Ol' Ralph Southerland

Feb 5, 2001 - © Virginia Marin

Folklore Table of Contents

Not everyone who came to America was able to pay for their passage. It became customary, therefore, to indebted one's self, and a family if need be, to a master for servitude in his household, in return for a ship's fare to the new world. This is fact. But is this story of one evil bondsman and his eventual demise fact, or is he merely a legendary character whose life became a legend?

The story is told of one Ralph Sutherland, who in the early 1700's was a lonely and quite horrible bondsman to a young Scottish lass. Now, this lass, being totally indebted to him for payment of her passage to America, was no more than a slave. She was poorly fed, received no pay, enjoyed no amenities, and was required to bed at night with the chickens and livestock.

One day, the girl determined to run away. Early one morning, before her evil master had awakened, she slipped off through the woods of the Catskills, hoping never to see his stone house again. But she was not destined to enjoy her short lived freedom.

The cruel master set off in a raging chase. The girl had not gone far before Sutherland overtook her. He tied her wrists to his horse's tail and began the journey home.

In a fit of rage, and wanting to punish her severely, he set his horse to a trot, dragging the poor screaming lass behind. Over rocks and sticks they moved onward. In his inhuman desire to punish her, Sutherland was oblivious to the cessation of the girl's screaming.

Reaching home, he untied her wrist from the horse's tail, whereupon her limp body fell lifelessly to the ground.

Sutherland was arrested, tried, and sentenced to die on the scaffold, but due to circumstantial evidence, and a few influential relatives, his sentence was delayed until he reached the age of ninety-nine. Until that birthday, he was ordered to keep a hangman's noose around his neck and present himself before a judge in Catskill once every year.

Wherever he went, he was observed with the knot around his neck. Children made jokes of him and he was generally shunned by all of the residents. During the ensuing years, he remained a loner, speaking to no one.

The townsfolk avoided his house after dark, for gossip was passed that a shrieking woman passed it nightly, tied to the tail of a great black horse with fiery eyes and smoking nostrils. Others were firm in their belief that a skeleton wearing a white garment inhabited the stone house with Sutherland. Some townsfolk reported that they had seen a woman sitting on his garden wall with fingertips of shining lights and uttering unearthly laughter.

The copyright of the article Ol' Ralph Southerland in Folklore is owned by Virginia Marin. Permission to republish Ol' Ralph Southerland in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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