Legend of Deb's Hill
Reprinted from Cape Cod Magazine, 1915, by Mary M. Bray
Deb was by no means a myth– scarcely a tradition. She was a very real personage. Her doings and sayings are, however, somewhat traditional, since they have come orally to this generation from a preceding one.
At some period in her life, Deb had, doubtless, a surname, but if so, it had dropped away from her in the obscurity of her past. In this, however, she was scarcely worse off than are some royal personages that one hears of, though they, to be sure, make up for the latter deficiency by a superfluity of individual names, while Deb was known only by this three-lettered contraction.
Deb was tall and muscular, a woman of the Meg Merrilies type. She had not, perhaps, quite so much the air off a prophetess, judging from the reports that still linger in the vicinity of her haunts, but we cannot say what she might have been made to appear, under the transforming imagination of Scott.
She had, or pretended to have, similar gifts. If you crossed her palm with a bit of silver, she would trace wonderful fortunes on your own. She shuffled cards with a mysterious air, as though some occult force controlled the combinations and she gazed at the floating tea leaves in the bottom of a cup with the eye of a seeress.
She lived in a small hut of one story, situated on a pine-crowned hill, about two miles from the village. The smallness of the hut seemed to accentuate her size. Her head reached nearly to the unceiled roof; her presence appeared to pervade the whole building.
The front room into which one entered directly from the outside was her living room. It had two small windows and a fireplace. There she, presumably, cooked, ate and slept.
Back of it was a smaller room, scarcely more than a closet. About this hung an air of mystery. She seldom allowed anyone but herself to enter it, yet she made frequent trips into it and back again for no apparent purpose. She may have used it for a store room if she ever had any stores to put in it, which is doubtful. Or it may have been connected in some way with her spells and divinations, like the dark cabinets of the seances.
Deb’s nationality was a problem. That she had some Indian blood in her veins was certain. There were unmistakable evidences of this in her tall, straight figure, her deep-set eyes and the copper-colored tint of her skin. Tradition said that she was also of gypsy origin, because she was given to long periods of wandering. She would now and then be missed for days– even weeks. She gave no hint of her going, nor of her destination or object. She simply put two nails over her door latch to indicate her absence. And such was her awesome reputation that these were never withdrawn, nor her hut invaded, even by mischievous boys.
During the warm weather, Deb often came to the village with bunches of herbs and baskets of berries, beach plums and wild grapes in their respective seasons. These she offered for sale at rather variable prices, according to her mood of the moment. In the winter, she lived chiefly upon divination and charity.
So homogeneous was the population of the Cape in those days– that people leaving their homes for a few hours seldom locked their doors.
It would happen now and then that a housekeeper, coming back from an entertainment, or a friendly call upon a neighbor, would find that her pantry had been invaded during her absence.
If she found flour and ginger scattered about and her molasses jug, milk pitcher and yeast bottle lacking a part of their contents, she at once surmised that Deb had been there, and had been making bread or gingerbread to take home with her.
People were neighborly in those days, and nobody protested against this habit. Deb was never known to take anything else that did not belong to her. She would have scorned to steal! But to make for herself needed food, in any convenient household, she seemed to regard it as a right.
Deb long ago disappeared from the haunts of men. When, where or how her exit from earth took place, neither history nor tradition has said.
No vestige of her hut is left. But the hill remains, bearing its crown of pines as of yore, and it is still known as “Deb’s Hill.”