Aglebemu

The brook had always been good water, cold and clear off the mountains, and the village had grown a little proud of it. Then one autumn it began to shrink. Not in the heat of summer, when a stream has its excuse, but in the wet months after the rains, when it had no business failing at all. Day by day the channel sank lower, until the bed lay dry as a bone left in the ashes of a fire. There was no spring anywhere in that country, no second source to fall back on. People stood at the edge of the dust and waited for water that did not come.

Far upstream, past three days of walking, the trouble had a shape. A man sent to find the cause came to a dam thrown across the rivulet, holding the whole flow in a still pond, and behind it, half sunk in the mud, the thing that had built it. It wore a human form and was no man. It was enormous and bloated, fat in the way of something that has swallowed more than it should, with a mouth that ran nearly ear to ear and great yellow eyes that pushed out of its head like the knots in a pine log. Its feet were broad and skinny, the toes long past reason. When the messenger begged for water for his dying people, the creature only croaked, then bellowed a slow refrain about doing as you please and going somewhere else. To be rid of him it bored a single hole in the dam with an arrow, let a thread of water trickle through, and told him to be gone.

This was Aglebemu, though the people suffering under him had harder names for the misery. One old Passamaquoddy storyteller called him Hahk-lee-be-mo. In the dry language of later writers he became Mitche-hant, the evil creature, a label loose enough to cover almost any monster, and Kci Cekolhs, which says only what he plainly was: the giant frog. He belonged to the Wabanaki country of the far northeast, to the Penobscot and the Maliseet and the Passamaquoddy who still carry his story, and the river he stole was usually named as the St. John or the Penobscot. The versions argue over which water it was, and over whether his frog-shape came at the beginning or only at the end.

Into this walked Glooskap, who knew what passed in the hearts of men and beasts and arrived the way wind arrives, with no one able to say how. He came looking deliberately terrible. Ten feet tall, a hundred red and black feathers in his scalp-lock, his face painted the color of fresh blood with green rings around the eyes, a clam-shell swinging from each ear, and a spread eagle flapping at the back of his neck. The villagers, honest and simple people, took him for the devil himself turned Wabanaki and admired him enormously. He heard the whole story, told them to take heart, and started up the dry bed of the brook toward the town that was hoarding their water.

There he asked a boy for a drink and was told that no water was given out except by the chief. He sat on a log and smoked his pipe for the better part of an hour before half a cup of filthy water arrived. That was enough. He went to the monster, called him a thing of mud, and demanded the best water at once. The creature told him to find water where he could. So Glooskap drove a spear into its belly, and a whole river burst out of the wound, all the water that should have been running in the brook the entire time, because Aglebemu had not so much drunk the river as become it. Then Glooskap rose high as a standing pine, caught the frog up in one hand, and crushed its back with a single grip before flinging it into the current to go downstream with the flood. The bullfrog has carried the wrinkles of that squeeze in its lower back ever since.

What happened in the village while he was away is the part the Maliseet sometimes leave off, ending instead with the plain return of the water. The older Passamaquoddy telling keeps a stranger coda. The men, idle and parched, had been passing the time with the game of saying what each would wish for, and the talk had turned to water. One wanted to live forever in soft cool mud. One wanted to dive headlong off the rocks into the deep. One wanted to be rolled gently up and down on the waves. One wanted to swim and never leave the water at all. They happened to speak in the single hour of the world when every wish a man makes comes true. So the first became a leech, the second a spotted frog, the third a crab that the tide drags back and forth, and the fourth a fish. Before that hour there had been no creatures living in the water anywhere. The river came roaring down and swept them all toward the sea, to be carried out into every land.

The tale was written down by Silas Rand and by Charles Leland in the nineteenth century, from narrators like Tomah Josephs, and one reading that traveled with it holds that Aglebemu is not a beast that drank a stream but the stream itself made flesh. The frozen river of winter, in that reading, locked and motionless, with Glooskap’s spear standing in for the spear of the sun that finally breaks the ice and sets the water moving again.

His power was simple and total: he could take an entire river into his own body and hold a whole country to ransom with thirst. By damming the flow at its one source he made everything his victims tried downstream useless, since there was nothing left to divert or beg for. He could sit in his mud and answer suffering with a song, untroubled, because he occupied the only place that mattered. That was also exactly the shape of his ruin. A creature that keeps everything in one place has put everything in one place. The spear found the swollen belly where the river was stored, and the hoard turned at once into the flood that washed him out of his own kingdom. He was strong only for as long as no one strong enough came up the riverbed. One did.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Aglebemu?

Aglebemu is a giant frog monster from the legends of the Wabanaki peoples of the northeastern woodlands, including the Penobscot, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy. He dams a great river at its source and swallows its water into his own bloated body, causing a drought that nearly kills the village downstream.

How was Aglebemu defeated?

Aglebemu was defeated by the culture hero Glooskap. After the monster refused him water, Glooskap drove a spear into its belly, releasing the whole river that had been trapped inside, then grew to the height of a pine, seized the creature, and crushed its back before throwing it into the current.

Which river did Aglebemu dam up?

The river is usually named as the St. John River or the Penobscot River, depending on which Wabanaki community is telling the story. In every version Aglebemu builds a dam far upstream, where the people suffering the drought cannot reach it, and hoards the water in a still pond behind it.

Why does the bullfrog have a wrinkled back?

In the legend, the bullfrog’s wrinkled lower back is the mark left by Glooskap’s grip. When Glooskap crushed Aglebemu in one hand and transformed him into a bullfrog, the squeeze permanently creased his back, and the legend says every bullfrog has carried those wrinkles since.

Where did the first water animals come from in the Aglebemu story?

In the Passamaquoddy version, the first water animals were created when Aglebemu’s victims made wishes during the one hour of the world when all wishes come true. Each man who wished for a life in the water became a leech, a spotted frog, a crab, or a fish, and the returning river swept them all toward the sea.

Related Entries

Gluskabe, Chenoo, Azeban, Atshen, Alom-bag-winno-sis, Mateguas, A-senee-ki-wakw, Pamola, Chepi, Jipijka’m, Gichi-anami’e-bizhiw, Horned Serpent, Haietlik, Akhlut