# Journal of American Folk-Lore/Volume 12/Issue 44/A Tradition of Shelter Island

A TRADITION OF SHELTER ISLAND, N. Y.
The eastern end of Long Island, New York, is divided into two long points which partially inclose a bay. The northern point is named Orient, and the southern, which is longer, is named Montauk. Between these points lies Gardiner's Island, and within the bay thus sheltered from the ocean is Shelter Island.
One of the natural curiosities of Shelter Island is what appears to be a footprint in a rock. This footprint is that of a right foot. The impression of the heel and instep is deep and well formed, but the toe-prints are lost where the rock slopes suddenly away. The tradition about this is that when the Evil Spirit left the island he took three long strides, the first on Shelter Island, the second on Orient Point, and the third on Montauk, whence he plunged into the sea. The rock on which there was a corresponding footprint at Orient Point has been removed to the rooms of the Long Island Historical Society in Brooklyn.
It is said on Shelter Island that if any one makes a wish when he places his foot into this footprint for the first time, he will certainly get it. This unfortunately is not true; but another saying, that the footprint will fit the right foot of any one from a little child to the largest man, is a striking fact; for as the bottom is narrow and the top wide, and there is no limit in length, it supports comfortably any foot that is placed in it. Finally it is said that no horse will pass this stone without being seized with terror on drawing near it, snorting, rearing, and trembling in every limb. A similar story is told about another rock on Shelter Island, where the notorious pirate, Captain Kidd, is supposed to have murdered and buried a young woman. This rock is also said to be an object of terror to horses, who, so the story says, cannot be safely ridden near enough to see it.
It is these sayings about fear in horses to which I wish to draw your attention. Why should a horse be supposed to dread the scene of a crime, or the footprint of Satan?
These traditions are evidently Old World stories transferred to a new and suitable scene. The opportunity to secure a wish, the footprint of the Devil, and the three long leaps are all familiar to us in English folk-lore.
If we look for a more serious cause for some of these traditions than that of the gossip of the countryside in England, we must pass beyond the limits of what can be proved at present.
​A possible origin for these stories occurred to me lately while reading a paper in the Saga-Book of the Viking Club of London, named "Odinic Traces in Somerset," by the Rev. Charles W. Whistler.
Mr. Whistler says "that the thing that is never forgotten in a district is a terror. Often the latest terror will absorb into its own story the legends of the older days," and "one can trace the remains of the past beliefs in many ways as coloring the thoughts of our people, and in nothing more than in the matter of the one terror of our faith,—the fear of the spiritual enemy, the Power of Evil. The fear of the old gods has been, not replaced by, but transmuted into, the fear of Satan. And this is natural ; for to the early converts from heathenism the sway of the pagan deities represented the power of evil from which they had escaped, and to their minds Satan was to a certain extent typified in the likeness and with the ways of them, as they had been wont to fear them."
Mr. Whistler then traces several of the Somerset traditions back to an Odinic origin. Among them is a story about footprints of the Devil which are still to be seen on the rocks.
Two stories are about the "wild hunt." Once a man saw it pass in the air over him. The rider stayed to speak to him, to his terror, for he saw that the huntsman was the Devil, and that he rode a great sow.
"'Good fellow, now tell me, how ambles my sow?'
"'Eh, by the Lord! her ambles well now!' the man answered. But the pious emphatic was not to be stood by the fiend, and he vanished in a flash of fire." In this tradition Mr. Whistler sees Frey mounted on his golden-bristled boar Gullinbursti, transmuted into the Devil, while his boar, for the sake of the rhyme, is changed into a sow. In another story the appearance of a headless man riding on a black horse is supposed to have been the hooded Odin; and in a third, the wild huntsman riding on a headless horse suggests that the horse was headless from his sacrifice to Thor at the Vé. Horse sacrifice was the cause of much trouble in England in the old days, as it was to King Olaf Tryggvason in the far North.
Is it possible that these stories about the terror of horses for the scene of a crime, and for the footprint of Satan, may have come down from the time of the confusion of the Christian and old Norse faiths in England, when, if a crime had been committed, the wrath of the Æsir must be appeased by the sacrifice of a horse; and likewise when Satan, invested with the character of the northern gods, would be supposed to desire for himself their ancient sacrifice, a horse?
Cornelia Horsford.
December 17, 1898.