Tambour Yockel, Part 2

[a continuation of last week’s post]

Jerusalem Eastern Salisbury’s church records, kept in immaculate German script, suddenly end in 1791. For more than half a century, the congregation vanished, only to appear once more in 1847, when the cornerstone of their new church was laid on Ascension Day. Where had these people gone in the meanwhile? Why did they let their church building go to ruin and not touch it for 56 years? And why on earth did they choose to rebuild the church away from the original one, on the opposite side of the street distant from the cemetery?

Jerusalem Eastern Salisbury Church today

Shortly after the church was rebuilt, two published accounts of the Tambour Yockel story appeared, though oral tradition of the legend was firmly in place by then. It has also been printed up as a broadside and retold as a ballad in English and German. John Birmelin, perhaps our best Pennsylvania Dutch poet, celebrated the story in his own magical way — lending even more mystery to the death of Drummer Jake on Lehigh Mountain that night. He wrote that the superstitious Pennsylvania Dutch would drive miles out of their way to avoid passing the cemetery at night. So fearful were they to happen upon Wild Bill, the Devil, the Tambour Yockel, and any others who may rest uneasy in the cemetery:

Die alde Leit verzeehle, ass efters in der Nacht
So eener vun de Dode nix Gudes datte schafft.
Es iss der Tambour Yockel, mit seinre Deiwelei;
Do mache Leit en Umweg, geht niemand gaern verbei.

The elders tell the story, that when the sun has set
One of the dead stirs restless, intent on making strife.
It is the Tambour Yockel, with his old evil ways;
Such that they all avoid it, the graveyard and the church.

Drummer Jake challenged the balance of life and death that night — he became a cautionary tale of what happens when one disturbs the dead and challenges the Devil. I wonder if people in that area still tell ghost stories about the haunted cemetery. Maybe, on moonlit nights, when the air is still and the cold, you can still hear the faint sound of a drummer drumming in the distance. You’ll have to let me know what you’ve heard about this story, or perhaps you know of other ghostly hauntings in the Pennsylvania Dutch country. I’d love to hear about them.

Florentina, 17 October 2025, The Bullfrog Inn