Songquest


Book Description

The field notes of a pioneering folklorist who collected the songs, stories, and cultural history of Great Lakes sailors in the 1930s. Ivan H. Walton was a pioneering folklorist who collected the songs and stories of aging sailors living along the shores of the Great Lakes in the 1930s. His collection is unique in the annals of Great Lakes folklore. It began as a search for songs but broadened into a collection of weather signs, shipboard beliefs, greenhorn tales, and stories of the intense rivalry between sailors and the steamboat men who replaced them. Edited by Joe Grimm, Songquest: The Journals of Great Lakes Folklorist Ivan H. Walton is a selection from the daily journals Walton wrote during his travels as a folklore collector. It is clear that Walton, a professor of English at the University of Michigan, both admired the sailors of the Great Lakes for what they had done during their working years and worried about them as they entered the twilight of their lives. Walton went beyond the songs he set out to find and captured the pitch and roll of the Great Lakes alive with white-winged schooners. His writings provide a clear picture of the colorful individuals he met and interviewed—captains, cabin boys, tugmen, chandlers, boardinghouse owners, dredgers, and light keepers. Walton also documented the methods he used and recorded his personal thoughts about his nomadic life and the events going on around him during the 1930s, including the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election, and the end of Prohibition.




National Union Catalog


Book Description

Includes entries for maps and atlases.




Folklife Annual


Book Description













American Folktales: From the Collections of the Library of Congress


Book Description

This two-volume collection of folktales represents some of the finest examples of American oral tradition. Drawn from the largest archive of American folk culture, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, this set comprises magic tales, legends, jokes, tall tales and personal narratives, many of which have never been transcribed before, much less published, in a sweeping survey. Eminent folklorist and award-winning author Carl Lindahl selected and transcribed over 200 recording sessions - many from the 1920s and 1930s - that span the 20th century, including recent material drawn from the September 11 Project. Included in this varied collection are over 200 tales organized in chapters by storyteller, tale type or region, and representing diverse American cultures, from Appalachia and the Midwest to Native American and Latino traditions. Each chapter begins by discussing the storytellers and their oral traditions before presenting and introducing each tale, making this collection accessible to high school students, general readers or scholars.










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