The articles featured
in this issue of Voices
contain a variety of
voices whose messages
are “traditional”—in the
surprising, the comforting,
and even the most
alarming senses of that disciplinary keyword. In the photo essay “Carving Out a Life:
Reflections of an Ithaca Wood-Carver,”
self-taught carver Mary Michael Shelley describes
how she responded simultaneously
to her Northeastern farm family heritage,
liberal arts education, and the emerging
feminism of her time to claim a form of
man’s work—carpentry and carving…
Journal Articles
Carving Out a Life:
I was born in 1950 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
I started carving at age twenty-two,
when my father gave me a gift of a
painted wood-carving he had made of me
at the farm where I grew up. This gift from
my father inspired me to begin to make my
own carved and painted pictures. Since then
I’ve made more than one thousand pieces in
thirty-five years. I think of my pictures as a
visual diary that helps me make sense of the
events and feelings of my life.
Upstate
We all know that time flies when we’re having
fun. As for me, I can scarcely believe that
thirty years have passed since the summer
of 1979, when Valerie Ingram and I, both
recent Cooperstown “folkies,” organized a
conference we called Getting the “Lore” Back
to the “Folk” for anyone interested in folklore,
particularly applied folklore, as it was called
in those days. It was the ’70s, and this was
a new field.
Downstate
Why do folklorists and scholars of
play so rarely explore the playful aspects
of sex? Perhaps, as I’ve always suspected,
a prudish element runs through the discipline.
Or perhaps, despite the similarities,
sex and children’s play seem to exist in separate
universes. Nonetheless, any folklorist
or ethnographer seeking to understand
New York City, in particular, can’t do so
without acknowledging a side of the city’s
life that attracts people from all over the
world for its anonymity and permissiveness.
Songs
New York City is special by any measure.
Who would think that “Finnegan’s Wake”—
immortalized by James Joyce, the ultimate
Dubliner—was actually written in Manhattan?
It’s true. John F. Poole, a theater manager and
writer, composed “Tim Finigan’s Wake” for
the singer-entrepreneur Tony Pastor sometime
around the beginning of the Civil War. It appears
in Pastor’s “444” Combination Songster, first
published in 1864…
From Wild Man to Monster:
When the first European settlers
entered what is now New York
State and its environs, they brought with
them not only their material culture, but also
an array of beliefs in mythical beings. Such
creatures had been part of the European
psyche for centuries. A central character in
this pantheon was the “wild man” thought
to inhabit the darker parts of the European
countryside. Also known as the woodwose,
wooser, or “wild man of the woods,” it
was conspicuous in folklore between the
thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and holds a
prominent place in later medieval European
artwork and literature.
Xiao Xiannian:
It was a beautiful spring day in Chinatown when I stopped by the Mencius Society to talk with Xiao Xiannian, a virtuoso of the Chinese hammered dulcimer known as the yangqin. Housed in a building on Grand Street near its intersection with Delancey, the Mencius Society—also known as the AiCenter, formerly the Wossing Center—provides instruction in Chinese and Western musical instruments, as well as a number of other arts education programs for youth and adults. It is also the home base of the EastRiver Ensemble, one of New York’s leading Chinese music groups.
Foodways
Long before our contemporary chefs developed
the New American cuisine, farmers
and horticulturists were the custodians of
taste, walking their orchards, vineyards, and
vegetable fields sampling fruits and saving
seeds from the most cleverly delicious tree,
bush, or vine. For a contemporary farmer to
grow a Bronx Seedless grape is to reclaim
that custodial role after almost a century
and reposition farmers as the guardians of
flavor and their family-owned farms as the
sanctuaries of quality.
Good Spirits
Two years ago, while preparing to teach
my fall Folklore of the Supernatural class, I
looked up “haunted dolls” on eBay. A folklorist
friend of mine had warned me never
to order a haunted doll, even at a good
price. “I’d never have one of those things
in my house!” my friend had told me. Like
the central character of the Grimms’ tale
“The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What
Fear Is,” I could not resist the temptation
to order a haunted doll. What harm could
possibly come from this simple transaction?
Fieldwork, Memory, and the Impact of 9/11 on an Eastern Tennessee Klansman:
I wish to share a personal account
of my first folkloristic encounter: the series
of events that led to my choice of a
career in folklore. While many folklorists
may recall their excitement and fascination
with their first informants and the unique
narratives or artifacts that they produced,
my tale involves near-accidental fieldwork
in the company of a less-than-savory group
in American society: the Ku Klux Klan
(KKK).
Still Going Strong
Images of jugglers appeared on the
walls of Egyptian tombs more than four
thousand years ago. They are the first known
representations of an ancient craft that
continues to entertain and fascinate. The
English word “juggler” derives from the Old
French jongleur, and these performers have
been common at public events, carnivals, and
on the streets since time immemorial. These
days, jugglers appear at circuses and variety
shows, as well as in public places.
Play
Abner Cartwright, Alexander Doubleday. . .
these composite names stand for an exceedingly
odd couple whose identities have been
stolen, accomplishments merged, and stories
intertwined for more than a century now. What
both men share is that their lives were hijacked
after their deaths, and as a result, each was
credited with something he did not do—that
is, invent baseball.
Reviews
(1) Girsa—pronounced geer-sha
and meaning “young girls ” in Gaelic—is
a group of eight Irish American teenagers,
two generations removed from the Emerald
Isle, who live in and around Pearl River in
Rockland County. Their new, eponymous
compact disc is as refreshing as a cool drink
of spring water on a sweltering summer day. (2) “Seeking out a region’s folk tales and
legends offers more than entertaining reading,”
Melanie Zimmer explains in Central
New York and the Finger Lakes: Myths, Legends,
and Lore. “It offers a piece of ourselves.” This book is a celebration of the
regional identity of central New York as
developed and preserved through folktales.
From the Director
Folklorists are uniquely positioned to lend
an important voice to the debates around
immigration and immigration reform. As
globalization brings the world together, folklore
works to draw attention to that which is
local, individual, and expressive. Throughout
the next decade, it will be important for
folklorists to continue to draw attention
to the field of folklore through alliances
with disciplines and organizations outside
of folklore, thus providing a folkloristic
perspective on contemporary life.
From the Editor
This issue of Voices offers readers a cornucopia of food for deep thoughts on New York. We experience the transcendent freedom of Vodou dancing in the city, survey the shape-shifting history of Rip van Winkle stories, and wend our way through the psychological landscape of a post-9/11 urban legend. We also encounter Afro-Colombian music in Queens and Native New York handcrafts.