Tag Archive for Lover’s Leap Legends

Lover's Leap, Lover's Leap Legends

Revisiting Noccalula

February 19, 2023 • 0 Comments

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.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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.

Lover's Leap, Lover's Leap Legends, Uncategorized

More on Lover’s Leaps of Derbyshire, UK

February 12, 2023 • 0 Comments

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.

Lover's Leap

Valentine’s Day approaches – Lovers Leaps again in the public imagination: Brimham Rocks

January 29, 2022 • 0 Comments

All hail, Google Alerts!

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 Lesbos to 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.

7 romantic walks for Valentine’s day in Yorkshire

Lovers’ Leap – Brimham Rocks

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.

Lens & Pen is having a warehouse sale. All titles are now 50% off, postage paid. Lover’s Leap Legends is now $17.50, postage paid (original retail price $35). See our store

Lover's Leap

THE BALLET OF NIAGARA

September 21, 2020 • 0 Comments

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.

Lover's Leap

Puntan dos Amantes, Two Lovers Point, Guam, USA

March 3, 2020 • 0 Comments

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.