LES BALADES DU BIBLIOTHÉCAIRE : LES COLLINES DU VERMONT avec Eli Davenport.

  Une recherche de Natacha et Samantha

 

🕯 Eli Davenport — Folklore and Legends of the Vermont Hills

(First printed privately in Brattleboro, 1839. 124 pp., with marginal notes and a folded map of the White Mountains region.)

“...among the old settlers of Windham and Caledonia Counties, I have found tales not of Indian origin, but of some darker and more ancient source. The people speak of winged things upon the mountains, and of lights moving against the stars.”
— Preface, Eli Davenport, 1839

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📜 Auteur

Eli Davenport (1804–1842)
Folkloriste et pasteur congrégationaliste de Grafton (Vermont). Issu d’une famille de colons puritains, Davenport s’intéressa dans les années 1830 à la survivance des légendes montagnardes et des “superstitions païennes” de la Nouvelle-Angleterre.
Selon Wilmarth, ses carnets furent retrouvés dans la bibliothèque d’un juge local à Brattleboro en 1908.

🗺 Structure supposée de l’ouvrage

1. Preface — “On the Persistence of Pagan Memories among the Vermont Hills”
2. Chapter I. “Old Indian Tales and the Forgotten Tribes”
3. Chapter II. “The Hill Lights of Grafton and the Strange Music of Windham”
4. Chapter III. “The Black Stone near the Connecticut River”
5. Chapter IV. “Voices Beneath the Ground: The Caves of the Green Mountains”
6. Chapter V. “The Winged Men of the Upper Passumpsic”
7. Appendix A. “Local Charms and Protective Signs”
8. Appendix B. “Fragment of a Hymn to the Star-Dwellers” (possibly pre-colonial)
9.  

🕮 Passages reconstitués

“The light seen upon the ridges near Barton, moving in silence against the wind, is said to mark the path of those who went up to the high places and never returned. Some name them the ‘Silent Ones’. The oldest folk of the valley refuse to speak after sundown, lest they be heard by the hillmen.”
— p. 47

“The small idols of soapstone found near the abandoned farm of Asa Wheeler resemble no Indian totem I have known. Their faces are turned inward, as though listening to the earth.”
— p. 88

“There is talk, too, of a music under the river ice, and of stones that hum when struck by moonlight.”
— p. 93

 

🧩 Notes critiques (ajoutées par Wilmarth, 1929)

• The “Winged Men” and “Star-Dwellers” mentioned by Davenport are of obvious interest to the investigator of the so-called Mi-Go cults of the Vermont uplands.
• Certain symbols reproduced in his Appendix B coincide with glyphs later observed on metallic cylinders recovered after the 1927 floods.
• The surviving copy (Brattleboro Historical Society, Cat. MS-F-D-12) bears on its flyleaf the initials “H.A.W.” — presumably H. Akeley Wilmarth.
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