THE JERSEY DEVIL AND THE DANCING FOOL
By
Doris Lane

It is hard to know what makes the night so black here. They all are here, every night, black as pitch. Look up and the clouds racing across the moon are black. The green grasses at night are black. The water is not blue, but brown. The river is the color of weak coffee from the cedar and the iron ore. That river damn near never moves, you know. It is the slowest flowing river, the Mullica. You could float on your back for five months and go nowhere a-tall. The water is very close to the ground here, 17 trillion gallons of it, sitting just underneath the million acres of Jersey Pine Barrens. There are places one wrong step could drown a man.

The trees are low here, stunted and dwarfed, but not too short to hang a man. The lonely sand roads wind their way through the forest of pygmy pine. These roads are forlorn and carpeted thick with pine needles. You should not be able to hear footsteps out there in the night atop all those soft pine needles, but you do. The screams that tear your heart out through your chest, you hear them, too.

We don't go out at night here. A gun might help you with some sights you can see here, but not all of them. You might as well stay in. We who live here stopped going out at night a century or more now. It's become the local custom, you might say, staying home at night. It's the night sights we'd rather not see out there in the black. The lady all dressed in white, the hanged man who goes looking for his gold to pay off the Devil, but mostly we don't want to see the devil itself, so we stay in at night here.

The devil is about four feet high. Not tall for a man or woman, but tall as some of the cedars around here. The devil has hooves for feet and paws for hands, legs that are long in the hind and up short in the front. A head like my great-aunt's collie, a face like Grandpa's horse, a nice long neck, legs as strong as a kangaroo's, and wings that can almost out fly a cannon ball shot off by a Commodore of the U.S. Navy. I should tell you, witnesses swore that ball went through the devil before the devil flew on its way. There was a hole gaping big they could see straight through to the trees on the other side. A hunting rifle shot by a King of Spain could not stop the devil, neither.

Kings and Commodores can't stop making war on the world, and the devil can't stop screaming through the Jersey Pine Barrens. Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Viet Nam; you name the war, the devil came on screaming through the Jersey Pine Barrens.

Shipwrecks, too, sometimes.

The devil does have that forked tail you hear so much about. Around these parts, we say fork-ed, though, so the devil has a fork-ed tail. Streaks of fire shoot out the devil's mouth in a certain mood. Ah, well, they say the devil don't exist even if it's been seen thousands of times for over 200 years, some nights seen almost all at once in every last corner of these million acres of Pine Barren. Goes off sometimes elsewhere, once in a while, to Philadelphia, Long Beach Island, Mount Holly, Trenton, even once in California, they say. It lives here with us, but it is seen in all sorts of places and not just by your ordinary backwoods Piney, no, but by military men, politicians, postmasters, pharmacists, captains of industry and farmers' daughters, trappers, hunters, doctors and lawyers, policemen, clergymen, reporters like you, and everybody else you can think of, even a King of Spain.

Of course, Hannah Butler didn't help any, the old bog hag, saying, "Aye, he is there! And a storm like the one when I see'd the Leeds Devil!" There were only a few drops of rain that day she mouthed off without a tooth. And she never saw no Leeds Devil, because if anything don't exist it's that. But because of her they try to say the devil was born at Leeds Point in the marsh between the Barrens and the Atlantic Ocean. Bunk, I say. Around here we know where the devil was born and when and why.

But what they do say is that Mrs. Leeds, a Quaker witch, if you can imagine, in extrem's of childbirth, her thirteenth live birth this was, called out for the Devil and the devil popped out of her womb. That baby devil grew to full growth before their eyes in minutes that night. It curled its fork-ed tail and beat its own mother with it. That's when it gave out with that ear-piercing scream for the very first time. It flapped its wings and flew up the chimney and out into a terrific storm. It flew screaming into the night over the Pine Barrens. Ignorant people try to say the devil ate its whole family before leaving the house, but we all know the devil don't eat humans. Besides, it wasn't its mother, but its grandmother it beat with his tail.

Now this is said to have taken place in the 1740s, with Mrs. Leeds of Leeds Point, but I think that's just because of the exorcism date. You see, the devil was exorcised and by a pastor with a bell, book and candle and it was supposed to be good for 100 years flat. The devil did get excited and went screaming around in the 1840s, ate a whole lot of livestock, but not because the exorcism ended after 100 years. The truth is, the devil was seen in between the exorcism and the 1840s. It was the Mexican War brought the devil out in full strength in the 1840s and any fool should see that. Why, I seen the devil, myself, December 7, 1941, scamperin' along the banks of the Mullica River.

And that should tell you something.

The Jersey Devil was born with the nation in 1781, wartime, don't you know, our first war as a country all our own. Back when the iron furnaces at Batsto were turning out ammo for General Washington's troops. After the lousy British rowed up the Mullica to Chestnut Neck and burnt the town down. The British said Mullica River country was a nest of rebel pirates and it was. After Chestnut Neck, they were cocky, thought they'd destroy the bog iron furnace in Batsto, but our local boys had another idea and drove them Redcoats back and out to sea. Count Pulaski's regiment turned up a week late to defend Batsto, but it was all over by then. We know how to take care of ourselves around here and always have.

Not everybody here was a Patriot, not by a long shot. We had our local Tories and a good lot of them. A few had to hightail it out of here. Most stayed on, though, and a lot of these folks like to claim Patriots for ancestors are lying in their teeth. But it's the easiest thing in the world to lose yourself and live your life outside society in the Jersey Pine Barrens. I mean, who cares who's who in 2,000 square miles of nothing? Even today, all shrunken by progress, real estate enterprise, and government installations, a man can walk ten miles one day in every direction and never see another human being.

Some of these Tories in the Revolution called themselves "Refugees," but others called them "Pine Robbers." The Refugees were nothing but a lawless gang of bandits, really -- thieving, pillaging bandits. Joe Mulliner was one of them who led a gang of 40 Refugees out in the Hemlock Swamp near Sweetwater. A handsome fellow with charm enough to talk the bloomers off a clothesline. From a good family and educated was Joe Mulliner, but he stood for the King and that made him an outlaw.

Joe Mulliner was a dancing fool and this piney country in the day was a dancing fool's paradise. Every little hamlet and crossroad had a dancehall or a hotel parlor that could turn into one and had a fiddle. Called them stage-stop hotels on the Jersey stage roads connecting Philadelphia with York. Joe never could resist a dance with a pretty girl. It was a problem, of course, him being a wanted man in enemy territory and himself wanting nothing more than a dance. Not one to let circumstances stop his fun, Joe made a custom of arriving at some point of an evening with his gun in his hand. He'd wave it around until the men lined up against the wall. Then he'd take the arm of the prettiest girl, aim his pistol at the fiddlers until they started up again, and he'd be off dancing across the floor. They say nobody could hold a candle to Joe in a country-dance.

His legend is that he was some kind of Robin Hood, but most people say he stole from anybody rich or poor. He did like to capture prominent Patriots, though, and hold them for ransom. Kidnapped an heiress once, he did, but she escaped and was rescued by friends of her family. I never heard of Joe Mulliner giving a dime to nobody but once, and maybe that's at the root of the Robin Hood notion.

It was always a woman with Joe, even this time, although he wasn't even there. He'd been captured briefly before being traded for a Patriot captain. His gang, leaderless and out for bear, stopped at the Leeds farm near the fork in the road. They knew four of the Leedses were in the Revolutionary Army. And they knew Widow Leeds, herself, was one big, loud-mouthed Patriot. The woman would shout down the Royal George if he ever showed his face in the Pine Barrens. This Mrs. Leeds did not live at Leeds Point, she lived right here near the fork in the road to Old Washington, so it shows you how people don't know what they are talking about when it comes to the Jersey Devil.

She was at the meetinghouse with her younger kids when the Refugees took possession of her house. Mrs. Leeds was a widow woman, but she was a prosperous farmer, too. She liked her fine furnishings and such. These Refugees ransacked her house and had sacks full of her belongings set outside the front door. Some of the gang had already gone off with her pigs and chickens.

She showed up with her young boys and her lovely teenaged daughter. Widow Leeds was thunderstruck quiet for the first time in her life. Once she got her wind and after she saw her family silver sticking out of one of their sacks, she let loose with a stream of verbosity that would turn a bluebell yellow. Finally, when she wouldn't shut up, they tied her to a tree and stuck her own hanky in her mouth. Well, then, the boys and the girl started throwing rocks at the bandits, so they had to tie the boys to another tree. One of the Refugees tossed the girl onto his saddle, jumped up behind her, and rode off into the woods. Even in the thick of things the Refugees never forgot that a Patriot kidnapping for ransom was the main chance. The rest of the gang stood there and watched the house burn to the ground before they untied the Leeds family and left them there.

Meanwhile, Joe Mulliner, on his way home from captivity, meets up with his henchman and the girl on a road out a ways. This girl was a delicate little thing, surprising she ever came out of her mother, who everybody agreed looked like nothing but a man. Joe takes one look into those cornflower blue eyes, reaches out and touches her long silver hair. Real towhead she was, that white blonde hair like most youngers grow in these parts. Had it myself once upon a time. When Joe touches it like it's spun platinum, the Leeds girl spits right in his face. Joe just laughs, licks the spittle off with his long and talented tongue, and takes her by her small waist onto his own horse.

Nobody knows what happened between then and the time they rode up to the Leeds farm. Joe Mulliner was a thief, but he was a gentleman thief, so, of course, never said. But it was springtime in the Pine Barrens and no place more beautiful. Blueberry blossoms, Orchids, Lady Slipper, Dogwood, Swamp Azalea and Magnolia, Sundew, and Rose Pogonia, just everywhere you look. Suffice it to say no silver haired girl could have resisted the charms of handsome dancing Joe Mulliner in the circumstance of springtime in the Pine Barrens.

When they finally ride up, the Leeds family is just standing around in the yard looking at the smoking ruins of their homeplace. They look up at the sound of horse's hooves on the road. Mrs. Leeds sees her daughter and tears off down the lane. She was a big woman, like I said, built like a man, and a big man, but she moved like a bat out of hell. Joe was scared shite-less and dropped the girl to the ground.

All he could hear as he galloped down the road was Mrs. Leeds's bellowing curse, "Joe Mulliner, the Devil take you!"

A few months after the fire, it was announced a wedding was coming up quick in the Leeds family. Widow Leeds was marrying her daughter off to a gentleman from away, up north around Aberdeen, and a strong Patriot. Nobody thought much of it at first, it was wartime, and weddings did come up quick. This wedding was to take place at the hotel in Sweetwater not far from here. It was a stage-stop hotel and the Leeds girl and her intended arrived by stagecoach. The Leeds family and all their friends and relations were already inside, an ox was roasting, the ale was pouring, and the fiddlers in fine tune.

No love lost in this match, it was apparent to the wedding guests who crowded out to the veranda to watch the couple's arrival. The bride gave off no happy blushes as her groom helped her to the stepping-stone. She was dressed in a beautiful white gown with woven curly grass fern in a crown on her silvery head, but her face was tear-streaked and her lips swole up. When she spotted the wedding guests, her eyes grew wild, her breast heaved, and she seemed to search for an escape. At the foot of the stairs, she wrenched her arm away from him, and stormed off around the side of the hotel. Her mother started after, but the groom shook his head firmly, and they went inside and joined the party.

The bride, and I am sorry to say her name has not survived, threw herself down on the grass out back and wept. When evening fell her dress shone white against the dark grass. Even if she had not been wracked with sobs, she would not have heard the footsteps through the woods, not all covered as the sandy path in a cushion of pine needles. Joe stood at the edge of the woods and watched, his own heart breaking. He watched as the girl's mother came to get her. He watched them enter the hotel through the back door. And he waited a time before going through that same back door. Joe always entered a party through the back door, it wasn't unusual, but this time instead of heading straight in, he climbed the back stairs to the second story.

Downstairs the wedding ceremony proceeded, the bride weeping the while. Joe crept silently down the main staircase with the room's focus on the bride trying to get out her words. The time had come for her to say, "I do." She hesitated and then she tried, but her voice failed her. She tried again, clearing her throat. She spoke, but nobody heard her response for the noise of a gunshot from the stair that sliced the rope of the candelabra and sent it crashing to the floor. There was shocked silence for a moment before somebody doused the burning candles on the sawdust with a pitcher full of ale.

Joe said nothing, just gestured with the long barrel of his pistol from the groom to the exit. Nobody blamed the fellow from Aberdeen; it was at gunpoint he left his bride at the altar. Joe came down the stairs and took his love into his arms. He gestured once more with his gun to the fiddlers who started up playing. Once more, Joe Mulliner danced, round and round, round and round, with the prettiest girl at the party. So you can see why Joe Mulliner has his legend in these parts, even if what came later never happened.

When the song ended, Joe picked her up in his arms and carried her out the front door of that hotel in Sweetwater, her white wedding dress draped over his arm and trailing the floorboards. The Refugees were waiting outside with Joe's horse. They had the unfortunate groom tied over the back end of another horse. The Refugees, shouting their hearty congratulations, went one way with their Patriot captive, and Joe and his beautiful bride went the other.

Nobody ever knew for sure if she was already a married woman when he took her out of the hotel in Sweetwater. Nobody heard her response as the gunshot cracked the hush in the room. But everybody knew she was not married to Joe Mulliner. At least not that night and by a clergyman, but it was said he got himself a writin' for a divorce, just in case, and then another writin' for a marriage. What's that? Oh, a writin's a piece of paper writ up by a Piney squire. Good as the real thing in these parts.

Like I said earlier, it's no difficult deal to live in the piney woods and your next neighbor not know you are there. Joe and the Refugees had been doing it for years in the Hemlock Swamp near Sweetwater. Turned out, though, he kept his love in a house deep in the woods on the Mullica River and he loved her as if she were his true wedded wife. Nobody knew the young girl was even pregnant except for Mrs. Leeds, who had tried to fix it with the Patriot from Aberdeen, and she was out of her mind not knowing where her child was in the world.

Mrs. Leeds, as has been shown, was no shrinking violet and she had Patriot credentials, which she used to good effect. She pestered everybody could be pestered, yelled abuse at anybody who walked away from her, and finally got one of her sons to talk to George Washington himself. So the General got together with Captain Baylin, the famed Indian fighter who knew his way in wilderness, and had him organize a company of rangers to find Joe Mulliner and get the girl back to her family. It quieted Mrs. Leeds, but the girl wasn't the only reason, naturally, for the action. Joe Mulliner was wanted for every crime short of violence to a person, including banditry and treason, which he was eventually charged with, tried and convicted. It fit in with everybody's plans in South Jersey to get Joe Mulliner. Joe, being Joe, had some good fun with it, leading them all a merry chase. It never stopped him dancing with a pretty girl in one hand and a gun in the other.

The Leeds girl went into labor early, as I understand it. Alone in the house in the woods along the river, she cried out for her mother. Joe came home, the bravest man no match for childbirth, he took pity on her. He untied his boat and went out on the river for Mrs. Leeds. He walked to the crossroad, went into the Leeds's barn and got her horse and wagon ready. Then he walked in the house bold as brass and took her out at gunpoint, drove her off in her own wagon to the Mullica River. You'd think a pistol on her would keep her quiet for once. But this was the Widow Leeds and Joe's ears were burning and ringing by the time he rowed her up the Mullica. The woman never let up for a minute even in the house with her girl there in extrem's of childbirth.

Joe could not get away fast enough. He jumped on his horse and rode out hard. Through the trees he heard Mrs. Leeds curse him a second time, "The Devil take you, Joe Mulliner!"

The Devil hadn't taken him the first time, he reasoned, trying to shake the chill down his spine. Joe felt a little lost and scared alone there in the piney woods with only his horse for company. With his woman having pains, he had sent his gang out on their own about Refugee business, and stayed behind. Not knowing what to do with himself, Joe hit on the idea of having a dance at a tavern party he knew of in Nescochague. Ordinarily when Joe went dancing, his boys would surround the place and keep watch for trouble. This night, with the chill of the Devil curse on him, Joe's judgment must have gone off. He went alone to the tavern at Nescochague, pointed his gun, and danced his last dance with the prettiest girl at the party.

Captain Baylin made short work of it, snatched him out of the tavern, had him tried, convicted of treason, and hung that night in the buttonwoods on the shore road of the Mullica. The wind was high and the night was black as pitch, the way nights are here. A gale was coming up and the body hanging from a tree limb turned and turned. They left him hang there in the wind until the weather cleared and they could come back and bury him. The last man out of the clearing looked back. Said he saw the wraith of the body fall away and down to the ground. Said he saw Joe Mulliner searching the ground for where he buried his gold, so he could pay off the Devil. Said he saw Joe walk down the road and heard the sound of Joe's footsteps carried on the screaming gale wind in spite of the pine needles cushioning the sandy road.

Mrs. Leeds, meanwhile, delivered her own grandson live on this same stormy night, but lost her daughter to childbirth. Mrs. Leeds was weeping and wailing nearly as loud as the gale wind outside. She cursed Joe Mulliner to the Devil again and again. She never let up even as she cleaned the baby boy, cut his umbilical cord, and set him down to find something to swaddle him in.

Exhausted, Mrs. Leeds sat down at the fireplace with the naked babe to her back. She cried and cried for the loss of her beautiful daughter. She ranted and she raged, pounding her heavy feet against the floorboards, and tearing at her hair with her manly hands. She cursed the Devil, God, and Joe Mulliner, before it occurred to her to curse the child, too. Before doing so, she considered how the baby was now to be in her charge, sentencing her to a life of horror, of watching this boy child grow year by year into Joe Mulliner, reminded daily of the silvery hair and cornflower blue eyes of her lost daughter. It was too much to bear. She could not and would not do it. But could she strangle the life out of this newborn? No, Mrs. Leeds didn't have it in her.

With her powerful bellow, in frustration at her plight, Mrs. Leeds called out, "Devil take this child!!"

The sound of the raging storm couldn't cover what she heard next, a hissing, a rattling, a stuck zzzzzzzzz sound like a saw hitting a rotten place in a plank of wood. As she turned to look, a shooting flame flared past her face. Jumping from her chair, her hands flew to cover her open mouth. Her eyes raced around in their sockets. Mrs. Leeds was shaken to her soul by what she saw before her.

Her grandson, normal looking when she had turned her back, was metamorphosing into a monster, his body lengthening to full growth, his head taking on the look of a horse, his feet turning into hooves and his hands into paws. The silenced grandmother watched the arms shorten before her eyes, saw the wings come on like a bat's, saw the tail grow and grow and split into a fork at the end. The fork-ed tail moved as if on its own steam. The devil was lifted by its tail off the bed and bounded to the floor. The devil looked at his dead mother and whimpered softly, then at his horrified grandmother and screamed. Mrs. Leeds was struck deaf and dumb, then and there, and forever.

The devil raced around the house, up the walls, across the ceiling and floor, upturning furniture and wreaking havoc on anything in its path, screaming all the while in a sound heard clear across the Pine Barrens that broke straight through the wind barrier. Finally, there was only one thing standing in the room. The devil swung its tail around and around, building up the speed and precision of a whip, and beat its grandmother half to death before flying up the chimney and screaming out into the night.

Mrs. Leeds lay broken and bloody on the floor until morning. She dragged herself up and nursed her wounds. She bathed her daughter's body and dressed her in the white wedding dress. She brushed the sawdust from the hem. She found the crown of woven curly grass fern and placed it on her daughter's head. She wrapped her child in sheeting and carried her outside to a spot near the fence. She dug a grave for her child with the strength she was born with. She constructed a wooden cross and burned in the lettering, not using Leeds or Mulliner, but the name of the near-husband from Aberdeen, and the year 1781.

Mrs. Leeds never left the house on the Mullica River. She lived there and tended her daughter's grave until she herself was buried there in the yard. She never spoke another word to anyone, not even her own sons. Throughout the many years she lived in the house, she often saw her grandson, the Jersey Devil, sitting on the fence above his mother's grave. Mrs. Leeds never went outside at those times, but watched from the window. Like any child, the devil would scamper along playfully atop the fencing and then along the riverbank. He never tried to hurt his grandmother again, but he ate the chickens and pigs she raised solely for his sustenance and hers. Sometimes he would go a-wandering and she never knew where, but watched faithfully from her window and into her old age for his return.

When Mrs. Leeds died, the devil was forced to forage for food on his own throughout the Pine Barrens. He so frightened people with his appearance that he learned to go about at night under cover of darkness, leaving only odd-shaped tracks and bloodied livestock to show he'd been there. When evil times were on the world, when malice, greed, hatred, and other trouble hit a critical mass, the Jersey Devil, filled to busting with unending pain, screamed and screamed and screamed, flying hither and yon to reach every darkest corner of the Pine Barrens. When war threatened, the Jersey Devil flew tirelessly day and night, stopping in towns and cities, peering into windows of houses and public meetings. Everybody saw him in times of coming war. Everybody heard him scream and nobody listened.

Every now and then down through time, he'd come upon the buttonwood clearing and see his father's form twisting on the tree in the wailing wind. He'd watch the wraith slip from its noose to the ground and begin its search for gold. Over the sound of the wind, he'd hear the footsteps fall on the soft pine needles and move away down the sandy road in the direction of the roadside grave marked: Joe Mulliner, hung 1781. Sometimes he would see his mother in her white wedding dress take the arm of her husband and accompany him to the grave.

We of Pine Barrens, we'd see it, too.

It is hard to know what makes the night so black here. The night is black as pitch here. They all are here, every night, black as pitch. Look up and even the clouds racing across the moon are black. The water is not blue, but brown, the river the color of weak coffee, from the cedar and the iron ore. The trees are low here, stunted, dwarfed, but not too short to hang a man. The lonely sand roads wind their way through the forest of pygmy pine. These roads are forlorn and carpeted thick with pine needles. You should not be able to hear footsteps out there in the night atop those soft pine needles, but you do. The screams that tear your heart out through your chest, you hear them, too. And you see a woman with long, silvery hair. She is dressed in a white wedding dress and wears a crown of woven curly grass fern.

The Jersey Devil screams.

________________

This short story draws on three South Jersey legends:

the Joe Mulliner hanging; the burning of a Patriot farm by Tory Refugees; and the Jersey Devil. Joe Mulliner was hung for treason in 1781. The house of a Patriot family named Bates (not Leeds) was burned by Tory Refugees. The Jersey Devil, well, is the Jersey Devil. Commodore Stephen Decatur of the United States Navy claimed early in the 19th century to have shot a cannonball through the Jersey Devil. Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon and ex-King of Spain, claimed to have shot at the Jersey Devil while hunting on his estate in Bordentown. In the year 1909 alone thousands of sightings of the Jersey Devil are on record for the third week in January in every part of South Jersey. The Jersey Devil does appear before wars and shipwrecks.

Elements of all three legends were combined into one story, but the story is fictional. Geographic liberties were taken and the personalities did not interact as the characters do.

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Doris Lane is an online writer. Much of what she writes draws on Americana, local history, legend, and folklore. She writes three columns on Themestream: North Jersey Coast Line, for visitors to the Jersey Shore; Madam Murder, true crime mysteries; and Ghoulies and Ghosties in New York and New Jersey. She compiles American Miscellany, a collection of historical trivia. She is Crime & Mystery Editor for the e-zine, E-This, and New Jersey History Editor for the Open Directory. Crime Magazine, The 13th Story, and Haints.com E-zine of Southern History and Culture have also published her work. She can be reached at Jerseycoa@yahoo.com or on her website: http://GhouliesGhosties.homestead.com/GhouliesGhosties.html