Blackbeard's Cup and Stories of the Outer Banks
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- 15,99 €
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- 15,99 €
Publisher Description
One August night, two young law students knocked three times on the huge door to Blackbeard's castle, spoke the secret password, and gained admission to a ceremony steeped in local legend. Judge Charles Harry Whedbee was one of those students, and he waited for over fifty years to tell the story of the night he drank from Blackbeard's cup—the legendary silver-plated skull of Blackbeard the Pirate. For centuries, the people of eastern North Carolina have spun tales to explain local phenomena and bizarre happenings. For decades, Judge Whedbee collected and preserved that lore. In Blackbeard's Cup and Stories of the Outer Banks, he once again went to the source and returned with sixteen tales that attest to the rich oral tradition of the coastal area. Why does the stone arch over the entrance to Cedar Grove Cemetery in New Bern drip blood on passing mourners? Who carved the name CORA in the gigantic live oak tree on Hatteras Island? What causes the sound of cannons firing off the coast of Vandemere in the summer? How did the rare creature known as the sea angel come to be? Why did an Edenton doctor spend a fortune searching for buried treasure? These are only a few of the mysteries contained in this fifth collection from North Carolina's beloved raconteur.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
These richly detailed stories set on North Carolina's barrier islands delve into a trove of folklore. The fifth entry in a series on the region ( Legends of the Outer Banks , etc.) presents ghost stories and tall tales narrated in a straightforward manner and enriched with the history and idiom of the area. Whedbee prepares a wry mixture of science and the supernatural in ``The Guns of Vandemere,'' where three unrelated phenomena (loud noises that sound like cannons firing; shellfish rushing toward the shore; a ghostly, swaying light) can either be explained rationally or traced directly to a series of events that caused the pirate Blackbeard's fiancee to die of a broken heart. In ``Horace and the Coinjack Charade'' Whedbee tells, with great humor and delicacy, a wonderfully off-color tale of a mule and a trumpet. Readers should pay particular attention to ``Blackbeard's Cup,'' in which the author recalls his own 1930s visit to Blackbeard's castle, where he drank from a silver cup reputed to be the pirate's skull. The author offers $1000 to anyone who can locate the elusive vessel. Perhaps reading these delightful stories would be reward enough.
