On a recent trip to Alabama, I had the opportunity to swing up to Gadsden to see Noccalula once again. Rains had been constant for several days and the stream plunging over Noccalula Falls was full and roaring. It was a chilly late winter afternoon and the sun was reaching toward the horizon. There she was – the cover girl of our book, the great bronze sculpture of Princess Noccalula by Baroness Suzanne Silvercruys, still poised on the precipice.
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Noccalula and the variations on her legend, in poem, prose and song, open the chapter “Waterfalls” of Lover’s Leap Legends: from Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco. She has graced the covers of other publications and has most recently been the star of The Noccalula Experience, “a moving, interactive theater performance in the gorge at Noccaulula Fall,” which ran in the summer of 2019.
Spring travel season is approaching. Those looking for off-the-beaten-path sites to explore can use Lover’s Leap Legends as a guide to romantic tales in spectacular settings across the U.S. and around the world!
Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco is available through our website for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), USPS postage paid.
In our chapter on “World Lover’s Leaps,” in Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-tee of Waco, we shared a postcard image and brief account of the love and loss of Hannah Baddeley, a well known part of Stoney Middleton, Derbyshire’s local lore. This 18th century tale tells of a beautiful maiden scorned in love and despairing, who flung herself from the precipitous cliff above the small town. Battered and bruised, she survived, but died two years later.
The one-time way station called Lovers Leap Tavern (now called Curry Cottage) was noted in an 1841 issue of “The Monthly Chronicle.” At one time the inn offered unhappy couples contemplating jumping a chance to repair to a room to reconcile.
Today’s Google Alerts brought a much expanded explanation of “How Lover’s Leap in Stoney Middleton Got its Name,” in Great British Life. Author Nathan Fearn consulted with Colin Hall of the Stoney Middleton Heritage Group who confirmed the unfortunate Miss Baddeley was indeed real, baptized in either 1738 or 1739 (18th century script can be hard to decipher) and buried in 1764, a mere two years after her desperate jump.
The small village, south and west of Sheffield, near Peak District National Park, has in its history colorful characters (“Black Harry” an 18th century highwayman, for example), many historic buildings, and a prominent scene in Tom Cruise’s recent Mission Impossible: 7, other tales of romantic love, and lo and behold – he notes two additional Lover’s Leaps in Derbyshire! One new to us took place at Dovedale. There the legend attached to another promontory is of a heartbroken lass whose lover, she thought, was killed in the Napoleonic Wars. Happily, he was not. Mr. Fearn also describes the leap at Ashwood Dale, which we located as near Buxton. However, both these lovers’ tales come to happier conclusions than the story of forlorn Miss Baddeley. Follow the link to Great British Life for the juicy details and much more.
Spring travel season is approaching. Those looking for off-the-beaten-path sites to explore can use Lover’s Leap Legends as a guide to romantic tales in spectacular settings across the U.S. and around the world!
Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco is available through our website for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), USPS postage paid.
Sappho of Lesbos and other ancient Greeks in the recently redesigned Archeological Museums. With thanks to Joe Yogerst, photographer and colleague!
Here she is – in all her classic sculptural splendor, the leading lady of legend for millennia: Sappho herself. Fabled poetess of fifth century B.C.E. Greece, her passionate leap from the Leucadian cliffs into the Ionian Sea provoked, they said, by despair over unrequited love. On a recent trip through Greece and Turkey my colleague Joe Yogerst, captured her now serene image when visiting Istanbul.
Sappho’s fame in her own time came from her poetry. Over time, her impetuous and dramatic expression of despair at the indifference of the boatman, Phaeon, grew to legend, transcended national boundaries, crossed time and landscape and is now a feature across the globe.
When Leland found Mark Twain’s account in Life on the Mississippi, of Winona’s near fatal leap from a peak above Lake Pepin, we didn’t know we were embarking on a quest that would range from here to ancient Greece, across the westering American frontier, and to remote island nations of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Nope. We just laughed at Twain’s sardonic account and his description of the raconteur who told the tale.
But the quest beckoned and off we went – to find a string, a reason, a common thread for the tales of passionate love so compelling that life without it was not possible. It took a while to get from Lake Pepin in Wisconsin to Cape Leucadia in ancient Greece – but the crumbs were scattered across the millennia, across continents.
Over the centuries her story never faded from cultural memory. Indeed, her woeful saga inspired other romantic tales: Romeo and Juliet was one such tale. But so was the story of lovely Frida, a country lass from the west of England; and the interfaith lovers in eighteenth century Spain who met their fate at La Peña de los Enamorados near the city of Antequera, Málaga Province in Andalusia.
Sappho taking the Leucadian leap, steel engraving from a painting by Richard Westfall. Sappho’s plunge was a favorite theme of nineteenth-century artists.
We found many images of Sappho over the centuries. Her plunge was a favorite theme of nineteenth-century artists. Pictures of Indian maidens actually jumping off cliffs are rare. However, in Gadsden, Alabama a 9’ tall bronze statue created by the Baroness Suzanne Silvercruys commemorates the leap of Noccalula.
Google alerts most often bring up the Leaps at Rock City, Tenn, Jamaica’s Leap above Cutlass Bay, and (recently) Trincomalee Harbor in Sri Lanka. Road (or sea, or air) trip anyone?
The first account that we found in the new United States was reported by Zebulon Pike (yes the Pike the mountain in Colorado was named for). Before his western explorations, in 1805, he was commissioned to find the source of the Mississippi. As they waited out the weather one night, the grizzled Scottish trapper/trader guide regaled them with tales, one of which was about a young Sioux woman who was being forced into a loveless marriage. Rather than submit, she cast herself from the heights above Lake Pepin (full circle back to Mark Twain!). Pike’s journal of his expedition up the Mississippi was reviewed by the The Baltimore Repertory (Jan. 1811).
Pike’s brief mention of the Sioux woman’s leap from the cliff along Lake Pepin was quoted in full. Then followed a comparison of the Indian legend in the wilderness of Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase with a 2,700-year-old classical legend.. . . . . “It was thought that ancient Greece alone had her Leucadian rock; and the desperate leap of Sappho had consecrated it in the eyes of all the enthusiasts of love in succeeding generations. Who would have supposed that the rocks of the Mississippi were destined to be its rival . . .?
Lover’s Leap Legends, p. 47
Princess Noccalula, frozen in her desperate impulse above the falls. Bronze statue by the Baroness Suzanne Silvercruys, Gadsden, Alabama.
Sappho of Lesbos and other ancient Greeks in the recently redesigned Archeological Museums. Photo courtesy of Joe Yogerst.
Sappho taking the Leucadian leap, steel engraving from a painting by Richard Westfall. Sappho’s plunge was a favorite theme of nineteenth-century artists.
View of Lake Pepin in the Mississippi River from Maiden Rock, Wisconsin.
Guam. Courtesy Todd Hoose
A 25-foot tall statue of the two tragic lovers was created by Philippine sculptor Eduardo Castrillo in 1984.
Jamaica’s Lover’s Leap commemorates an enslaved African couple who lept rather than be sold apart.
A Muslim knight loved the “daughter of a noble of Antequera.” Unfortunately, she was promised to another, so they eloped. . . .They were buried where they died, at the foot of the Peña de los Enamorados.
Princess Noccalula. Bronze statue by Baroness Suzanne Silvercruys, Noccaulua Falls Park, Gadsden, Alabama
Lover’s Leap Legends around the world.
Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. Lover’s Leap Legends, Damming the Osage, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness and others are now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for half the original price, postage paid.
Ravana’s Cleft, Trincomalee. Seen from the Swami rock (West). credit AntanO/Anton, 2014. Used under creative common license
Courtesy of Google Alerts–a far flung (pardon the pun) Lovers Leap to add to our ‘inventory’ of world Leaps: Sri Lanka in the 17th century. Among destinations featured in The Sunday Observer, “the oldest and most circulated weekly English-language newspaper in Sri Lanka since 1928,” is the dramatic plunge of a heartbroken maiden into an angry sea:
“The story of Lovers Leap is a sorrowful tale of unrequited love in which Francina Van Rheed, the daughter of a Dutch official, engaged to a young Dutch officer who broke off the engagement upon the end of his foreign service. Forsaken and distraught, she watched atop Swami Rock as the vessel carrying her faithless lover passed beyond the horizon in 1687. Overcome by sorrow, she flung herself into the violent sea – a drop of 400 feet.”
Lens & Pen Press is having a half-price sale for all titles. Lovers Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco is now available on our website at www.dammingtheosage.com for $17.50 (half the original price of $35), postage paid.
We’re still keeping up on the worldwide phenomena of Lover’s Leaps … the geography that gives real meaning to the phrase “Til death do us part.” As we pointed out in Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbosto Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, this is a tale that has come down through millennia (“back in the mists of time,” says Great British Life) from all corners of the globe.
Go to Brimham Rocks and share a story that’s been embedded in the stone (and local folklore) for generations. It’s said that way back in the mists of time, Edwin and Julia were madly in love but were forbade to see each other. Unable to face life apart, they decided to leap from the rocks and spend eternity together. Fortunately, instead of plummeting to their deaths in a gory tumble of limbs and teeth, the couple floated gently to the ground in such a miraculous fashion that Julia’s disapproving father changed his mind and consented to their marriage. Their launch pad to matrimony is now fondly known as Lovers’ Leap.
The tale they recount here differs from the one we found in that today’s tale has both lovers leaping while the 1884 legend we include in the book has only Miss Royst taking the despairing leap. Both have the saving grace of a ballooning skirt saving the day (er – life/lives).
From Lover’s Leap Legends, page 220:
Brimham Rocks (left) are fifty acres of the grit of millstone (a sand-stone once used to grind grain) shaped by weathering and exfoliation into bizarre configurations. These “curious” rock formations not only have a Lover’s Leap, some are thought to resemble elephants, bears, and hippos. It is claimed a few have a Druid or Devil connection. The highest is called Lover’s Leap. In “1766 or 1767,” reported The Leeds Mercury of October 11, 1884, “a young woman . . . by the name of Royst on being disappointed in love, determined to destroy herself by leaping”:
A strong wind was blowing from the west at the time, which inflated her dress in such a manner that she made the descent comparatively unharmed, in the adjoining field, and instead of breaking her neck, only sprained her thumb. She made no attempt to repeat the experiment, which probably cured her hopeless passion, as she lived long afterwards, and died at Kirby Overblow.
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In Lover’s Leap Legends we devoted 66 of 352 pages to the Maid of the Mist legend. These sob stories of a beautiful Indian maiden (usually pictured nude), sent over Niagara Falls in a canoe as a sacrifice to appease various gods, are not technically Lover’s Leaps but they clearly derive from the same indifference to ethnological truth. In both, a “dusky maiden” dies in the end—usually.
Maid of the Mist narratives were hugely popular and had many spinoffs. Recently, we acquired a 1910-1911 New York Hippodrome souvenir program. On the cover is a flakey adaptation of James Francis Brown’s naked Indian girl in a canoe cresting the falls. Curiously, the theater’s dance version does not result in her death. Twice she is in her canoe headed for destruction but is rescued both times. To sweeten the conclusion even more, the two warring Indian tribes grasp the futility of their conflict and the enemy tribes “bury the hatchet.” Princess Ioneta and the handsome young chief are united in marriage.
With seating for 5,300 (the largest playhouse in the world) the New York Hippodrome opened in 1905 with “A Yankee Circus on Mars,” complete with space ships, elephants, a Spanish clown, a baboon named Coco, and hundreds of singers and dancers.
The Ballet of Niagara was less surrealistic and spectacular. Its rendition of Niagara Falls did draw press praise for its realism and there was a snake dance featuring lovely Indian maidens handling large, presumably fake serpents. The relation of handling snakes to the plot is unknown.
The gigantic theater’s overhead was so enormous it never made a profit and was demolished in 1939.
Lovers leap worldwide. Across the globe, these romantic dramas climaxed on romantic real estate. Actual geographic locations presumably add veracity to the implausible stories. Our research revealed the global reach of this tale of stalwart and undying love.
Souvenir and postcard of the Lover’s Leap in Guam from Todd Hoose.
Tourist postcards identifying Lover’s Leaps have been produced by the millions and I recently received such a reminder from a friend. Todd Hoose was deployed by FEMA to Saipan following Super Typhoon Yutu. While there, Todd emailed, saying he would be in Guam for a meeting; where was that Lover’s Leap we were putting in the book? I sent him the story:
Puntan dos Amantes, Two Lovers Point, Guam, USA, is a full-service tourist attraction. … The park honors Guam’s Lover’s Leap legend. A 25-foot tall statue of the two tragic lovers by Philippine sculptor Eduardo Castrillo was created in 1984. It was destroyed by Typhoon Pongsona in 2002, but retrieved from a junkyard, restored, and reinstalled in 2015.
A plaque on the base tells the story of “The Legend of Puntan dos Amantes.” It’s the familiar Romeo-and-Juliet premise with a Sappho conclusion. An “impressive beauty” is ordered to marry a “powerful, arrogant Spanish captain” by her “wealthy Spanish aristocrat” father. Alas! She loves a “young, gentle, strongly-built and handsome Chamorro man.” They rendezvous on the cliff where they first met:
When the father discovered that his daughter was gone, he told the captain that his daughter had been kidnapped by the Chamorro boy. The father, the captain and all the Spanish soldiers pursued the lovers up to the high cliff above Tumon Bay. The couple stood at the very edge of the cliff. The boy and girl took the long strands of their hair and tied these together into a rope-like knot . . . They looked deeply into each other’s eyes and kissed one last time. In that instant, the young couple leaped off the long, deep cliff into the roaring waves below.
French explorer Louis Claude de Freycinet in 1819 published a slightly different version, which he claimed to have learned from locals. In it both the boy and girl were Chamorro (natives of Guam). She was of higher caste. Without her father’s permission to marry they became impoverished outcasts. They put their love child in a stone vault and climbed to the overlook. Binding their hair together they jumped to their deaths. In later renditions, the baby has disappeared. This unique tying of hair together has persisted and is portrayed in all graphic representations.
Guam. Courtesy Todd Hoose
Courtesy Todd Hoose
Courtesy Todd Hoose
Courtesy Todd Hoose
Courtesy Todd Hoose
Courtesy Todd Hoose
Courtesy Todd Hoose
View of Tumon Bay. Courtesy Todd Hoose
page 228, Lover’s Leap Legends
page 228, Lover’s Leap Legends
page 228, Lover’s Leap Legends
page 228, Lover’s Leap Legends
Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco is available on our website, at Barnes & Noble, and on amazon.com
Leland Payton pondering jumping into a book project while at Hannibal, Missouri’s Lover’s Leap.
Our last two books were on Ozark rivers – the James and the Osage (although it heads in the prairie plains of Kansas). Both streams have folklore about cliffs where Indian princesses jumped to their deaths over parental interference in their love life. These struck us as bizarre and aroused our curiosity. Researching these tragic stories that didn’t jive with our impressions of Native American culture we ran across Mark Twain’s satire on Lover’s Leaps. In Chapter 59 “Legends and Scenery” in Life on the Mississippi (1883) Twain wrote of encountering a garrulous passenger on the upper river who tells a story of a broken-hearted Indian maiden who leaps from a bluff. In a departure from other such tales she doesn’t die but lands on her cruel, controlling parents, killing them. Then she is free to marry the brave her parents opposed and lives “happily ever after.” Of course, Twain’s telling is marvelously arch – and it reminds us how much he imitated Mel Brooks.
So Crystal and I, in late March 2017, drove to Hannibal, Missouri to decide if there might be a book in these tear jerking tales. That leap in Twain’s spoof is off Maiden Rock, Wisconsin – too far for a casual drive. Hannibal, on the other hand, does have a quite well-known Lover’s Leap. Mark Twain loved Hannibal and Hannibal loves Mark Twain. Perhaps there the spirit of the writer would whisper “go or no” in our ear.
Crystal Payton took the cover photograph of Lover’s Leap Legends and ended up with more interior shots with a much smaller camera than husband Leland.
Cardiff Hill, another Hannibal bluff, is prominently featured in several Twain books. He published nothing about Hannibal’s Lover’s Leap, though he knew about it – the legend saw print before the Civil War. Today the overlook is a city park. A short version of its legend is cast in a small bronze plaque. While we were taking pictures, cars arrived and people strolled along the protective fence gazing out over the river and town.
In Life on the Mississippi, geography including cliffs are sharply realized. Norman Mailer thought Twain, a pretty promising writer but was critical of him for stealing so much of his stylistic delineations of landscape from Ernest Hemmingway. Twain’s setup for his leap satire was a passage on “the majestic bluffs that overlook the river.” That and the public’s attraction to the Lover’s Leap geography, along with the promise we could like Twain make fun of Romanticism suggested we should proceed. We dedicated the book to the godfather of American realism:
FOR MARK TWAIN
Who diagnosed America’s sentimental romantic infection.
Alas, his injection of realism was not a cure.
That moment Crystal took my picture with my elbow on the fence at Hannibal’s Lover’s Leap may not be the exact second all this jelled, but then it could be. Mark Twain proved you could get by with mocking sentimentality and get paid for it, a good trick.
A folio by Crystal and Leland Payton of Hannibal, Missouri’s Lover’s Leap and Mark Twain’s visible imprint on the town. Twain’s linkage of geography with folklore (which he thought unreliable but intriguing) was a guide to us in writing a book on Lover’s Leaps. Lover’s Leap Legend will be published February 2020.
LOVER’S LEAP LEGENDS: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco Leland & Crystal Payton
ISBN: 978-0-9673925-9-2
352 pages 7.5×10 511 color illustrations
$35.00 retail Buy the book here for 10% off. Click here.
“Your great grandmother probably teared up when told the story of an Indian princess jumping to her death over a disappointment in love, but Mark Twain laughed,” observed Crystal Payton, co-author with husband Leland of a new book Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco,” April, 2020. The couple believes the godfather of American realism was right about excessive sentimentality. “Twain satirized romantic popular culture, but he was not an elitist snob,” added Leland. “He found these Lover’s Leap fables fake but funny.”
Lovers leap worldwide. Stories about these tragedies extend back to a myth that the ancient Greek poet, Sappho of Lesbos, jumped from a cliff when spurned by her lover, Phaon. In America the leaping was usually done by a love-shattered Indian woman. There are hundreds of dramatic cliffs where a “dusky maiden” is said to have plunged to her death after her father, the chief, objected to her boyfriend from an enemy tribe. Thousands of poems, stories, and newspaper accounts chronicle these dolorous events. Millions of postcards and souvenirs have been manufactured picturing the often-spectacular bluffs where “many moons ago” these tragedies took place. Folklorists have largely ignored these legends. Understandably so—they are “fakelore” and do not resemble Indian traditions.
This 352-page book with more than five hundred color illustrations is the first comprehensive study of Lover’s Leaps. Twain found these saccharine sagas perversely amusing, and so will contemporary readers. Corny cultural products have not vanished however, as the Paytons acknowledge in the book’s dedication: “For Mark Twain—Who diagnosed American’s sentimental romantic infection. Alas, his injection of realism was not a cure.”
“Lover’s Leap Legends is the definitive visual sourcebook for an American tradition that is as disturbing as it is amusing.” –Jared Farmer, author of On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape.
“An inherently fascinating, beautifully illustrated, impressively informative, expertly organized and presented study, Lover’s Leap Legends: From Sappho of Lesbos to Wah-Wah-Tee of Waco, is an extraordinary, unique, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal reading lists, as well as community and academic library collections.”—Midwest Book Review.
Lens & Pen Press’s new book, LOVER’S LEAP LEGENDS, won a bronze medal in the competitive Popular Culture category of the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Awards.
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