#19 Malpeque Miser:PEI Legends and Lore series Traditional Cache
Olewaif: Out and about retrieving/archiving caches in the area today. The process continues .
#19 Malpeque Miser:PEI Legends and Lore series
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Camoed pill bottle
"They have tales ." Oh yes they do ! P.E. Islanders love to share tales and there is no shortage of yarns both short and tall to tell. The history of this tiny island is replete with strange occurrences and each seems to spawn one or more explanations to account for them. Ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night are commonplace in this lore. The stranger the actual events the more detailed the often supernatural story around it. Some of these tales go back centuries. Loss and gain, treasure, triumph, disaster, birth, life and death all feature prominently. Not many who live here doubt the existence of spirits and ' haunts' , nor the places they can be found. Forerunners, omens of all kinds, even Satan himself often show up in these accounts.
I have lived here too long to dismiss all these tales as fiction, nor the beliefs that they encompass. I know too many perfectly sober honest people who have had ' strange ' experiences to doubt the veracity of what they say happened.
This series contains a variety of such tales I gleaned from several Island folklore books, old newspaper articles, a few first-person accounts and even an on-line site or two. None are original to me and I certainly wish to thank all those who gathered the stories. I have tried to place the caches in the communities and, if possible, on or close to the exact sites of the described events. For some of these stories you would NOT find me at the exact site late at night. Not a chance. I hope you enjoy both the story and the going to where it happened !
# 19 : The Malpeque Miser:
Isaac ' Shylock ' Barrett was a master at amassing money. Since he was 25 year old he bought and sold fishing vessels and he spent as little as he could of his wealth to keep alive. By age 40 he was richer and meaner. His wife, a delicate woman is said to have died for lack of medical care and proper nutrition. To save the expense of a funeral the miser made her a rough casket with his own hands and had her buried in an unmarked grave in a pioneer graveyard.
Childless the rich but mean Barrett moved to Malpeque where he became a money lender, charging clients exhorbitant rates and squeezing the very soul out of anyone who missed or was late with a payment. As the years went by he became richer and richer and became more and more detested by all who lived in the area. he lived in a mean shack with no light nor heat... he called them needless luxuries.
peopel who borrowed from Shylock Barrett lived to regret it for he always skinned them in the end, often foreclosing on their properties for the slightest reasons.. he grew richer and richer....
He dressed in rags and was known to subsist on mush, beans, cold water and stale bread. Come night he would sit in his dreary hovel, his thoughts always on how to acquire more money.
Then came the mice plagues. there were three of those with the last and worst in the spring of 1738. Huge numbers of very large mice descended on the communities from the forest eating everything in their paths. The crop destruction was so devastating that many settlers would have starved to death but for the kindness of people from Nova Scotia who sent help to their PEI brethren.
Miser Barret had laod up a great storehosue of food when he saw the impending plague but he refused to give or even sell any of it to his starving neighbours... then the mice found his house. Hordes of mice descended on his shack anfd invaded in overwhelming numbers.... when they left the food was gone and left was the half-eaten body of miser Barrett.
It is said that no tears were shed over his horrible end with everyone feeling he had got what he deserved.
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(Decrypt)
5' hc RT
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