Evangeline

Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 81 pages

     Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,

     Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of women's devotion,

     List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;

     List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

In the middle of the 18th century, the vast majority of the 14000 French inhabitants of Acadia were forcibly deported by the British government, scattered across North America and Europe.  Visitors to present day Nova Scotia, the Acadia that was, will find a statue of Evangeline, a person who never existed outside of poetry.  Statues of the same fictional character can be found in Louisiana, where many of the exiles settled and formed new communities as "Acadian" gradually developed into "Cajun".  In both cases, Evangeline, separated from her lover as well as her home, stands as a representative of all that the Acadians loved and lost.

Of course, Longfellow was a poet, not a historian, and his genius makes universals out of particulars.  This is embodied within the poem by a Shawnee widow whose own tragic tale mirrors Evangeline's, and who shares with the heroine legends in which similar stories are told and retold, as hers has continued to be since 1847.