(1) All of Us: Stories and Poems Along Route
17 is set in Middlefield, a mythical town in
the Catskills, New York. It’s one of those
villages with “real families, messy, earning
some kind of living or trying to.” (2) Jeffrey Tolbert and Michael Dylan Foster have returned to the source material, their edited volume The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World, with a new ensemble cast to create…Möbius Media: Popular Culture, Folklore, and the Folkloresque is a continuation of the themes….but with new applications after years of discourse.
North America
Crankies — What People Watched before Movies
We were about 200 years late. For us,
it started in 2011, with a concert
featuring the traditional performer Elizabeth
LaPrelle. She sang the Child Ballad “Lord Bateman,” accompanied by a table-top box, which
contained a long scrolling quilt, which as it was
unwound revealed scenes depicting the various
verses. She called it a crankie. Well, my wife
Janet is a quilter. We exchanged looks: How
neat was this? We could make something such
as this for Fine Arts Salon at the next year’s
caving convention. Janet asked me, “What
songs about caving do you have?” We selected
“ The Ballad of Pete Hauer ”— a true story I’d
written about the mysterious death of a close
friend and his involvement with the murder of
a sort of innocent bystander.
Good Spirits
Have you ever spent a night in a haunted
bed-and-breakfast? Having stayed in several
inns that pride themselves on their resident
ghosts, I know that stories about these
ghosts’ appearances can be the best part
of overnight stays. Introduced at breakfast
along with blueberry pancakes, waffles, or omelettes, such stories add a dimension
of wonder to what might otherwise be a
humdrum stay.
Play
In the years before the Revolution made it
America’s patriotic anthem, “Yankee Doodle”
was a song of derision that the British
heaped upon ignorant colonists hoping to
attain foppish stature by aping English gentlemen.
Mikvah Musings
The Friday before my wedding in November
of 2007, I drove to Mayyim
Hayyim, a new-style mikvah, or ritual bath,
in Newton, Massachusetts. Accompanying
me were my sister Lois and one of my oldest
friends, Roz, who had flown in from Seattle
for the event. Mayyim Hayyim (Living Waters)
was founded by Anita Diamant of Red
Tent fame. She had once visited a mikvah and
been underwhelmed by the experience. She
knew that there had to be a reason why this
tradition of dunking oneself had persisted
through the millennia. It couldn’t just be
about purifying oneself for one’s husband.
There had to be more.
Chicago Folklore Prize Winner:
On behalf of the New York Folklore Society’s executive board and the editorial
board of Voices, I want to congratulate Faye McMahon for winning the American
Folklore Society’s 2008 Chicago Folklore Prize with her outstanding book Not Just Child’s Play: Emerging Tradition and the Lost Boys of Sudan, published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2007. It brings all of us great happiness to see Faye receive this richly deserved award….According to the American Folklore Society’s web site, the Chicago Folklore Prize, “awarded to the author of the best book-length work of folklore scholarship for the year, is the oldest international award recognizing excellence in folklore scholarship.”
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.
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.
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?
Good Spirits
Since “seeing is believing” in our culture, visual evidence of a supernatural presence seems especially compelling. Ghosts in photographs and on videos get more attention than ghosts that whisper in the night. It should not surprise us, then, that orbs—bright spheres of light in photographs—…Some people believe that orbs represent ghosts; others believe that orbs come from glitches in the photographic process.
The Grateful Terrorist:
The folktale of the grateful dead was
once widely known and passed on through
both religious and secular traditions. Today
most people would conjure an image of
the popular rock band, which is said to
have found its name from this story, as
well…. The story has evolved
throughout history in response to society’s
psychological coping needs during times
of crisis. This mythic theme has resurfaced
from the earliest Judaic scriptures to
contemporary urban legends.
Reviews
Masterfully arranged by the editor, the
articles in this book comprise a sterling
collection of Italian American folklore
research. The organization of the work
provides seamless transitions from essays
on foodways to material culture, cultural
landscape to explicit art forms, and largescale
ceremonial events to religious belief,
all situated in diverse locales from New York
to California.
Play
We have been singing his songs for more than 150 years—“Camptown Races,” “Oh! Susanna,”and “Old Folks at Home,” the one we called “Swanee”—with not much thought about who created them, for they seem to have sprung into life spontaneously, like folk songs. Those of us who thought we knew a thing or two about Stephen Collins Foster (1826–64) regarded him as a beautiful dreamer, an untutored country boy with a lucky gift for melody, an unworldy songster who permitted publishers to pirate his songs and others to take credit for their composition, a spendthrift alcoholic who died with thirty-eight cents to his name, a racist or at least a highly effective publicist for the South’s peculiar institution. All of these elements of the folk tradition prove upon examination to possess elements of truth without being true, and thus leave us no better prepared
to understand Foster’s life as an artist.
Good Reads:
Reviews of The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning, by Ben Raines and Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” by Zora Neale Hurston; and All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles
The Poetry of Everyday Life
Fred was once described as “a master jeweler in the timeless language of the pitch.” He was fond of stating the pitchman’s credo: “Never, never use one word when four will suffice.” The medicine shows were always presented “free, gratis, and for nothing.” A sucker for alliteration, he presented “glittering galaxies of gorgeously gowned girls” and featured, among others, “Tillie Tashman, that teasing, tantalizing, tormenting, tempestuous, tall, tan torsotwister from Texas.” I certainly consider him one of the most inspiring, incandescent, irreplaceable, inventive, and absolutely inimitable (as Fred might say) collaborators in my life.