# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/The Friar of Campobello

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THE FRIAR OF CAMPOBELLO
CAMPOBELLO ISLAND sounds well, but is prettily absurd, and the change from the original and distinctive title of the Passamaquoddies, which was Ebawhoot, is pleasant only to people who like weak names. It has more history than an island measuring only three miles by eight can usually boast, for many are the tales of pirates, of wrecks and wreckers, of haunters and of war; as in 1866 the romantic region was menaced by all the terrors of bombardment. A band of Fenians assembled at Eastport in that year, determined to take the island away from Canada, crush its population of eighteen or twenty, and annex it to Ireland; but they got into a discussion and finally didn't. Here Admiral Owen, proprietor of the island, used to pace up and down in his gold lace and buttons on a quarter-deck that he built over the ledges. Here is the rock of the Friar, scarred by the shot of British war-ships at practice; for sea-captains were not brought up on Indian legends. This friar was never a monk. He is a petrified lover. Foolishly he fell victim to the charms of a squaw, and when the husband of his copper-colored enchantress discovered the fact he drove him into outer darkness. So stony was his despair that it completely changed him, and there he is at this day: skedapsispenabsku, the stone manikin.
​Another accounting for the figure is this. A young Indian of courage, and his wife of grace and beauty, lived on the cape above the Friar, and would have lived happily had it not been for the parents of his wife, who not only insisted on living with her and being cared for, but on commanding her as if she were still unmarried. A trip to St. John River having been proposed by the parents, the young man refused to go with them or to allow his wife to go. She was divided between two duties, as she fancied, and was in much grief. Neither her father nor her husband would concede any point, and the time set for the journey was near. Now, the young man had medicine power, and he did what he could to increase it, until, feeling that he could work his will, he asked his wife to walk with him to the shore. While she sat there he threw his command upon her, and she sank to sleep; then she grew rigid, death-like, and soon she was stone. "I told you I would never part from my wife," he said to his father-in-law. "Come with me and see how I keep my word. There is your daughter. She will never move or speak again. I look on her and bid you farewell." And, putting all his magic power into the effort, he began to lose his human outline, to harden and turn gray. And in a few minutes he, too, was stone.
This myth of conversion is wide-spread, and on the other side of the continent we find an opposite ​phase of it. The Chinooks point to Mount Ikanam as the body of Ikanam, creator of the universe, self-petrified; while on the Yukon, above Klatoklin, or Johnny's village, are two mighty rocks heaved sheer for hundreds of feet above the water. These are husband and wife. Being incompatible in temper, the man kicked the woman into the plain and drew the river out of its old bed to run between them.
With that infernal spirit of destruction that differentiates men from other animals, a crowd of fishermen succeeded in tumbling the Campobello husband into the bay, while the British captains pounded off the head of the wife with cannon. Along come other destroyers who tear up the old names and old traditions, set up Jonesvilles and Jimsonhursts, and hold five o'clock teas amid the ruins of Indian romance.