Folklore
Howe's Masquerade
During the siege of Boston Sir William Howe undertook to show his contempt for the raw fellows who were disrespectfully tossing cannon-balls at him from the batteries in Cambridge and South Boston, by giving a masquerade. It was a brilliant affair, the belles and blades of the…
Work
- Type
- folk narrative
- Creator
- Charles M. Skinner
- Created, as stated
- 1896
The tale
During the siege of Boston Sir William Howe undertook to show his contempt for the raw fellows who were disrespectfully tossing cannon-balls at him from the batteries in Cambridge and South Boston, by giving a masquerade. It was a brilliant affair, the belles and blades of the loyalist set being present, some in the garb of their ancestors, for the past is ever more picturesque than the present, and a few roisterers caricaturing the American generals in ragged clothes, false noses, and absurd wigs. At the height of the merriment a sound of a dirge echoing through the streets caused the dance to stop. The funeral music paused before the doors of Province House, where the dance was going on, and they were flung open. Muffled drums marked time for a company that began to file down the great stair from the floor above the ball-room: dark men in steeple-hats and pointed beards, with Bibles, swords, and scrolls, who looked sternly at the guests and descended to the street. Colonel Joliffe, a Whig, whose age and infirmity had prevented him from joining Washington, and whose courtesy and intelligence had made him respected by his foes, acted as chorus: “These I take to be the Puritan…
- Narrative type
- place legend
- The printing this telling comes from
- Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896) (1896)
- First attestation in print
- 1886 — the earliest printing the archive holds. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-told Tales (1886) — the earliest printing of this tale the archive holds
The attestation
This archive holds a printing of this tale older than the collection its own telling comes from, and the passage below is the tale where it stands in that older volume. It is the earliest printing the archive HOLDS — not a claim about the earliest that exists.
Britain in this ancient province is at its last HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 289 gasp to-niglit ; — almost while I speak it is a dead eoi-jise ; — and methinks the shadows of the old gov- ernors are fit mourners at its fimeral ! " AVith these words Colonel Joliffe threw on his cloak, and dravsing his granddaughter's arm within his own. retii'ed from the last festival that a British ruler ever held in the old province of Massachusetts Bay. It was supposed that the Colonel and the youn^ lady possessed some secret intelligence in regard to the mysterious pageant of that night. Howev
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-told Tales (1886) — the earliest printing of this tale the archive holds · the document, as the archive holds it
Tellings
A tale told several ways is one record and several tellings. Each is given whole, with its teller named — or recorded as unattributed where the collector left them unnamed, which is itself a fact about the collection.
As printed in Charles M. Skinner (1896)
Told by unattributed — the collector names no informant · collected by Charles M. Skinner · 1896
During the siege of Boston Sir William Howe undertook to show his contempt for the raw fellows who were disrespectfully tossing cannon-balls at him from the batteries in Cambridge and South Boston, by giving a masquerade. It was a brilliant affair, the belles and blades of the loyalist set being present, some in the garb of their ancestors, for the past is ever more picturesque than the present, and a few roisterers caricaturing the American generals in ragged clothes, false noses, and absurd wigs. At the height of the merriment a sound of a dirge echoing through the streets caused the dance to stop. The funeral music paused before the doors of Province House, where the dance was going on, and they were flung open. Muffled drums marked time for a company that began to file down the great stair from the floor above the ball-room: dark men in steeple-hats and pointed beards, with Bibles, swords, and scrolls, who looked sternly at the guests and descended to the street. Colonel Joliffe, a Whig, whose age and infirmity had prevented him from joining Washington, and whose courtesy and intelligence had made him respected by his foes, acted as chorus: “These I take to be the Puritan governors of Massachusetts: Endicott, Winthrop, Vane, Dudley, Haynes, Bellingham, Leverett, Bradstreet.” Then came a rude soldier, mailed, begirt with arms: the tyrant Andros; a brown-faced man with a sailor's gait: Sir William Phipps; a courtier wigged and jewelled: Earl Bellomont; the crafty, well-mannered Dudley; the twinkling, red-nosed Shute; the ponderous Burnet; the gouty Belcher; Shirley, Pownall, Bernard, Hutchinson; then a soldier, whose cocked hat he held before his face. “'Tis the shape of Gage!” cried an officer, turning pale. The lights were dull and an uncomfortable silence had fallen on the company. Last, came a tall man muffled in a military cloak, and as he paused on the landing the guests looked from him to their host in amazement, for it was the figure of Howe himself. The governor's patience was at an end, for this was a part of the masquerade that had not been looked for. He fiercely cried to Joliffe, “There is a plot in this. Your head has stood too long on a traitor's shoulders.” “Make haste to cut it off, then,” was the reply, “for the power of Sir William Howe and of the king, his master, is at an end. These shadows are mourners at his funeral. Look! The last of the governors.” Howe rushed with drawn sword on the figure of himself, when it turned and looked at him. The blade clanged to the floor and Howe fell back with a gasp of horror, for the face was his own. Hand nor voice was raised to stay the double-goer as it mournfully passed on. At the threshold it stamped its foot and shook its fists in air; then the door closed. Mingled with the strains of the funeral march, as it died along the empty streets, came the tolling of the bell on South Church steeple, striking the hour of midnight. The festivities were at an end and, oppressed by a nameless fear, the spectators of this strange pageant made ready for departure; but before they left the booming of cannon at the southward announced that Washington had advanced. The glories of Province House were over. When the last of the royal governors left it he paused on the threshold, beat his foot on the stone, and flung up his hands in an attitude of grief and rage.
Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)
Questions this record answers
Each answer is composed only from fields this record carries, and names the attestation for what it says. A question the record cannot answer from its own attested content is not asked here. Where a boundary is described as official it was promulgated by an authority with the power to draw it and is not amended by anything on the vernacular layer; where it is described as vernacular it is held by attestation alone and amends no official boundary.
In which printing does the archive hold Howe's Masquerade?
Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896) The printing is dated 1896. This is the printing this archive's own telling was lifted from, and the archive can hand over the volume. It is not a claim that the tale was first printed there.
Attested by: Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)
When was Howe's Masquerade first attested in print?
1886, in Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-told Tales (1886) — the earliest printing of this tale the archive holds — which is the earliest printing of this tale the archive HOLDS, and older than the collection its own telling comes from. It is not a claim about the earliest printing that exists; it is a claim about a volume the archive can hand over.
Attested by: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-told Tales (1886) — the earliest printing of this tale the archive holds
How many tellings of Howe's Masquerade does the archive hold?
One telling: As printed in Charles M. Skinner (1896) (unattributed — the collector names no informant). A tale told several ways is one record and several tellings, each given whole with its teller named — or recorded as unattributed where the collector left them unnamed, which is itself a fact about the collection.
Attested by: Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)
Who collected Howe's Masquerade?
Charles M. Skinner. The archive records the collector separately from the teller, because who wrote a tale down and who told it are different facts and collapsing them destroys both.
Attested by: Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)
What does the archive hold for Howe's Masquerade, and under what license?
The Boston Archive holds this record of Howe's Masquerade from Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Public domain — published before 1929 (public domain). 7 recorded transforms stand between the retrieved bytes and this record. Attribution is due to Charles M. Skinner.
Attested by: Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Public domain — published before 1929.
Related records
- documents — Myths and Legends of Our Own Land
Identity
- Identifier
- urn:lemay:boston:entity:howe-s-masquerade
- Canonical URL
- https://boston.fyi/work/howe-s-masquerade
- As JSON
- https://boston.fyi/work/howe-s-masquerade.json
- Version
- 2 · last changed 3 September 2026
Provenance
- Source
- Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896) — source of record
- License
- Public domain — published before 1929 (public_domain)
- Retrieved
- 2 September 2026
- Source identifier
- HOWE'S MASQUERADE
- Attribution
- Charles M. Skinner
- Rights as stated
- Published 1896 and in the public domain in the United States.
Transform ladder
| # | Operation | Description | Tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fetch | retrieved the full text of the collection from its public-domain holding institution | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 2 | segment | split the volume into chapters at its own printed headings; the first occurrence of a heading opens the chapter and later occurrences are the running header, which is discarded | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 3 | corroborate | matched each heading against the book's own table of contents and took the index's spelling as the title; a heading the index does not carry was refused as a caption, a byline, or scanner noise | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 4 | filter | retained the chapters that name a Boston-area place, by the tale's own words | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 5 | normalize | collapsed the scan's line breaks; not one word of the telling was altered, added, or removed | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 6 | withdraw-unattested-setting | The setting recorded on this tale — "Boston and eastern Massachusetts" — is the same string carried by every folklore record in this archive. It is the scope of the collections these tales were drawn from, applied at accession, and not a setting read out of this tale by anyone. It was being served as the source's own wording, which it is not, and on a dozen records the tale printed beside it refuted it. The field is cleared rather than reworded: the archive does not hold a per-tale setting and will not imply one. | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 7 | withdraw-unattested-collection-place | The collection place recorded on every telling of this tale — "Boston and eastern Massachusetts" — is the same string carried by every telling in this archive. These tales were compiled from print, not collected from informants in a place, and the field asserted a collection event that did not happen. It is cleared: the teller field already records, correctly, that the collector named no informant, and an absence stated is worth more than a constant that hides it. | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |