Rum Keg Dolly
from Winnipesaukee Whoppers, by Elizabeth Crawford Wilkin
Illustrated by Lloyd Coe
Maybe you wonder why the islands off Meredith Neck (if you've ever seen or heard of them) are called "Aunt Dolly's," and why the near tip of Bear Island is called "Aunt Dolly's Point."
Well, if you'd been a fisherman in the 1800's (or a fisherman's wife waiting for her man at home) you'd have known all right, for Aunt Dolly Nichols ran The Fishermen's Haven on Bear Island. Aside from the attractions of well-cooked food and even better rum, there was Aunt Dolly herself, and her willingness to listen to (and believe) any fish story they cared to tell her, and she could tell a good few herself.
She liked to tell about the night a dozen fishermen took refuge from a storm at her place when she hadn't enough food to soften their rum to feed a kitten. While she was despairing over her empty larder the lake spit and splashed at her back door in the pounding wind, and finally knocked. This was too much for Aunt Dolly. She opened up, and there on her rocky backyard were fish a-plenty, thrown there by the gale.
Then there was the time her old man lost his underpants, and later how she got them patched up fit to wear after she had found them in the "stummicks" of a pair of cusks. It may be she got these cusks mixed up with a goat or two, but no one ever questioned Aunt Dolly's tales. They wanted her to believe their own.
For a small woman she had amazing strength, and often when the Haven's rum supply was low she would row down to The Weirs for a keg. Slinging it single-handed on to her shoulder she would tote it to the wharf where she would remove the bung before an admiring company for a good swig prior to loading, and on arrival at Bear Island she usually repeated the performance for good luck.
She ran the first ferry service on the lake; she used a scull and plied between Bear Island and Meredith Neck.
One evening early in May, according to her best story, when the salmon fishing was at its height and the moon was full, Aunt Dolly was bringing her ferry back alone from the mainland.
Halfway across the passage she saw, in the moon's path, a salmon as big as a dray horse break water just in front of the scull. So she stopped and threw out a line baited with a dead mouse she'd seen lying under the rum keg.
Before she could flick an eye the salmon had struck.
Afterward she said that although it may have been as big as only one horse it had the strength of a dozen, for it started pulling her and her ferry off their course.
With all her lake-renowned strength she held on until her stummick muscles were sore and quivering, but the fish didn't weary. It towed her all the way around Bear Island once and back again, and took two side loops around Birch and Jolly Islands as well.
Along about midnight after they had passed her point for the second time Aunt Dolly was about ready to give in.
"Where are you taking me, and what do you want?" she called out, for she was pretty sure by that time that it was no fish on her hook, but some fiend of Satan.
For the first time in hours, she felt the line go slack, and presently the big fish swam back and came to the surface. She said it had the face of an old hag with long strands of stringy hair and no teeth to speak of.
"Who are you? Go away!" she shrieked at sight of the horrid creature, and in her terror foolishly threw her scull at it.
The "thing" edged closer and Aunt Dolly retreated to the furtherest edge of the ferry.
"I'm the Spirit of Fishermen's Wives," it said. "Wives who have waited at home."
"All right and then what?" called Aunt Dolly but her voice didn't sound like her own.
"Are you ready to strike a bargain?" the creature asked.
"I'm ready to go home," she retorted. "It's cold out here, and a lot of your husbands will soon be waiting for the smell of my coffee and beans and a noggin of rum
That's just the point," the "thing" replied. I’ll agree to tow you home if you'll promise not to serve Rum at The Haven in future."
Aunt Dolly hesitated. She was cold, hungry and tired; she wanted to go home, but The Haven was her livelihood and it couldn't exist without the sale of rum.
"Well," countered Aunt Dolly, "that's sort of sudden-like. Let me shut an eye and think it over."
After a minute the "thing" spat out the dead mouse into the lake with which the salmon hook had been baited, pulled its huge flabby bulk up on to the gunwale of the ferry, and said, "That's fair enough. I'm tired myself, and wouldn't mind a little snooze."
As soon as Aunt Dolly heard it snoring she threw off her hoop and all the other things she didn't need, and swam ashore.
The next morning her old man found the ferry beached at the far end of Bear Island, but in spite of her story the dead mouse was still there under the rum keg.
