Coming to America 1721

--Note: This content comes from the scripts of an American TV show called  'American Gods'.

It is fine fiction that america was founded by pilgrims seeking freedom to believe as they wished, that they came to americas

to spread and bred and filled the empty land.In truth, the American colonies were as much a dumping ground as an escape, a forgetting place.

In the days when you can hang in a London prison for the theft of 12 pennies,the Americas became a symbol of clemency.

Transportations, it was called.

For 5 years, for 10 years,for life.You were sold to a captain and would ride his ship crowded tight as a slaver's.

off the ship you were sold as an indentured servant to the one who would take the cost of your skin out in your labor.But at least you were not waiting to hang in an English prison.

And when your years of your indenture were complete,you were free to make the best of your new world,of the new world.

I am reminded of the life of Essie MacGowan.

As a young girl,she was not a hard worker,forever slipping off and away to listen to stories and tales,tales of the trouping faeries and the

shape-shifting pucas,of banshees wailing in the night,fortelling a death. and best of all ,tales of leprechauns.

    and when she was no longer a little girl,curved and billowed like the swell of the green sea,it was she who kept alive the old practice.

and she who told the tales.

Intelligence has never been uncommon among women, and beauty is had by all of 17.

But Essie possessed a rare token of ambition. She had paid close attention to the tales. she knew what the moment wanted.

It was all the money she had in the world. There were many silks and lace she coveted,and she was never once full of white bread or syllabud.

But she knew one does not ask favors of a leprechaun without a kindness of gold. --Essie was trying to get help from leprechauns to seduce the big boy.

It was first time for neither,a fact neither felt worth to mention,for this sensation was new to both. --They had sex.

It had been a gift from his grandfather to his grandmother when they had courted,and (the boy) placed it in her hands

with the promise to marry her upon his return at Christmas. -- You are gonna forget all about me? aren't you. the girl asked.

But as essie warned,the fair folk are a fickle lot.

It was easier for the mistress of the house to believe Essie capable of being a theif than seducing her son's affections.

"Did you give this to her freely?" His mother asked.

The answer required was implicit in the question.

"You must hang for this,girl." Said the judge.

Perharps noticing her age or her eyes,he paused."However,as charity breeds charity,I offer an alternative."

Essie was sentenced to 7 years transportation.

She was transported on a ship called the neptune under the command of one captain clark,headed to carolina,where she would serve her sentence.

Though hunger gripped her belly with both hands,she never neglected to leave a small scrumb, for the leprechauns.

As luck would have it,Essie conceived an alliance with the Captain,and prevailed upon him to return her with him to London,where no man knew her.

The journey back,when the human cargo had been exchanged for tobacco,was a happy time for the sea lovers,who were as butterflies courting, in constant contest as to

who could be the most grateful,each insistent their life were saved by the other.

Upon his arrive in London,the captain opened his home to his new bride.

Eight weeks later,the neptune,in its human cargo,replenished,readied to set sail again.

The captain swore to carve the most from the wind , and returned to essie's hands faster than anyman has ever crossed the ocean.

Her world branded Essie MacGowan a theif,so a theif she became.

'Tatanka Ska', a white buffalo,believed sacred by the lokota,was born here on the ranch of Derek Arnold Jr on June 10th,2008.

Thousands came in pilgrimage to see it.

Malice draped in pretty can get away with murder.Essie MacGowan has no incline to murder,but she had long since stopped thinking theft as sin.

Over the following years,Essie became an accomplished shoplifter,her wide skirt capable of concealing a multitude of sins.

Though the work was not honest,she lived by her own labor,and owed thanks to no man.

She saved her thanks for the creatures she had been told of as a child,whose influence,she was certain,extended as far as London.

Unfortunately,the more abundant the blessings ,the more we forget to pray.

"You are charged with returning to transportation and you are charged with theft."

Essie was taken to new gate prison,where it's only a matter of time until she would face the gallows.

The warden of new gate then made three factual statements:

that it would be a good 12 weeks before her case would be heard.

that she was, to his mind, a very pretty thing,

and that there  was a way that she might,luck smiling,escape the gallows yet.

When her turn came,Essie shocked no one by pleading her belly.

The town matrons who assessed such claims, which were usually spurious,were suprised when they were forced to agree.Essie was indeed with child.

Her sentence of death was once more commuted to transportation,this time for life.

In her days ever after,she would have nightmares of her time in that hold.

The sea-Maiden landed at Norfolk in virginia and Essie's indenture was bought by a tobacco farmer named john Richardson.

For his wife had died of fever a week after giving birth to his daughter,he had need of a wet nurse and a maid of all work upon his small holding.

And along with her milk,the children as they grew,drank essie's tales.

She told them all these things, and they believed,because she believed.

Essie told him how shock and hurt she felt. A poor widow woman to be asked to prostitute herself for a man whom she had so much respect for.

An indentured servant could not marry, so how could he think to torment an ill-starred transportee girl,she could not fathom.

John Richardson found himself going down on one knee, and proposing an end to her indenture.

Until he had taken her hand in marriage,Essie did not so much as kiss Master Richardson.

But when he did, she did.And from that day on ,she called him john.

They called their son the same.

And when the children went off to school to learn their letters,Essie made sure each one of them to carry a little salt in one pocket,a little bread in the other,

to make sure they came safely home once more.They always did.

John Richardson loved her kindly.

They had been married a decade when Essie swore she heard a banshee keen in the night.

A week later,the fever carried him off.

There were good days,and there were bad in the usual balance,but they were many.

The farm flourished under the eye of the widow Richardson,as she was ever after known,when not 'Mum', or in time,"Gran".

There seemed no room for the spirits of old in virginia,so Essie no longer told her tales.

She kept them in her heart, where they warmed her like her father's stew on a chill night in Bantry Bay a lifetime ago.

She was still warm when they found her,although the life had fled her body,and only half the apple was peeled.