Is the Jersey Devil fact or folklore? Over hundreds of years, thousands of sightings of a winged creature with the head of a horse or dog and cloven hooves have been reported in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Many people have reported seeing the creature, fantastic though the legends may be.

Descriptions of the Devil vary and include a 'flying lion' or 'an eagle with 4 legs'. The consistant report is that it calls with a combination howl and whistle. It is said to be carniverous.

There are two sides to the story of the Devil, the sightings and the legend. What exactly is the legend? Read on!(You'll have to wait for my next article to find out about the sightings).

The Pine Barrens, originally home to the Lenni Lenape Indians, were 'settled' in 1609. The Lenni Lenape called the Barrens "Popuessing", "place of the dragon." Swedish explorers called it "Drake (dragon) Kill". Seems people saw, and had been seeing, something there. Something somewhat reptilian it seems. But a dragon in South Jersey?

Unfortunately, detailed information about the Lenni Lenape legends relating to the creature is either very obscure or non-existant. (If someone out there knows something about these, please write to me!) So, all we have to go on folklore-wise, (at least at the moment), are later 'explanations' for the devil.

The fact of the matter of the Devil frankly doesn't seem to lie in the legends but in the sightings. The legends are all set in the 1700s and a strange creature had been seen in the pines for some time before that, obviously. The legends seem to report a seperate situation. They may not explain the 'dragon', but they seem to explain something real.

Here's the core story: A woman in the area gave birth, following an unwanted or at least unplanned pregnancy in the mid-1700s. The infant sufferred some kind of deformity. She hid him or her in the attic or basement. The infant grew old enough to leave what little society it knew and forever more terrorizes the countryside.

Keeping children and adults who sufferred from mental or physical impairments out of sight in the family home, (and usually out of the sight of the family) was, unfortunately, the way the mentally and physically handicapped were generally cared for at the time. We find a description of this in 'Jane Erye'. Statesman Patrick Henry kept his mentally ill wife in the basement, for example.

So, this may well be fact to an extent, with the 'escape' of the child perhaps a tale the family created to covered up murder. Or the mother became ill and/or died so the child had to leave the home and forrage for food. It may be that the three main accounts from this period refer to three actual women who all gave birth to handicapped children.

The shared elements of folk stories or songs are often relatively or completely factual, (as reflected by the relatively logical particulars above). Most began as a sort of news story. The surrounding details are elaborations added as it passed from person to person.

In this tale, the variations are as follows:

1. An unnamed Leeds Point woman gave birth to the 'devil' out of wedlock after falling in love with a British soldier during the American Revolution. The child was deformed because God cursed her for her treason act.

2. A Mrs. Shrouds of Leeds Point gave birth to a deformed child and hid it in the attic. The child flew out the chimney during a storm one night and became the Jersey Devil.

3. A Mrs. Leeds of Eastville was involved with a Satanic cult. Pregnant with her 13th child, (an unwelcome addition), she said, "it might just as well be a devil." So the devil it was, born with horns, a tail, wings, and a horse-like head. She presumably abandoned it in the woods but it revisited her daily.

4. The Jersy Devil was born and flew immediately up the chimney to the swamps, cursing it's mother as it went.

5. A 'normal' infant was born but gradually developed horns, wings and hooves. It killed it's whole family then destroyed a Quaker town.

6. Mother Leeds, a Quaker woman from Burlington, NJ, reputed to be a witch gave birth to a 'normal' child. It grew hooves, a horses head, bat wings and a forked tail. It killed everyone in the house then flew up the chimney into the pines.

The transformation is said to have occurred because she either angered a clergyman or a gypsy. In other accounts because God cursed her for practicing sorcery. Other people believe the birth of the devil was punishment for the
mistreatment of a minister by the Leeds folk.

An historian, Alfred Heston, found that A Danial Leeds did in fact live at Leeds Poing in the 1700s. A Samuel Shrouds lived right across the river from him. Another historian, Fred MacFadden, found mentions of the Devil in Burlington writings from the mid-1700s. He pointed out that Burlington referred to a broad area at the time and that Leeds Point, Estelville, and Burlington would all have been the same place.

So, here we have some evidence of something, but it's not likely that we have evidence of the Jersey Devil. Rather, we have evidence of unfortunate children and possibly murderous parents. It also seems a woman dabbled in witchcraft, (a witch trial is actually recorded as held in the area at the time of these accounts) and someone angered a clergyman or gypsy.

So what is the Jersey Devil then, if the legends refer to other things that were simply melded with the accounts of the creature?

I have some ideas, but you've got to wait till the next article.