Love and Rum

The Boston Archive

Folklore

Love and Rum

Back in the seventeenth century a number of Yankee traders arrived in Naugatuck to barter blankets, beads, buttons, Bibles, and brandy for skins, and there they met chief Toby and his daughter. Toby was not a pleasing person, but his daughter was well favored, and one of the…

Work

Type: folk narrative
Creator: Charles M. Skinner
Created, as stated: 1896

The tale

Back in the seventeenth century a number of Yankee traders arrived in Naugatuck to barter blankets, beads, buttons, Bibles, and brandy for skins, and there they met chief Toby and his daughter. Toby was not a pleasing person, but his daughter was well favored, and one of the traders told the chief that if he would allow the girl to go to Boston with him he would give to him--Toby--a quart of rum. Toby was willing enough. He would give a good deal for rum. But the daughter declined to be sold off in such a fashion unless--she coyly admitted--she could have half of the rum herself. Loth as he was to do so, Toby was brought to agree to this proposition, for he knew that rum was rare and good and girls were common and perverse, so the gentle forest lily took her mug of liquor and tossed it off. Now, it is not clear whether she wished to nerve herself for the deed that followed or whether the deed was a result of the tonic, but she made off from the paternal wigwam and was presently seen on the ledge of Squaw Rock, locally known also as High Rock, from which in another moment she had fallen. Toby had pursued her, and on finding her dead he vented a howl of grief and anger and flung…

Narrative type: ballad
Set at: Boston and eastern Massachusetts
First attestation in print: Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896) (1896)

Tellings

A tale told several ways is one record and several tellings. Each is given whole, with its teller named — or recorded as unattributed where the collector left them unnamed, which is itself a fact about the collection.

As printed in Charles M. Skinner (1896)

Told by unattributed — the collector names no informant · collected by Charles M. Skinner · 1896 · Boston and eastern Massachusetts

Back in the seventeenth century a number of Yankee traders arrived in Naugatuck to barter blankets, beads, buttons, Bibles, and brandy for skins, and there they met chief Toby and his daughter. Toby was not a pleasing person, but his daughter was well favored, and one of the traders told the chief that if he would allow the girl to go to Boston with him he would give to him--Toby--a quart of rum. Toby was willing enough. He would give a good deal for rum. But the daughter declined to be sold off in such a fashion unless--she coyly admitted--she could have half of the rum herself. Loth as he was to do so, Toby was brought to agree to this proposition, for he knew that rum was rare and good and girls were common and perverse, so the gentle forest lily took her mug of liquor and tossed it off. Now, it is not clear whether she wished to nerve herself for the deed that followed or whether the deed was a result of the tonic, but she made off from the paternal wigwam and was presently seen on the ledge of Squaw Rock, locally known also as High Rock, from which in another moment she had fallen. Toby had pursued her, and on finding her dead he vented a howl of grief and anger and flung the now empty rum-jug after her. A huge bowlder arose from the earth where it struck, and there it remains--a monument to the girl and a warning to Tobies. Another version of the story is that the girl sprang from the rock to escape the pursuit of a lover who was hateful to her, and who had her almost in his grasp when she made the fatal leap. In the crevice half-way up the cliff her spirit has often been seen looking regretfully into the rich valley that was her home, and on the 20th of March and 20th of September, in every year, it is imposed on her to take the form of a seven-headed snake, the large centre head adorned with a splendid carbuncle. Many have tried to capture the snake and secure this precious stone, for an old prophecy promises wealth to whoever shall wrest it from the serpent. But thus far the people of Connecticut have found more wealth in clocks and tobacco than in snakes and carbuncles.

Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)

Related records

documents — Myths and Legends of Our Own Land

Identity

Identifier: urn:lemay:boston:entity:love-and-rum
Canonical URL: https://boston.fyi/work/love-and-rum
As JSON: https://boston.fyi/work/love-and-rum.json
Version: 1 · last changed 2 September 2026

Provenance

Source: Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896) — source of record
Licence: Public domain — published before 1929 (public_domain)
Retrieved: 2 September 2026
Source identifier: LOVE AND RUM
Attribution: Charles M. Skinner
Rights as stated: Published 1896 and in the public domain in the United States.

Transform ladder

#	Operation	Description	Tool
1	`fetch`	retrieved the full text of the collection from its public-domain holding institution	`archive-ingest 0.1.0`
2	`segment`	split the volume into chapters at its own printed headings; the first occurrence of a heading opens the chapter and later occurrences are the running header, which is discarded	`archive-ingest 0.1.0`
3	`corroborate`	matched each heading against the book's own table of contents and took the index's spelling as the title; a heading the index does not carry was refused as a caption, a byline, or scanner noise	`archive-ingest 0.1.0`
4	`filter`	retained the chapters that name a Boston-area place, by the tale's own words	`archive-ingest 0.1.0`
5	`normalize`	collapsed the scan's line breaks; not one word of the telling was altered, added, or removed	`archive-ingest 0.1.0`