The Legend of the Siren of the French Broad River
Alluring Cherokee Cryptid or Just a Bunch of Babble?
Location: Asheville, North Carolina
Both a well-known and seemingly obscure legend, the Siren of the French Broad River is considered a Cherokee legend and has been making the rounds with non-Cherokee locals since 1845.
Watch my research process and wrap-up videos here.
The Lore
Along the French Broad River, just east of Asheville, NC, weary male travelers have reported hearing a beautiful song and seeing a woman beckoning them from the water. If they are not careful, they fall into her arms and are pulled under the waters of the river, never to be seen again. In some tellings, the man falls victim immediately while in others, the siren visits him in his dreams over the course of 3 nights before luring him into the icy waters of the river.
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| Aleksandra Waliszewska. 2011. Gouache on paper. |
First Written Telling
William Gilmore Simms was the first to publish the story of the siren, "The Syren of Tselica; A Tradition of the French Broad," back in 1845. According to him, this story comes from the Cherokee, who lived locally. He wrote his poem retelling the legend and included it in his book, Poems. Descriptive, Dramatic, Legendary, and Contemplative. This version has a traveler who is not only weary from his journey but life itself, finding himself at the rushing river's edge. He lies down next to the bank and begs for death. He then hears the siren singing to him and with a renewed *ahem* spirit, he races to join her. Too late he realizes he is in the river and being pulled under. Unable to escape, the traveler drowns, never to be seen again. The death he longed for only a short time before has finally found him.
Second Written Telling
Charles Montgomery Skinner was the first to equate our siren with the Lorelei legend in Germany.
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That's right, this siren is less like the Greek myth and more like a German one I've never heard of before this post. So let's side-quest for a second and learn about Lorelei.
Lorelei (AKA Loreley AKA Lore Lay) was a beautiful maiden who was betrayed by a lover and accused of bewitching men and causing their deaths. She was sentenced to the nun life and on the way to the nunnery, asks the 3 knights guarding her if she can stand on a tall rock to view the Rhine one more time and, well I think we all know where this is headed. Straight down into the river. Thinking she sees her lover in the river, she falls to her death. Now, the rocks still echo her name and have inspired siren tales of a beautiful woman luring men to shipwreck deaths in the river. (The siren sound is actually a combination of the heavy currents and the nearby waterfall. And boats are often finding trouble on the rocky edge of the cliff Lorelei fell from.)
Alright, back to Asheville and our Lorelei (wait... Simms's middle name was Gilmore... Do you think our siren is related to the fictional coffee lover Lorelei Gilmore??? OK, I'm done, I promise.)
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Skinner's telling is nothing more than a two-paragraph, stripped-down retelling of Simms's poem. With the exception of equating this myth with the German one, Skinner provides us with no new information, just fewer tongue tanglers, and who likes that? Not the Lily. 😉
Personal Account
I only found one personal account online of the siren. And it's not so much an account of seeing the siren as just potentially seeing a victim claimed. Taking place in the summer of 2011, Guard (name provided with their telling) was 15 at the time and had snuck out with their girlfriend to camp by the river. Guard ventures outside their tent around 3am to pee (I can relate) and sees a man on the other bank. This man is staring at the water before walking into the river and eventually diving in, never to resurface. Guard has since had a recurring dream about wading into the water, looking down, and seeing a woman's silhouette and crippling thalassophobia or fear of deep bodies of water. This account was shared in 2019, and Guard admitted that they sought therapy in 2018 and were on PTSD meds which kept the dreams away but did not help their phobia. The time from their experience to telling was 8 years.
Content Worth Listening To
In my research, I didn't find much in the way of YouTube rabbit holes, but I did find two podcasts and one YouTube video worth sharing.
MountainLore may be my new favorite podcast to listen to. Not only do I love the name, but I could listen to Steve Gilly talk all day long. He has one of the coziest warm blanket voices I have ever heard. That being said, his bite-sized lore pods are perfect for learning all about the "tales of Appalachia" and his episode "The Siren Of The French Broad River" is worth 7 minutes of your time.
Likewise, The Carolina Haints Podcast did their own episode featuring our siren myth. This one starts with another legend but at under 14 minutes, it's a fun listen overall.
Over on the YouTubes, I spotted this little quick retelling mixed with Guard's experience:
There really isn't much difference between any of these as the lore is sparse, but I like to share my audio and video finds with the class.
The Facts
French Broad River
The French Broad River is said to be the third oldest river in the world and has been flowing for around 250 million years. It is part of the Mississippi Watershed and flows through North Carolina from just before the South Carolina border and into Tennessee. One of the few north-flowing rivers, it flows for 218 miles between North Carolina and Tennessee. Like most rivers, it has points of rapids/rushing waters and areas of calm currents. The Cherokee may or may not have called all or some of the river or watershed "Agiqua" meaning "Long Man." As I mention below, verifying Cherokee names for bodies of water and the areas they are located proved to be less than easy.
Racing Waters or Whispering Waters?
Getting a direct translation from Cherokee to English is not as easy as say Spanish to English. In trying to find the area named in the legend, I have found "Tahkeeosteh" (also may be spelled "Tahkieostie") means "racing waters" and "Tselica" (also may be spelled "Tzelica") means "sparkling waters" or "whispering waters." I attempted to verify these translations with a couple of Cherokee-to-English translators but was unsuccessful. The Cherokee didn't so much name rivers as they did areas, so Simms stating the French Broad was named "Tselica" as a whole, is inaccurate. Instead, they would have named a portion of the river and the surrounding area. Which area exactly were they talking about in detail for this legend? That seems to be lost in translation.
Documented Cherokee Legends
Since I was unable to verify even one of three Cherokee names for the French Broad River, I did attempt to see if there was any mention of a siren-like story in Cherokee mythology. I could not find one. There is mention of a large fish creature or däkwä' said to live in the French Broad River about 30 miles south of Asheville in Madison County, but nothing about a singing spirit or creature or the like. This doesn't mean the legend did not originate with the Cherokee, it just means I couldn't find anything online or in the few Cherokee legends I have written copies of that mention such a myth. And unfortunately, my local bookstore was lacking in books on the Cherokee beyond relocation history.
Noted Inconsistencies
When it comes to the original telling and the second, there are some notable inconsistencies. First of all, a lot of people seem to credit either Skinner or Simms with both tellings. To be clear, William Gilmore Simms wrote the first and Charles Montgomery Skinner wrote the second.
Additionally, there seems to be a bit of confusion about when these stories came out. Charles Skinner's book, Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, was published in 1896. With William Simms, there is a bit of confusion. The poem is credited as being first published in 1845, however, I was not able to find where it was published at that time. Instead, I found The Wigman and the Cabin, a book Simms published in 1845 on Native American legends. The first printed mention of his poem I could find was the 1853 publication of Poems. Descriptive, Dramatic, Legendary, and Contemplative. This is not to say that "The Syren of Tselica; A Tradition of the French Broad" wasn't written or even printed in 1845, just that I could not confirm a publication date before 1853.
Mountain Tramp
William Simms wrote a longer piece in 1852, hidden from publication until 2003, entitled "The Mountain Tramp. Tselica; A Legend of the French Broad." This poem dove deeper into the lore of Tselica, transforming her from a siren into a woman in love with Ockwallee, a Muschoghee (also spelled Muscogee or Muskogee and also known as the Creek) man. Simms had hoped this 3-part poem would be printed in a roughly 250-page standalone book. Publishers did not agree and this work remained part of his family's estate until it was published in 2003. While most of the Muscogee Nation were relocated and now reside in Oklahoma, they did originally have ties to the local area, other tribes, and Cherokee themselves. A review of the Cherokee legends with this added information and a review of Muscogee legends did not produce a potential origin story.
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| Theodor Kittelsen. The Water Sprite. 1904. Ink, watercolour, pencil and crayon on paper. The National Museum in Oslo. |
Lily's Thoughts
I wish I could say I have more to offer up on this one but even ol' Simms knew there wasn't much to this legend, because if you read his poem and its introduction, he mentions that it is more of a warning about dying from muscle spasms or cramps while hunting/hiking. I am a bit sad that there isn't more to this myth as it is a fascinating topic. I went down a few research rabbit holes in hopes of finding something I could correlate to something, anything. I even found out sirens were originally more like birds with human heads and not the beautiful sea nymphs we think of them as today. But unfortunately, I could not find anything more than what I have here.
You might have noticed way back at the beginning, I mentioned a three-day version of this myth. You may have also noticed that I did not mention it again. That's because I could not find the original source of the three-day siren song legend. It's mentioned repeatedly in minor online publications and even in my Unexplained South book, but nothing in the way of where this version came from. Campfire tales are my best guess at this point.
As for the single personal experience, Guard was 15 when it happened and has suffered from PTSD and thalassophobia ever since. Could this be their brain's way of hiding something way worse that they saw (some random man kill himself) with a local legend? Sure. Could the guy they saw have been a tankless diver and Guard just didn't see him surface? Yep. Could the siren actually exist and they saw her claim a victim? Yeah, sure. I can't say with absolute certainty that they didn't see exactly what they think they saw. And I'm not going to. Guard has clearly been through enough without us questioning their experience.
This brings me to a quick overview of Simms himself. Simms was a Confederate man and all that implies. He wanted his works to be known both regionally and nationally. He wrote fiction and non-fiction during his life. Without going into too much detail about his life and writing career, I feel it is safe to say his "Moutain Tramp" was his attempt at creating something that he believed would put his writing, and by default the South, on the map, so to speak. Could it have been inspired by an actual Native American legend, either Cherokee or Muscogee? Yes. There are a lot of their legends lost to time and language barriers. But how many "inspired by" stories stick to their original tellings when shared with a new audience? Just a thought...
I am a bit disappointed there isn't much more to this piece of lore, but I think unless more personal experiences surface or if there is an actual Cherokee legend this can be definitively tied to (that isn't currently online), we can pretty much safely assume that this is nothing more than a pretty way of warning travelers of the dangers of resting too close to fast-moving currents and nothing more than that.
Until next time, lore lovers, stay spooky💖
~Lily
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Sources
(I am trying to make these a bit more organized and dare I say formal for y'all, but they are far from perfect citations, and definitely not in much of any order.)
From Lily's Library
Brown, Alan. “The Siren of the French Broad.” Unexplained South: The Underwater Forest of Alabama, Inexplicable Lights over Texas, the Red-Eyed Monster of Arkansas & More Rich Southern Mystery, The History Press, Charleston, SC, 2023, pp. 94–96.
Hairr, John. “Chapter 3: Rivers of the Mississippi Watershed.” North Carolina Rivers: Facts, Legends, and Lore, History Press, Charleston, SC, 2007, pp. 71–102.
Other Publications (E-Books)
Simms, William Gilmore. “The Syren of Tselica; A Tradition of the French Broad.” Poems. Descriptive, Dramatic, Legendary, and Contemplative, Redfield, New York, NY, 1853, pp. 324–327.
Skinner, Charles M. “Siren of the French Broad.” Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete, Project Gutenberg, 22 Oct. 2006, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6615/6615-h/6615-h.htm.
Personal Experiences
Benedict, Adam. “User Submitted Folklore: French Broad River Siren.” The Pine Barrens Institute, 22 June 2020, https://pinebarrensinstitute.com/user-submitted-encounters/2019/9/27/user-submitted-folklore-french-broad-river-siren.
YouTube
The French Broad River Siren, Those Endless Mysteries, 25 Apr. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdfeMatpLfA&ab_channel=ThoseEndlessMysteries.
Podcasts/Audio
Gilly, Steve. “The Siren of the French Broad River.” MountainLore, 19 June 2019, https://mountainlore.net/2019/06/19/the-siren-of-the-french-broad-river/.
“5.13 The Siren of the French Broad.” The Carolina Haints Podcast, 4 Mar. 2022, https://carolinahaints.libsyn.com/513-the-siren-of-the-french-broad.
Artwork
Benajah, Nsey. Unsplash, 22 Oct. 2017, https://unsplash.com/photos/WaWV3DVqTA0.
Waliszewska, Aleksandra. Gouache on paper. Demonic Spaces and Offshore Formations - Alexandra Waliszewska and Balto-Slavic Landscapes, A Shade Colder, Nov. 2022, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, https://www.ashadecolder.com/demonic-spaces-and-offshore-formations-alexandra-waliszewska-and-balto-slavic-landscapes.
Kittelsen, Theodor. “The Water Sprite.” Demonic Spaces and Offshore Formations - Alexandra Waliszewska and Balto-Slavic Landscapes, A Shade Colder, Nov. 2022, The National Museum, Oslo, Norway, https://www.ashadecolder.com/demonic-spaces-and-offshore-formations-alexandra-waliszewska-and-balto-slavic-landscapes.
Pop Culture Finds
Krug, Veronica. The Siren and the Crow. Lulu.com, 2022.
Other
“North Carolina Historical Review [1957: July].” North Carolina Digital Collections, Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1943-1972, July 1957, https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p16062coll9/id/4007.
“William Gilmore Simms.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gilmore_Simms.
“Native Languages of the Americas: Tsalagi/Cherokee Legends, Myths, and Stories.” Cherokee Legends, Myths, and Traditional Indian Stories (Tsalagi), Native Languages of the Americas, 1998, http://www.native-languages.org/cherokee-legends.htm.
Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1897-98, Part I. [1900], 2001, https://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/cher/motc/index.htm.
Mooney, James. “122. Local Legends of North Carolina.” Myths of the Cherokee, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1897-98, Part I. [1900], 2001, https://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/cher/motc/motc122.htm.
“Haunted AVL: Appalachian Witches, Paranormal Phenomenon & Ghostly Spirits in the ‘Land of Sky.’” Greybeard Rentals, Greybeard Rentals, 14 Oct. 2021, https://www.greybeardrentals.com/blog/haunted-avl-appalachian-witches-paranormal-phenomenon-ghostly-spirits-%E2%80%9Cland-sky%E2%80%9D.
Elliston, Jon, and Jason Sanford. “Legends & Lore of Western North Carolina.” WNC Magazine, 11 Sept. 2020, https://wncmagazine.com/feature/legends_lore_western_north_carolina.
“The Siren of the French Broad.” North Carolina Ghosts, n.d., https://northcarolinaghosts.com/mountains/siren-french-broad/.
Collins, Kevin. “''The Mountain Tramp. Tselica; A Legend of the French Broad'': With an Eye on the Horizon.” The Simms Review (Vol 17: Nos 1-2), The Simms Initiatives, 2014, http://simms.library.sc.edu/view_page2.php?resource_id=TSR_SW2009_057.
Collins, Tom. “Siren of the Broad.” The Applewood Manor, 21 Apr. 2021, https://www.applewoodmanor.com/stories/siren-of-the-broad.
“French Broad Overlook (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2021, https://www.nps.gov/places/french-broad-overlook.htm.
“French Broad River.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Broad_River.
“French Broad River.” Localwaters, n.d., https://www.localwaters.us/find-local-water/find-your-water/french-broad-river/.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Lorelei". Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Jun. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lorelei-German-legend.
“Asheville, North Carolina.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asheville,_North_Carolina.
Thompson, Marcy. “Exploring the Origins of Selica.” The Transylvania Times, 6 Dec. 2021, https://www.transylvaniatimes.com/lifestyles/exploring-the-origins-of-selica/article_2dbee904-075f-5716-9412-6a5d030b8e63.html.
“The Muscogee (Creek) Nation.” Edited by Kathy Weiser, Legends of America, Mar. 2020, https://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-creek/.
“Native American Mythology & Legends.” Translated by Kathy Weiser, Legends of America, June 2021, https://www.legendsofamerica.com/native-american-legends/.
“Native Languages of the Americas: Creek Legends, Myths, and Stories (Muskogee, Muscogee).” Creek Legends (Muskogee Folklore, Myths, and Traditional Indian Stories), 1998, http://www.native-languages.org/creek-legends.htm.
Swanton, John R. “Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians [1929].” Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians Index, n.d., https://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/se/mtsi/#section_000.
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