The Legend of the Hawk

This is a random story that I wrote.   Below the story is the 'story behind the story'.
 

  In the land of Omira, there stands a tall pine tree beside a road.  It stands on the bank above, where the road runs through a cut in the hill.  Now in that tree, sits a hawk.  It is always alone and it screams intermittently day and night.  No one knows why.  But there are many theories and legends about it. 

Some say that it is a wild hawk who lost it's mate near the spot and is sad.

Others that it is a human in enchanted shape. 

That he was a rich man who was robbed there and has been cursed to stay there (it never flies far from the tree) until his stolen money is found.

Or that he was a robber, leader of a gang who robbed at this spot and he is cursed to wait there until 7,000 years have passed since his last robbery, thinking over his evil ways and having to stay in the place where he committed them, to remind him.

But my favorite, is the one about the Highwayman! 
 

One story says that he was a Highwayman who loved the Earl of Lanord's beautiful daughter Fiona (who was betrothed the that villain the Count Kulmere) and she loved him.  Every month, when the moon was two nights past the full, they would meet beneath the pine tree on the hill.  Every month for two years, they kept the tryst, but the Count Kulmere returned from the wars to claim his bride and Fiona and her Highwayman arranged to fly together to the neighbouring country.  But the Highwayman never came to the Tryst-tree, though Fiona waited until daybreak.  She thought him faithless and resigned herself to marrying Kulmere.  But the day before the wedding, she learned that a groom (the only one who knew about the Highwayman and who had aided her in meeting with him), had betrayed them to Kulmere and the Highwayman had never come because Kulmere waylaid him and killed him.  In her grief and her hatred for Kulmere, she killed herself rather then marry him. 

But........the Highwayman had not died.  Kulmere had left him for dead, but he was found by the Faeries and they healed him.  But when he learned of Fiona's death, he had no desire to live and wasted away.  Now his ghost, in the shape of a hawk, haunts the pine tree......and woe to any of Kulmere's descendants who pass that way!  The Highwayman will have his revenge!

The true story is this. About a 1/4 of a mile up the road from us, is a hill. On the telephone pole at the top of the hill, a hawk sits and screams. But only in summer. There used to be a pair, so I think that the hawk lost it’s mate. As I was taking a walk with my brothers, my 11 year old brother came up with the ‘rich man’ part. I said the ‘robber’ part was more likely. Then later that day, the ‘Highwayman’ part came to me inspired by Loreena McKennitt singing the poem The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, which I had listened to the night before.