bug? right outta my head. <v Bob Maker>What'd'you like best about ?inaudible?. <v Champ>Draws, man. Storage space if you catch my drift. <v Champ>But ?inaudible? <v Bob Maker>Just how big are you exactly? <v Champ>Well, I ain't no guppy [chuckles]. <v Champ>?inaudible? Comin'. I gotta go. <v Bob Maker>Stay tuned for more live coverage of Champ. <v Bob Maker>This is Bob Baker signing off. <v Bob Maker>Sleep like a champ. <v Champ>Yo! <v Bob Maker>On a waterbed from the Emerald City of Oz. <v Man 4>And what people are, individuals are investigating now is the possible existence

<v Man 4>of an unidentified animal. <v Man 4>Uh for the moment, we are calling Champy unknown, unidentified uncatalogued <v Man 4>species of marine life. <v Man 3>But it's it's real folk tradition. It's how it works and people wanna believe. <v Man 3>[folk music plays] <v Woman 1>The producers of this program would like to thank the following people for their <v Woman 1>participation. Harold Patch, Ed Groves, Dave <v Woman 1>Salomon, Mary-Alice Flyer, Evelin Stanley, Ethel Ones <v Woman 1>and musicians Ron West and Ronnie West. <v Woman 1>Thanks also to folklorist Dix ?inaudible? <v Woman 1>of the University of Vermont and to folklorist Morris Beck, ethnomusicologist <v Woman 1>Jennifer Quinn, and director of Public Relations, Ron ?Leaf? <v Woman 1>all of Middlebury College.

<v Woman 1>Special thanks to Vermont state folklorist Jane Beck of the Vermont Council <v Woman 1>on the Arts. <v Woman 1>The engineer for this program was Sam Sanders. <v Woman 1>The program was produced by Bonnie Morrissey and Ev Rhymes. <v Woman 1>With funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. <v Woman 1>I'm the executive producer, Betty Smith, and this is a production of Vermont <v Woman 1>Public Radio.