John Onion and the Devil

The following tale has been told by the Narragansett for more than 200 years and is their most popular legend...

A young man christened John Onion lived near Cocumpaug Pond (which was sometimes called Schoolhouse Pond), in the heart of Narragansett country. He was the oldest of four children. His father was a white man, also named John Onion, and his mother, Deborah, was a Narragansett.

Young John lived to ice skate. From the moment winter froze the ice thick enough on the pond, the boy would go racing across the white expanse, testing his speed or cutting fancy figures. Often he challenged the other young men to races. Many accepted, but John outskated them all. He grew so boastful that one day a Narragansett man said, “You think you’re pretty good, don’t you?”

“I know I am.” John laughed and added, “I could skate rings around Old Nick himself!”

“Make fun of the devil,” the man warned him, “and you might find he’ll have the laugh on you.”

After this, the other boys steered clear of John, as if they were afraid that his devil-may-care cockiness might bring them all bad luck. Soon he had no one to race against.

“They’re just bad sports,” John told himself, “because they know I can beat every one of them.”

He continued to skate alone, building his speed until he could whip across the frozen pond faster than lightning.

One clear, cold night, he went by himself to the pond. He put on his skates and began gliding faster and faster across the moonlit stretch of ice.

“The devil himself couldn’t catch me!” he shouted to the sky.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye he saw a small, shadowy figure, matching him stride for stride — skating backward or cross-toed in front of John, going him one better at every turn.

John wondered who this expert skater was. He knew that none of the boys in the neighborhood could keep up with him. John spun around, trying to see the fellow’s face. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make out the shadowy, speed-blurred figure who paced him move for move. He called, “Who are you?” But the stranger refused to answer. He swept past John, leaving a soft laugh and a shower of ice in his wake.

Angry at being mocked, John pushed himself to his fastest speed ever.

The moon slipped behind a cloud. The figure that had been skating first on this side, then on that side of John suddenly put on his own burst of speed and flew ahead. Turning around and skating backward, the stranger faced the boy. Two red eyes blazed in the dark head.

When the moon emerged from the clouds a moment later, John saw, to his horror, that his challenger had horns and a pointed tail that lashed back and forth. Sparks flew from the challenger’s skates.

The boy shivered, remembering his boasts about beating the devil.

In fright, he veered suddenly toward the shore, but the shadowy figure circled him once, twice, a third time, and then vanished, leaving only a lingering smell of brimstone in the air.

John hurtled forward, tumbling into a snowdrift on the shore. Not pausing to take off his skates, he charged up the bank and into the woods. He didn’t dare to look back or slow his breakneck pace until he had reached his cabin home, slammed the door, and tumbled onto the floor in front of his astonished family.

It was days before he dared to tell his story, for fear that just mentioning the devil might bring Old Nick back. It was a lot longer before John went skating again. But he never went alone; he always left the pond at sunset; and no one heard him boasting after that.

Old Nick is a nickname for the devil.