As token of his love and devotion, the young brave presented his beloved with a beautifully carved, hollowed-out pumpkin, filled with water in which were swimming four small silvery fish. The Princess adored her gift, and placed the small fish in a tiny pond which she hollowed out with her own hands. The beautiful Indian maiden spent long hours by her pond, for her lover had promised to return to her before the fish had grown to maturity. And so every day she watched the growth of her fish, for each change in size brought her closer to the young brave to whom she had pledged her love.
But the summer was a long and dry one, and when Princess Scargo went to her pond one morning, she found it dry and three of her beloved fish dead. The Princess was mad with grief. She wept and wailed, and the tears of grief kept alive the one remaining fish, which she placed once more in the pumpkin.
Her indulgent father immediately called an important pow-wow. It was decided that a lake should be dug especially for Princess Scargo’s fish. The strongest and most skillful brave shot an arrow in four directions. Each time an arrow fell, it marked a boundary of the lake.
The work of digging the lake basin went on steadily. When Autumn’s bright hues painted the countryside, and the Fall rains came, the lake bed filled deep and clear.
Princess Scargo placed her fish in the man-made lake, and prepared to wait once more for her lover. He came as he had promised, and after their marriage, they lived in their lodges on the shores of Scargo Lake, where the descendants of the silvery fish, token of an Indian love, still swim.
... The Curse of
Old Mother Melt
No one knew her real name, or from where she came. She seemed as old as Time itself, and her cavernous eyes were fathomless pits of mystic wisdom. The villagers spoke of her in hushed tones, and they called her Old Mother Melt. They believed she was a witch.
Old Mother Melt lived in an ancient, ragged cottage on the outskirts of Provincetown, and the townspeople dared not venture near her cottage after dark. Many a youth, returning from an evening of courting in a neighboring town, and forced to pass by the cottage of Old Mother Melt on his way home, was scared out of his breeches by the strange noises and eerie lights that came from the windows. This fear came from years of inbred superstition and ignorance, for Mother Melt had never done any harm that could be proven. Nevertheless, she remained an avoided, fearsome character. Whenever disaster, illness or calamity befell someone in the village, there were many who murmured ominously about “one of Mother Melt’s curses,” and the threat that “Old Mother Melt will get you” disciplined many an obstreperous child.