The Lore & Legends

Introduction

Hudson Valley lore plays an integral part in some of THE CHRONICLES, especially those associated with the Highlands “proper,” a run of fabled crags between the southern and northern “gates” of the wild and dangerous stretch of the river from Stony Point to Cornwall-on-Hudson, in the southeastern corner of New York State.

I’d first gotten wind of these tales when my great uncle PJ (Patrick Joseph) Cicale told me, among other stories (always apocryphal in retrospect, but never boring to a then 9-year-old), that thunder was the sound made by the ghosts of Henry Hudson’s crew bowling ten pins. The sound apparently carried far into the neighboring Catskills, for that’s where we lived at the time. I still don’t question how the sound of the Half Moon’s crew bowling in the clouds above Storm King Mountain could carry a hundred or more miles, because that’s the essence of belief in the power of myth and legend that anyone working in the horror and fantasy genres ascribes to.

I’d later read about one particular denizen of the Highlands – and his coterie of sub-denizens – in Washington Irving’s short story THE STORM SHIP, and reference is made to them in the prologues of Books 2 and 3, THE SYPHON and THE NEST.
I’m speaking about the Lord of The Dunderberg, aka “Thunder Mountain,” which lies at the aforementioned southern gate of the Hudson Highlands, on the river’s western bank. The Dunderberg marks the start of the most navigationally treacherous stretch of the river.

Appropriately, its midway point, near West Point, is called World’s End, the spot at which the river plunges to its deepest point, some 220 feet down. World’s End lies in wait in a series of sharp turns that necessitated ships going in either direction to slow down drastically. It was this portion of the river that would give the Royal Navy fits in their attempts to reach Albany during the Revolutionary War. Slowing to negotiate the natural zig-zags in the river’s course made them easy targets for colonial cannons located at several forts on both sides of the Hudson. Any ship that was fortunate enough – whether owing to luck or the skill of its helmsman -actually completed the tortuous turns and weren’t crippled by artillery was met by a massive chain across the river between West Point and Constitution Island.

For good measure, another chain blocked the channel further north, between Plum Point and Pollepel’s Island (aka Bannerman’s Island today, as it was known in my youth) at Cornwall.

The Highlands’ northern gate is guarded by the aforementioned Storm King Mountain on the west bank and Breakneck Ridge on the east. The passage between the two was named the Wey-Gat, the Wind Gap, by Dutch sailors who never underestimated the power of the sudden, mast-bending gales that nature – or the so-called “Heer” – brewed up between the two rocky sentinels.

The Dunderberg itself is a green eminence, as deeply wooded as Storm King is scabrously rocky, and is, according to legend, chiefly populated by a band of imps of prodigious circumference (fat little bastards to you and me). Their leader, the Heer, cuts an even more bulbous figure. All are clad in the dress worn by early Dutch colonists, but only the Heer brandishes a large brass horn, through which he howls his orders for the blowing of winds and the touching off of lightning. His orders are given in gruff Low Dutch, and are executed by the imps, who troop into the air from their aeries and tumble about in the mist conjured by their master, sometimes smiting the flag or topsail of a ship to ribbons, belying their comic appearance, or laying the vessel over in a fierce wind until it’s in peril of rolling over by one beam or the other.

One account tells of a sloop passing the Dunderberg that had nearly foundered, the crew of which had discovered the sugar-loaf hat of the Heer himself hanging from the figurehead on the prow as they sailed into a sudden wall of rain and wind, and developed a terrifying list they couldn’t counter. No turn of the wheel helped. It was as if the ship was rudderless. And no sailor dared to climb to the demon’s cap to toss it into the teeth of the tempest to break the Heer’s hold on the vessel. It was not until they’d driven the ship through the Wey-Gat – the northern boundary of the Heer’s jurisdiction – that she righted. And as she did, the little hat spun into the air like a top, creating a vortex that drew up the raging storm clouds in its wake, releasing their grip, and disappeared. The sloop slid safely through the Highlands’ northern gate and into the calm of Cornwall Bay. The rudder began to respond, and as the ship dropped anchor for the night, a spirited debate ensued among the stunned sailors. Had they avoided destruction because the captain had nailed a horse-shoe to the mast before they crossed into the shadow of The Dunderberg? Could that have restrained his powers? Or had the Heer had been toying with them? That Heer! He’s irrepressible!

At any rate, other Dutchmen who continued to ply the river lowered the peaks of their own caps in deference to the Heer, a common practice well into the 1800s. Mariners who paid this courtesy to the great goblin were said to pass unmolested by his imps, although a captain named Ouselsticker of Fishkill – who traveled with a parson on board in an attempt to offset any Heerish deviltry – refused to bow to the lord of the mountains. His ship, sailing from New York to Albany, was beset by a heavy squall as it passed the Dunderberg. The goblin king himself emerged from the dark blue mist that settled over the water and sat astraddle the ship’s bowsprit, his great weight bending it to near-breaking. He smirked as he seemed to guide Ouselsticker’s schooner straight toward a rocky shore by merely pointing toward it. The parson and frightened crew broke into a panicked chorus of the song of Saint Nicholas, and the goblin, unable to endure its spiritual potency or the parson’s impassioned singing – no one rightly knows – suddenly shot upward in a rotund ball of fire and rode off into the clouds on the gale he’d summoned, carrying with him the nightcap of the parson’s wife as a trophy. Oh, that crazy Heer. What a kook!

Later, it was discovered that he’d hung the nightcap on the weathervane of a church steeple in Esopus, 40 miles upriver. (Just because he could, as we’d say today.) The cap – singed and torn – was waiting for the parson when the ship reached Esopus the following day.

In this painting by Ivan Aivazovsky, a storm-tossed ship is depicted attempting to run the gauntlet “between the gates” just below present-day Cornwall-on-Hudson, renamed Cornwall Landing in THE CHRONICLES. Storm King Mountain is visible just ahead, to port, with Breakneck shrouded in mist to starboard.

I invite you to turn out the lights, light a few candles, wait for a wild and windy night with your favorite libation in hand, and read the following poem aloud. If the house shakes and the windows rattle, that’s all good. Optional: read it in your best pirate voice. Not scared, arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr you?

THE LORD OF THE DUNDERBERG by Arthur Guiterman

Goblin and kobold and elf and gnome
Riot and rollick and make their home
Deep in the Highlands, where Hudson glides,
Curving the sweep of his volumed tides

Round wooded islet and granite base
Down through the rush of the Devil’s Race.
Great is the prowess of Goblin might;
Dread is the malice of troll and sprite;

Chief of them all is the potent Dwerg,
Heer of the Keep of the Dunderberg!
Mountain and River obey his spell
E’en to the Island of Pollopel;

Brooding, he sits in the rugged glen,
Jealous of honor of sprites and men.
Ye who would sail his dominions through
Scatheless, withhold not the homage due!

Lower your peak and its flaunting flag!
Strike! — to the Lord of the Thunder Crag!
Gracefully rounded and broad of beam,
Breasting the calms of the golden stream,

Slanting along o’er the Tappan Rack,
Sidled the Geertruyd van Haagensack .
Sometimes she wobbled, for, be it told,
Casked in the darks of her roomy hold

Gurgled the liquor of pleasant sin —
Rum of Jamaica and Holland’s gin!
Puffing his pipe on the after-deck
Glowered the captain, Gerardus Keck —

Sour and headstrong, but stout of soul,
Scorner of legends of spuke and troll.
Up came the boatswain with pallid face:
“Captain! we swing in the Devil’s Race!

Will ye not lower the orange flag
Here, in the shade of the Thunder Crag?”
“Dikkop! Bemoeial!” the captain roared;
“Durfniet! the wrath of thy Goblin Lord

Lightly I hold as a stoup of rum!
Broom to the masthead! — and let ’em come!”
Shrouding the vessel, before they wist,
Streamed from the Mountain a curdling mist.

Piercing the woof of that leaden veil
Pelted and rattled the heavy hail.
Hudson arose like a tortured snake,
Foaming and heaving; the thunder spake,

Rolled from the cliffs, and the lightning played
Viciously red through the pallid shade!
Oh! how the elements howled and wailed!
Oh! how the crew of the Geertruyd quailed,

Huddling together with starting eyes!
For, in the rack, like a swarm of flies,
Legions of goblins in doublet and hose
Gamboled and frolicked off Anthony’s Nose;

While on the shuddering masthead sat
Cross-legged, crowned with his steeple-hat,
Grinning with mischief, that potent Dwerg,
Lord of the Keep of the Dunderberg!

Brawled o’er the gunwale the frothing tide.
“Up with the cargo!” the captain cried;
“Lighten the vessel or else we sink!”
Over the side went the precious drink!

Darting like swallows, those goblin knaves
Caught up the casks ere they touched the waves.
Back to their mountains the thievish crew
Whirled with their booty; before them flew,

Waving in triumph a captured flag,
He of the Heights of the Thunder Crag!
Gone was the tempest! With sails adroop,
Battered and draggled, the plundered sloop,

Stemming a current without a swell,
Crept past the Island of Pollopel.
Wild was the laughter that quaking men
Heard-through the night from the Goblin Glen

Where, in a revel, the gleeful horde
Drank to the fame of their puissant Lord!
Skippers that scoff when the sky is bright,
Heed ye this story of goblin might!

Strange the adventures of barks that come
Laden with cargoes of gin and rum!
When the Storm Ship drives with her head to gale
And the corpse-light gleams in her hollow sail —

When Cro’ Nest laughs in the tempest’s hem
While the lightnings weave him a diadem —
When Storm King shouts through the spumy wrack
And Bull Hill bellows the thunder back —

Beware of the wrath of the mighty Dwerg!
Strike flag to the Lord of the Dunderberg!

Cornwall/Cornwall-on-Hudson Myths & Legends

Hudson Valley Legends