This collection of essays from the 1970s describes the customs, traditions, songs, and stories by which future anthropologists will analyze that decade. The rodeos and chain letters and bumper stickers, Neiman Marcus and fat stock shows, gospel conventions and underground newspapers, CB radios and university ghosts, backwoods beer busts and the folklore of marijuana, Jack Ruby and the Kennedy assassination. This publication also looks at zydeco, Western Swing, gospel music, Texas country music, the rise of redneck rock, by such writers as Joseph Lomax, Guy Logsdon, Bill Malone, and Jan Reid.

African-American folklorist J. Mason Brewer starts this volume with "Juneteenth," followed by Martha Emmons' "Dyin' Easy." Mexican-American folklore is explored in witch tales, legends, folk-curing from Ruth Laughlin Barker, Ruth Dodson, Jovita Gonzalez. Other topics include British ballads in Texas and camp-meeting spirituals, by such contributors as J. Frank Dobie, Mabel Major, and Phil LeNoir.

The title of this collection denotes a span from the horse-drawn vehicles with steel tires that had to be shrunk down occasionally, to the cars that accelerate to unbelievable speeds on a drag strip. Society members like to look back at old customs and beliefs but they are quite willing to take into account that urbanization and engineering do not destroy folklife but rather bring about new formations. From tire shrinkers to the folksay of the drag strip; from silver ingots in East Texas to early Irish storytelling; from folklore and the Finnish sauna to mock bidding in Jamaica; from folkways and mores on the University of Texas campus in the 1930s to Dobie as teacher, this miscellany brings together a wealth of Texas folklore.

This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society examines how Texans of many races have shaped their lives and shaped the state. Among the pages are backward glances to post-war life in East Texas, descriptions of early recreations and games that children have played from pioneer days to the present, a friendly account of the hill people near Austin, a reminiscence of ranching life among the early Spanish Texans in the West. There are stories long current among the people, a celebration of frijoles, and a recollection of the wonders of yogi oil.

No molded plastic, mass-produced items in Texas Toys and Games. These are folk toys, made from natural or available materials, whatever is handy or can be scrounged. The folks who make them are amateurs of varying degrees, from the ten-year-old hammering together a skate scooter or box kite to the doting grandparent sewing doll clothes or whittling paired giraffes for a Noah's Ark. Folk toys are made not to sell but for the challenge and joy of the craft, and each toy is an object of personal pride. Folk games encompass guessing, gambling, and counting out games; physically competitive games of chase, tag, and mock combat; skill games using sticks, stones, marbles, tops, and knives; variations of baseball, basketball, and football; and rhythmic clapping, rope-jumping, and dance-like games. Remember "Red Rover," "King of the Mountain," and "I Spy"? And "Mumbletypeg," and "Drop the Hankerchief"? Texas Toys and Games combines how-to descriptions and reminiscences to produce a book that's as much fun as Christmas morning—and not a single battery required!

In 1999 the Texas Folklore Society looked back on its ninety years and saw that it was still strong. It has met annually since 1909, except when interrupted by wartime. It has collected, presented, and preserved more folklore than any other similar society in the United States. It has amassed a list of publications in Texas folklore that compare favorably with collections throughout the United States. It has brought to Texas and sent out from Texas some of the leading folklorists of the nation. And large numbers of the Society's members continue to gather annually to honor and enjoy the traditions of Texas. Volume III of its history begins with the move from Wilson Hudson's editorship at the University of Texas to F. E. Abernethy's editorship at Stephen F. Austin State University: "We moved during the burnt-out end of August, Wilson and I . . . We sweated and cussed some as we packed the Society's materials in cardboard boxes and carried them out to the station wagon parked behind Parlin Hall. We took down the pictures of Lomax and Payne and Thompson and some Cisneros sketches . . . Frank Dobie's old felt hat with a turkey feather in the band was sitting on a filing cabinet, so we put it in. Very gently we loaded a box of Mody's paisanos, five or six of them . . . And the Society's publications . . . that stretched back to Stith Thompson's Volume I in 1916 and make up our umbilicus, the visible chain of the Society's being, that makes us all a part of it from its inception in 1909."

The second volume to the Texas Folklore Society history covers from the McCarthy era to the end of the wild and woolly sixties. Includes the publishing history of the TFS books, anecdotes about the gatherings of the Society (including Hermes Nye starting the tradition of the hootenanny at Texas Folklore Society meetings in 1956), and the emphasis on singing beginning at Society gatherings. The Texas Folklore Society was thirty-five years old in 1944, having come into existence under the hands of John Avery Lomax and Leonidas Warren Payne in 1909. J. Frank Dobie held the reins of the Society from 1922 to 1943, when he turned the direction to Mody Coggin Boatright. Allen Maxwell and Wilson Hudson followed as editors of Society publications. These were the years when the Society lost J. Frank Dobie and Leonidas Payne, but it gained such notables as F. E. Abernethy, Jim Byrd, Ed Gaston, William Owens, Am�rico Paredes, Mabel Major, LaVerne Harrell, Elithe Hamilton Kirkland, John Q. Anderson, George Hendricks, Martin Shockley, James Ward Lee, Faye Leeper, and Ruth Dodson.

This book describes the history and publications of the Texas Folklore Society between the years of 1909 and 1943. It includes information about public songs and ballads; superstitions, signs and omens; cures and peculiar customs; legends; dialects; games, plays and dances; and riddles and proverbs.

This volume is, in Owens' words, "a sampling of a rich experience in a richer land." The 135 songs included, a number of them in versions by more than one singer, are divided into nine chapters containing British popular ballads, Anglo-American ballads, Anglo-American love songs, Anglo-American comic songs, songs and games for children, play-party songs and games, Anglo-American spirituals, African-American spirituals, and African-American secular songs. The British ballads were brought to America in the seventeenth century and later were carried westward to Texas by the adventurous pioneers who settled the state. The American ballad section is full of the stories of battles, crimes, and catastrophes that appealed as subjects to our country's folk singers when they adapted the British ballad traditions to their own use. There is heroism aplenty in these ballads; but when it came to love, the American singers deserted the heroically tragic tales of British balladry for mournful, plaintive songs in which the sad lover has nothing much to do but waste away in sorrow. Songs like these helped Texas pioneer women—and men also—to find release from the sternness of frontier life by "having a good cry." On the other hand, humor, too, helped—raw, rugged, raucous humor, as the section of comic songs demonstrates. New musical transcriptions of the melodies have been provided by musicologist Jessie Ann Owens from the original recordings, with guitar chords indicated where the singer provided accompaniment. Bibliographical source notes are included for the benefit of the scholar; but this is not a book just for scholars. These songs have been collected, as Owens has written, "for those who love to sing them as well as for those who have an interest in the past."

This volume contains "Folk-Lore of the Texas-Mexican Vaquero," by Jovita Gonzalez; "Tales and Rhymes of a Texas Household," by Bertha McKee Dobie; "Lore of the Llano Estacado," by J. Evetts Haley; "Names in the Old Cheyenne and Arapahoe Territory," by Della I. Young; "Nicknames in Texas Oil Fields," by Hartman Dignowity; "The Devil's Grotto," by Mody Boatright; "Myths of the Tejas Indians," by Mattie Austin Hatcher; "A Note on Four Negro Words," by Robert Adger Law. Part II of the publication includes "Ballads and Songs of the Frontier Folk," by J. Frank Dobie; "Songs the Cowboys Sing," by John Craddock; "Song of the Open Range," by Ina Sires; "The Texas Cowboy," by Arbie Moore; "Cowboy Songs Again," by J. Evetts Haley; "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," by Julia Beazley; "Annie Breen from Old Kaintuck," by George E. Hastings; "Songs and Ballads—Grave and Gay," by L. W. Payne, Jr.

This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains popular folklore of Texas, including information about crafts, stories about vampires, stories about peyote ceremonies, prison folklore, folk songs, and other miscellaneous folk tales.

The topics include Texas place names, Roy Bean, anecdotes from Brazos River bottoms, Mexican ghosts from El Paso, comedy in folk superstitions, witching for water with the Bible, pioneer folk ways, old sayings from Texas, Irish fairies in Texas, Alabama Indian music, tales from the Alabamas, among many other stories and folk characters.

The title of this volume comes from an essay by Hugh M. Taylor, "Spur-of-the-Cock: Hero of the Mayo Indians." An old New Mexican folk play, "Canto del Nino Perdido," edited by Mary R. Van Stone and E. R. Sims is included, followed by folk names of Texas cacti, cats and the occult, and old-time black proverbs by J. Mason Brewer.

Southwestern Lore is about as representative as such a miscellany could be. Bad men, razorbacked hogs, Mexican sheep-herders, treasure hunters, African Americans, cowboys both gringo and Mexican, plant life, songs, oil field, Indians—the four peoples that have mingled their lore in the Southwest, as well as a wide variety of occupations and natural elements—all find representation in the volume.

Folklorists look at the music of Bob Wills, "The Cowboys' Christmas Ball," Corridos of the Big Bend, cowboy and gaucho songs, "churching," Aggie war stories, curative waters, how to make a planked pirogue, among other topics.

Some people are still working stock, building chimneys, making syrup, curing warts, and witching water the same way their fathers and grandfathers did a hundred years ago. This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society is a collection of essays on some of the olds ways—the customs—still practiced in Texas. It is not an exercise in nostalgia, but a look at practical ways of dealing with problems of survival and coping with nature and people. This is a collection of essays about Texas folklore and customs, including information about cooking, woodworking, farming, festivals, folk music and other Texas folklore.

Collected information about popular folk music of Texas, including songs about hunting, love, nature, dancing, and religion, as well as information about the history of folk music in the state. Includes songs from early settlers, play-party songs, songs of love, children's songs, Sacred Harp songs, cowboy songs, and songs of history.

J. Frank Dobie leads off with "Storytellers I have known," followed by Mac Edward Leach's "The Singer or the Song." Americo Paredes offers a translation of Vicente T. Mendoza's "Some Forms of the Mexican Cancion and "Folklore and History." In addition, essays on oil promoters, the folksay of lawyers, old Thurber, ghost stories, prayer meetings, Belle Starr, removing warts, the German-Wends in Texas, and other folklore from around the state.

This first volume, published originally in 1916, includes the history of the Texas Folk-Lore Society, Texas play-party songs and games, religious beliefs of the Tejas (or Hasanias) Indians, State Industrial School boys' slang, traditions of the Waco Indians, wild horse stories of Southwest Texas, among many others.

This was the fourth book edited by Dobie for the Society. His energy and enthusiasm were stimulating the collection and study of Texas lore, and readers in general, in addition to teachers and librarians, were becoming aware that Texas possessed an interesting and valuable folklore. Dobie's article on tournament as he knew it in Live Oak County gives information interesting equally to historians of folk festivals and biographers of Dobie. Mary Jourdan Atkinson has recorded many colorful sayings that are seldom heard today; Gates Thomas has some fine songs that he heard sung by African-American workers in the country around Winchester; Douglas Branch presents an essay on buffalo lore; Mary Daggett Laske gives some Christmas customs of Tarrant County; John K. Strecker presents two papers on reptiles of the South and Southwest. In addition to other essays, this reprint added a pamphlet by Will H. Thomas on Negro folksongs which appeared in 1912.

The cream of a large collection of Mexican lore has been accumulated over many years, partly through contributions by lovers of the gente all over the Southwest and partly through editor J. Frank Dobie's ramblings in northern Mexico. Tales make up the largest category; however, more realistic are the accounts of Mexican customs and sayings. Another type of popular expression is the corrido, or ballad, and the tall tale is well represented, too, especially in connection with two mighty folk-heroes, Juan Oso and Catorce.

This is a collection of popular folklore of Texas, including stories about hunting, warfare, religion, Texas traditions, and other miscellaneous folk tales.

This is a collection of popular folklore of Texas and Mexico, including folktales, folk songs, ballads and other information about mustangs and horses.

This is a collection of popular folklore from Mexico and Texas, including ballads, personal anecdotes, folktales of the Alabama-Coushatta Indians and other miscellaneous legends. It contains "Corridos of the Mexican Border" by Brownie McNeil; "The Envious and the Envied Compadres" by Wilson M. Hudson; "Do Rattlesnakes Swallow Their Young?" by J. Frank Dobie; "Folktales of the Alabama-Coushatta Indians" by Howard N. Martin; "John Tales" by J. Mason Brewer; "The Literary Growth of the Louisiana Bullfrog" by Robert T. Clark; and "In Defense of Mrs. Mann" by Andrew Forest Muir.

The title of this book alludes to two branches of folklore that exist side by side in Texas, the English and the Mexican. The English tradition is symbolized by the willow and the Mexican by the Mesquite. Mezquite is the Spaniards' approximation of Nahuatl mizquitl, and of course Mexican folklore contains a mixture of Spanish and Indian elements. The mesquite and the willow both grow in Texas, but the mesquite has a much wider range because it can live in dry country. Mesquite belongs mainly to that part of Texas where the Mexican influence was the strongest, the country below San Antonio once occupied by Spanish and Mexican ranchers who traced their land titles back to grants made by the king of Spain.

This is a collection of Texas and Mexican folklore, including stories about folk medicine and ranch remedies, folk songs, legends and other folklore.

The madstones that J. Frank Dobie writes about have their counterpart in the bezoar stones of ancient India, and some of Howard C. Key's twisters dipped down into Texas last spring. There are still people who believe that a madstone will take the poison out of a bite by a mad dog or a rattlesnake, and the devastating and freakish tricks of tornadoes will always make the front pages of the newspapers. Some of the pieces deal with what happens to folk beliefs and practices when a people exchange one way of life for another. The lore of weather and of planting that used to be expressed by the almanacs has been weakened, though many people still believe that root crops are to be planted only when the moon is in the dark. Like almanacs, prairie dogs have seen their day. Mexican lore is well represented in this volume as is family lore.

This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society has been the standard work on the subject. Included are fascinating folk narratives of buried treasure and lost mines; legends of the supernatural; legends of lovers; pirates and pirate treasure in legend; legendary origins of Texas flowers, names, and streams. Over one hundred legends are included as they were recorded by more than twenty-five folklore collectors from every part of Texas.

This is a study of Texas women and the conflicting images and myths that have grown up about them. Texas women were activists. They ran ranches, branded cattle, lobbied the halls of the Texas Legislature, led strikes, ran hospitals, preached the gospel, got elected to public office and built major institutions. Women brought civilized life to hundreds of Texas towns by organizing libraries, museums, parks, symphony orchestras, Sunday schools, literary clubs and charitable organizations. Contents: Sister Marna de Agreda, the mysterious Indian Angelina, the "Yellow Rose of Texas" Emily Morgan, the "Weeping Woman" La Llorona, Belle Starr, the "Crying Woman" of San Patricio, the "Goddess of Liberty" statue on the state capitol, Sally Scull, Sophia Porter, Elise Waerenskjold, Adah Isaacs Menken, Elisabet Ney, Mollie Bailey, Martha White McWhirter, "Aunt Dicy," Ma Ferguson, Bonnie Parker, Janis Jopkin, Electra Waggoner, "Babe" Didrikson, and such groups as the El Paso madams, honky tonk angels, and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.

Juneteenth Texas explores African-American folkways and traditions from both African-American and white perspectives. Included are descriptions and classifications of different aspects of African-American folk culture in Texas; explorations of songs and stories and specific performers such as Lightnin' Hopkins, Manse Lipscomb, and Bongo Joe; and a section giving resources for the further study of African-Americans in Texas.

This is a collection of Texan and Mexican folklore, including stories about the Navajo Indians, the Alamo, Jim Bowie, various folk characters, tortilla making, and other humorous anecdotes. Dobie examines "Rose and His Story of the Alamo." Other pieces on the Alamo include "How Jim Bowie Died" and "Inventing Stories about the Alamo." "Anecdotes as Side Lights to Texas History" explores stories of the founders of Texas. Among other pieces included are: "There's a Geography of Humorous Anecdotes," "Folk Characters of the Sheep Industry," "The Ghost Sheep Dog," "Tortilla Making," "Navajo Sketches," and many more.

This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society includes a miscellany of Texan and Mexican folklore, including stories about hunting, folk medicine, ballads, religion and other folklore.

If there was any pleasure at all in hoeing, it was in the short row soon hoed rather than the one that in the day's high heat seemed to stretch to shimmering eternity. And that's what this collection of Texas folklore is, a series of short rows, easily and pleasantly hoed, promising a great crop as a reward for the reader's labors. Here are high toned women and hayburners, loud pipes and calaveras, brown derbies and battles royal. And, oh yes, Welsh mains. And if these seem like unfamiliar rows, they are nonetheless pleasantly hoed, and in the process much will be learned about railway lingo; the machismo of cockfighting and of the customized pickup; the aesthetic, didactic, and mystical aspects of baptistry paintings in Texas churches; the ways some folk honor the Dead on their Day. There are humorous recollections of religious mores; the summer ritual of the revival meeting; the rowdier ritual of a hog drive; and sagas of families and the Santa Rita rig, poetry by cowboys and common folk alike in this rich acreage.

When the early Spanish and Mexican colonists came to settle Texas, they brought with them a rich culture, the diversity of which is nowhere more evident than in the folk art, folk craft, architecture. This first book-length publication to focus on Texas-Mexican material culture shows the richness of Tejano folk arts and crafts traditions.

This volume contains Ruth Dodson's many stories of Don Pedrito Jaramillo: The Curandero of Los Olmos; in addition Soledad Perez offers his Mexican Folklore from Austin; Wilson Hudson and J. Frank Dobie add to the richness of this collection. Jose Cisneros provided the illustrations.

This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society is a miscellany of Texas and Southwestern folklore collected and written by ten folklorists in 1925. Included are articles on Mexican popular ballad; Spanish songs of New Mexico; versos of the Texas vaqueros; reptile myths; the cowboy dance of the northwest; superstitions of the Northern Seas; oil field diction; folk tales of the Chibcha nation; the human hand in primitive art; and Indian pictographs near Lange's Mill. It also includes "When the Woods Were Burnt," by L. W. Payne, Jr., the first pamphlet of the Texas Folklore Society.

"A good tale tell't well, an' a bonnie tune . . . and ye've a rare song. And fa widna sing it?" So said a Scotswoman, explaining what a ballad of American Indians and Texas Rangers was doing in the repertory of a Scottish traditional singer. The quotation furnishes a particularly appropriate title for this collection of Texas folklore, which features a symposium on "Folksong and Folksong Scholarship" by five men eminent in the field of folk music. Exploring changing approaches and attitudes in his exciting area of folklore are Tristram P. Coffin, secretary-treasurer of the American Folklore Society and author or editor of a number of books; John Greenway, editor of the Journal of American Folklore; W. Edson Richmond, editor of Midwest Folklore and teacher of courses on the ballad at the University of Indiana; D. K. Wilgus, author of Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship Since 1898; and George Foss, enthnomusicologist and member of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D. C. Good tales are represented in this volume by Frank Dobie and by Riley Aiken. Folklore in its travels is studied by Roger Abrahams, and Kenneth Goldstein. E. Bagby Atwood analyzes the variations of the cacophonous custom of the charivari or shivaree as it has been observed in different times and regions. George D. Hendricks compares versions of the origin and nature of woman, and John Q. Anderson surveys origins of stream names, among other topics covered in this volume.

The nameless settlement deep in the East Texas forest was truly paradise—until a young bride took a forbidden sliver from the gold log that spanned a nearby creek; whereupon the log disappeared into the water, bride and groom were banished, and hard times fell upon all. And thus, the story goes, was paradise lost in East Texas. Like the more than a dozen other contributions in this volume, "The Golden Log" typifies the combined universality and fresh and authentic regional flavor of southwestern lore and legend. Here are tales of early Texas days, told as they were told of old: "Thirteen Tales from Houston County" by Theodore B. Brunner; "Homemade Tales" by Richard M. Rivers; "Cuentos de Susto," by Baldemar A. Jimenex; and many others. On the contemporary scene are "The Petroleum Geologist: A Folk Image" by Mody Boatright and "The Changing Concept of the Negro Hero" by Roger Abrahams. Paul Patterson gives us "Cowboy Comedians and Horseback Humorists," and A. L. Bennett "Joe Say, Wit and Storyteller" for samples of native southwestern humor.

This volume includes stories about the life of a West Texas oil driller named Gib Morgan and other folk stories about the oil industry.

This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains popular folklore of Texas and Mexico, including religious anecdotes, stories about Native American dances, stories about petroleum and oil fields, folk songs, legends, customs and other miscellaneous folklore.

This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society includes the play party in Oklahoma; folklore of Texas birds; tall tales for the tenderfeet; fishback yarns from the Sulphurs; Cajun stories of Bolivar's Peninsula; Paul Bunyan; pioneer folk tales; folk anecdotes; the Texas pecan; African-American folk songs of Texas; old Nacogdoches; ghosts of Lake Jackson; how the polecat got his scent; characteristics of cowboy songs; ballads and songs of the frontier folk, and other tales.

A lot of different kinds of people have come to Texas since the Spanish first met the Indians within its borders. And that is what this book is about all the Cajuns and Mexicans and Czechs, all the colors and breeds and bones that have come to Texas and mixed their blood and their ways of life with the land they settled and the people they neighbored with. The main body of the book consists of writings about the customs and cures and the songs and stories and tales that twenty-four different ethnic groups brought with them when they came to stay in Texas.

The title comes from J. Frank Dobie's essay on "The Traveling Anecdote." Also included are Roy Bedichek on "Folklore in Natural History"; "The Names of Western Wild Animals," George D. Hendricks; "Bonny Barbara Allen," Joseph W. Hendren; "Aunt Cordie's Ax and Other Motifs in Oil," Mody C. Boatright; "The Western Ballad and the Russian Ballada," Robert C. Stephenson; "The Love Tragedy in Texas-Mexican Balladry," Americo Paredes; "Emerson and the Language of the Folk," John Q. Anderson; "Tales of Neiman-Marcus," James Howard; "The Devil in the Big Bend," Elton Miles, and others.

This book includes essays on yard art, rural mailboxes, folk grave decoration, folk art in Texas cemeteries, El Paso murals, art of the low riders, tattooing, art of spurs, textile artists, art of the cowboy hat, art of saddlemaking, quiltmaking, Indian pine-needle baskets, whittling, the folk art of Johnny Banks, Eddie Arning, Peter Paul Drgac, among many other pieces.

Without the footnote and bibliography baggage of academic writings, these newspaper articles and stories detail the traditions, customs and practices of Texans from El Paso to Longview, from Amarillo to Houston. This is a book about the folk as journalists write about them. Folklorist Jim Harris discovered through writing his own column that newspaper readers were hungry for articles about their past, but they did not want dry historical facts. They wanted lively and personal stories about such topics as the Native Americans who once roamed the plains, settlers who came from the east, the formation of early twentieth-century communities, abandoned school houses, ghost towns, old-fashioned ranch dances, or life in the oil camps. Any observant reader of newspapers will find examples of traditional life being reported and analyzed in the papers, be they large circulation dailies in metropolitan areas or small papers in rural and isolated regions. Journalists use folklore subjects in a variety of ways: reporting on an upcoming traditional festival; on the creation of a traditional artifact, an individual's rug or a communal quilt; or profiling a local folk artist or musician.

The title and the idea for this book began in 1958, when Mody Boatright first published his essay, "The Family Saga as a Form of Folklore." What Mody identified was a long established form of folklore that was firmly entrenched among people everywhere. The family saga—as Mody and this collection defines it—is made up of an accumulation of separate family legends. These are the stories of the old folks and the old times that are told among the family when they gather for funerals or Thanksgiving dinner. These are the "remember-when" stories the family tells about the time when the grownups were children. Families with strong identities and strong bonds eventually have a library of legends, treasures passed along in the oral tradition. Because of shared humanity and common family experiences, the legends of these old families follow a recognizable pattern of topics, some of which are contained herein. A large and chronologically extended collection of family legends brought together under one cover—or one roof—is a family saga. Included here are stories grouped by common topics, such as Ghosts and the Supernatural, Feuding and Fighting, and Death and Burial. They include tales from favorite storytellers Elmer Kelton, James Ward Lee, Robert Flynn, Archie McDonald, and John Graves. Lavishly illustrated, this volume is a fitting tribute to F. E. Abernethy's dedication to the Texas Folklore Society.

This especially substantial folkish son-of-a-gun stew concocted by J. Frank Dobie and associates is distinguished by a wide variety of materials, ranging from the simplest recording of single items, like anecdotes, folk remedies or sayings, through the skillfully retold primitive legend, to the scientific, though quite idiomatic, anthropological report, and to the scholarly analysis of the philosophy of the folk. The theme and hero of the volume, Old Man Coyote, is animal and folk character. Indian legends are well represented in Coyote Wisdom, a Publication of the Texas Folklore Society.

The title was taken from J. Frank Dobie and Dick Holland, who tell about library corners that contain writings that are forever Texas. Holland's essay, "A Corner Forever Texas: The Southwestern Writers Collection," is the leading essay in the book. Corners of Texas begins with a special section about the history of the Society itself and its "sainted elders." It is a traditional TFS miscellany, the best of the Society's papers over the past three years—from lynchings to el pato boat building; from sunbonnets to hammered dulcimers; from jokes about droughts and lawyers to tales of folk, gospel and blues music; from gravemarkers to bottle trees, and more.

The topics include Indian pictographs in the Big Bend, the cowboy dance, a miscellany of Texas folk songs, blues as folk songs, German customs in Gillespie County, customs and superstitions of Texas-Mexicans along the Rio Grande, and weather wisdom along the border.

A book of folk building in Texas, ranges across the state in word and photograph to explore the building by settlers who tarried on the timbered lands of East Texas and built with the readily available pine logs in the traditions of their fathers. Those in the Western Cross Timbers used oak; European migrants into Central Texas stacked rocks into houses in the fashions learned in the Old Country. West Texans of the Pecos, who had neither rocks nor logs to build with, mixed mud and grass, made adobe brick, and built in traditions borrowed from the Mexican-Indian population already settled there. These were the folk, building out of the environment, wasting nothing, building forms to suit their needs. Germans, Poles, Norse, and Alsatians coming straight from the Old World with their countries' ways of building in mind had to adapt to the new materials and learn from the older Anglo settlers the methods of putting the materials together. "In folk building, a man takes whatever materials he has at hand—logs, rocks, sometimes the very earth itself—and he builds with those materials whatever it takes to survive. The methods he uses to shape his log or thatch his roof are those he learned from his forefathers or from the people he has lived among. The forms that he shapes, whether they are barns or fences or stock tanks, are those that satisfy not only the immediate needs for which they are built, but also satisfy what the eye has been conditioned by his culture to see as beautiful." Francis Edward Abernethy

In addition to reminiscences of trapping and hunting in the Big Bend of West Texas during the 1920s and 1930s, this publication includes a heretofore unpublished outdoors sketch by J. Frank Dobie on deer hunting and a piece by Bertha McKee Dobie on Frank's interest in grasses. Paul Clois Stone disagrees with Larry McMurtry's contention that Dobie's audience is "composed primarily of middle-aged nostalgics," and that Dobie's work "will not outlive him by more than a generation." From Stone's perspective on the Yale scene, "Dobie's importance in the formal national academic community has grown since 1964 and . . . it will continue growing in the twenty-five years to come." Elmer Kelton, Joyce Roach, and Robert Flynn take a humorous look at their work and hometowns, which Kenneth Davis tells tales of souls departing their bodies. There are essays on the bounty of the tables of the earlier settlers, and the state's ethnic heritages through the German Volksfest in Brenham. The folk-song scholarship of Dorothy Scarborough, the art of Ben Mead, a look at prison language, and much more are included in this bountiful book.

This volume of twenty-one essays about folklore in Texas includes essays on teaching and defining folklore for students: "How I Define Folklore for My Students," "Toward a Definition of Folk Culture," "Beginning Within: Teaching Folklore the Easy Way," "Folklore Fieldwork on the Internet," and others. Essays illustrating folklore:"The Honored Dead: The Ritual of Police Burial," "Gang Graffiti," "Rail Tales: Some Are True," "Dance Halls of East Texas," "The Oil Field Camp," "Tex-Mex Dialect or Gidget Goes to Acuna," and more.

This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains information about folklore in Texas and Mexico, including folk songs and ballads, ghost stories, Mexican animal tales, sermons, stories about games and celebrations, folklore of Texas plants, and information about folk remedies. This volume is composed of materials published originally in the first twenty-five volumes of the Texas Folklore Society.

Collection of memorable and comical stories about Emma Wilson Emery's family members, including her Aunt Puss, Uncle Lum, Uncle Noah, Aunt Chlo and others. "In 1890, Aunt Puss Hooks, Spurger's outstanding citizen, was not known beyond the boundaries of Tyler County, Texas. She never saw the halls of Congress nor went shopping on Fifth Avenue, but she represented a way of life as it was lived in her day and a type of people who were among the unsung builders of our nation. Belonging to a generation that had its advent immediately following the conflict between our states, she was one of the children who had to go to the cottonfield instead of the schoolhouse . . . She was not a retiring, subdued woman . . . hers was a positive personality, the blending of a fighting spirit with an unselfish, gentle nature that filled her critics with awe and her friends with love and admiration . . . To me, as a child, Aunt Puss was a three ring circus all by herself . . . Despite all their shortcomings and oddities, Aunt Puss, her friends, and her kinfolk made up a lovable, God-fearing aggregation of human beings, a people whose roots grew deep into the heart of the Southland . . . I am glad I was one of them."

This volume borrows its title from John Q. Anderson's article on the horned toad of the Southwest. William Owens' "Seer of Corsicana" and "Curanderos of South Texas" by Brownie McNeil are about the folk doctors or advisers whom the people visited. The next two articles by John Henry Faulk and William Henry Hardin are about folk characters who have in common a creativity which leads one to imaginative lying and the other to stories, rhymes, or tricks to raise a laugh. George D. Hendricks writes of "Southpaws, Psychology, and Social Science," and Americo Paredes writes of songs and stories found in the Spanish Southwest. Michael J. Ahearn writes the history of a madstone that has been in his family for a long time. Everett Gillis describes a rural singing school. Girlene Marie Williams writes of "Negro Stories from the Colorado Valley" while Fred O.Weldon analyses the Negro folk hero. Cultural conflict is evident in Richard Lancaster's "Why the White Man Will Never Reach the Sun." Frontier life and ways are reflected in G. A. Reynolds' essay on "Vigilante Justice in Springtown." J. R. Jamison tells the story of "The Sinking Treasure of Bowie Creek." Ruth Dodson's essay "South Texas Sketches" looks back to frontier life and Kenneth Porter writes of ghost stories.

A collection of stories about the Kiowa and Apache Indians, coyotes and other animals, cooking, and other miscellaneous folklore. This publication leads off with "Kiowa-Apache Tales," by J. Gilbert McAllister, followed by "The Apache and His Secret," by J. Frank Dobie. Other topics include the yellow flower of death, Haymarket Plaza, dances at ranches, and children's games.

This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society "contains a sample of the research that members of the Society were doing at the turn of the millennium as represented at the 1998, 1999, and 2000 meetings." The volume covers "a wide variety of contemporary and historical topics," including baby lore, stories about notable women, stories about food and cooking, information about the Model T Ford, and more.