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Anglo-American Connections in Folklore and FolklifeAuthor(s): Simon J. BronnerSource: Folklore, Vol. 101, No. 1 (1990), pp. 47-57Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1259883 .

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Folklore vol. 101:i, 1990 47

Anglo-American Connections in Folklore and Folklife SIMON J. BRONNER

CONSIDERING that the settlement, language, and arts of the United States derived in great part from the British Isles, one would expect the links between folklore studies in the two places to be stronger.' This is not to say that great achievements have not been made. Every student of folklore knows of Harvard Professor Francis James Child's catalogue of British ballads, the Englishman Cecil Sharp's harvest of English folk songs in the southern Appalachians of the United States, Vance Randolph's vast collection of tales and customs derived from British inspiration in the American Ozarks, or Richard Dorson's encyclopedic narrative of the Victorian British folklorists.2 And it is possible to point to a flurry of research activity across the Atlantic before the turn of the century, and again after World War II; but until recently Americans, like their English cousins in folklore studies, mostly turned their lenses on peoples they considered more exotic- American Indians, east and south European immigrants, Africans, and Asians. This essay offers some possible explanations for this transatlantic rift and suggests a research agenda involving the analysis of the structure and aesthetics guiding traditions.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

American folklorists had the best intentions for Anglo-American study. After all, they organized the American Folklore Society in 1888 on the model of the English society formed ten years earlier, and in a nod to the mission of the Folklore Society they announced that their Society served to encourage the 'collection of the fast-vanishing remains of folklore in America.' Several examples of these remains were given, including the lore of French Canada, Indian tribes in North America, and negroes in the Southern States, but listed first were 'relics of old English folk-lore (ballads, tales, superstitions, etc.).3 The anthropological emphasis in the Society's early years, however, ensured the attitude that the workings of culture were revealed by attention to the primitive and exotic, rather than by the historical examination of the common and everyday centred on the immediate past. British precedent helped to establish this principle. Evolutionary doctrine reigned, and in folklore study it supported a search for a long-hidden past where the origins of modern institutions in pagan rituals could be unearthed. For the Victorians, the genre of custom and belief, and its symbolic ascent from superstition to science, from rude existence to genteel manners, became the standard topic for study. This anthropological study of folklore was particularly suited to English and American ideas of civilization. According to the predominant philosophy, civilizing was a moral and technological uplifting of peoples into nations and empires. In the best-selling works of the Englishman Herbert Spencer, who applied Darwin's precepts to the civilizing process, and of similarly minded scholars in America such as John Fiske, Lewis Henry Morgan, and William Graham Sumner (who all wrote on folkways), Victorians read of folklore as key evidence of the rise of civilization from savage and barbaric stages.4 This rise was tied to



48 SIMON J. BRONNER

industrialization and empire-building, coupled with the development of rational codes of moral judgments of character and manners inside the home. The assumption that there were stages of regular development through which civilizations climbed assured the dominant nations in the West of their superiority, for they saw themselves as occupying the top of the ladder, proud that their technology, expansiveness, and rationality marked the height of civilization.

The separati6n that had occurred in Great Britain between the study of oral and material genres in folk culture also found its way into the American conception of folklore, despite objections from certain leading British folklorists, notably George Laurence Gomme who argued for 'lore' as a sweeping kind of knowledge found in customs, tales, and crafts.5 The use of 'lore' mostly applied to tales and beliefs nonetheless suggested to most writers in Britain a crude survival of past practice which drew distinction because it seemed out of place within a modernizing society like Britain's. The significant fact for analysis and comparison was the remaining text, and owing to evolutionary doctrine it was often assumed to be universal. The use of 'life' suggested a perception of tradition which was much more localized and functional within a community or group; it often assumed a relation of traditions to the present needs of people within a community. Especially lasting and influential in the dominant use of 'lore' was the emphasis on genre, and classification by text, rather than by social group, spread by George Laurence Gomme's Handbook of Folk-Lore published in 1890, and expanded by Charlotte Burne in 1914. Gomme's influence can be seen, for example, in The Folk-Lore Manual of 1892, whose American author Fletcher Bassett admits that its essential contents were derived from Gomme's work.6 The name of 'folk-lore' coined by William John Thoms in 1846, lent itself to a textual interpretation. A progression similar to the one from Thoms to Gomme and others in England can also be found in the United States. John Fanning Watson, a Philadelphia merchant, saw industrialization and urbanization taking away what he called 'traditionary lore' during the 1820s, and, moved by Sir Walter Scott's field collections in Scotland, made a collection which he called Annals of the Olden Time in Philadelphia (1830). Although striking for its dig in the backyard for local customs, Watson's antiquarian efforts, like Thoms's, were submerged in the rush for an anthropological science of folklore.' William Wells Newell, organizer of the American Folklore Society, claimed in 1892 that 'American students will prefer . . . to consider the comparative examination of this material as a part of anthropological science.'"

Folklorists working in anthropological museums, especially, flocked to the American Folklore Society. Serious about the study of folklore but lacking university status, the Society sought to convey a professional image. Later, when folklorists in anthropology, language, and literature managed to establish footholds in American universities, the Society became more academic. This development marks an essential difference between the progression of the American and English Folklore Societies. The English Society could not carry over its serious image into the universities, and instead it fostered the noble status of the enthusiastic amateur. The emphasis on survival and custom in English folklore study continued well into the twentieth century. And the study of survival and custom for the English Society retained an international, cross-cultural scope, owing to the days of global empire. The American Society meanwhile focused more and more on its own field, a nation of diversity.

American study diverged from its British precedent largely at the behest of Franz Boas, a German-American. professor at Columbia University who became president of the American Folklore Society in 1900 and served as editor of its journal from 1908 to 1924.



ANGLO-AMERICAN CONNECTIONS IN FOLKLORE AND FOLKLIFE 49

Boas moved folklore study from its evolutionary biological model to a system of relativity inspired by Albert Einstein's theories. Cultural relativity lacked the absolutism of cultural evolution. Cultural relativity was based on the distinctiveness of many cultures, one not being better or loftier than another, though different in character and history. Thus the assumption that survivals found in a culture of the present could be connected to a different culture of another time did not hold up in a view of time and space that was heterogeneous rather than homogeneous. Boas's cultural relativism stressed the integrity of individual cultures and, often, the individual within the culture. Such a move meant a drift away from national comparisons, such as those between England and America, and a preference for small segments of culture studied in depth. However, a resurgence of literary interest in folklore after World War II, coupled with the simple fact that many Americans spent time in the British Isles during and after the war, ushered in a wave of studies seeking Anglo-American connections. Samuel Bayard studied Anglo-American fiddle tunes, MacEdward Leach and D. K. Wilgus asked questions anew about British ballads, and Francis Lee Utley and Louis C. Jones looked at other examples of lore travelling across the ocean.'

The great catalyst to realizing the British inheritance in scholarship as well as lore was Richard Dorson at Indiana University. Trained in history and literature within American civilization, Dorson disagreed with anthropologists on their general scepticism of national cultures. He agreed that folklorists could no longer talk of an absolute culture as did the Victorians. But his study of American folklore made the case for a distinctive national culture built on the foundation of European and especially British sources. Stumbling upon the library of the Folklore Society in London in 1948, Dorson devoted many years afterwards to convincing scholars, as he said, 'that familiarity with the brilliant history of folklore science in England was as indispensable for the American, and indeed for the European, Asian, or African student of folklore, as for the British."' His monumental influence in training students devoted to a separate discipline of folklore helped to spread his message of nationality and cross-cultural connections. His Folklore Institute at Indiana sponsored an Anglo-American conference in 1969, and his students through the years were required to commit The British Folklorists to memory. Greatly owing to his efforts, more university courses on British folklore sprang up in America than in Great Britain.

Anglo-American folklore study could grow because of the kind environment for interdisciplinary study that the post-war American university provided. The growth of American studies, including folklore, followed from the growth of American power and attention to the recent past. In the landscape of national knowledge, folklore was a sign of the cultural strength of a new nation derived from, but also separated from, Europe. In addition, the influx of new kinds of students-immigrants, workers, women, Appalachians, Jews, blacks--created a demand for courses on their own history and culture. Faced with an intellectual legacy alien to their roots, such students turned to oral and artifactual records for verifying their cultural integrity, and found folklore to be a socially and politically significant area of exploration.

Some other conditions peculiar to the American experience fostered yet another movement in American folklore studies: the conception of folklore as performance and communication. Although not in the vanguard of this movement, Dorson, as a student of Americans, their staunch individualism, and mix of identities, called for approaches that were different from the European study of rooted, homogeneous groups. Dorson



50 SIMON J. BRONNER

himself contributed essays on the narrative style of outstanding taletellers, and assessed how identities were conveyed differently by individuals as they passed from one social circle to another. Later articulated in the works of Roger Abrahams and Richard Bauman, among others, performance analysis centred on the small, often temporary group, and on symbolic events which typically defied cross-cultural comparison." History, then, shows that American and British traditions of study developed differently. The American tradition went through several changes, most notably the development into an academic discipline devoted to national traditions, and came to emphasize American conditions of individuality, mobility, and communication. Although itself experiencing change, the British Folklore Society did not stray far from its original mission. The opportunities for English and American co-operation were therefore limited by the cross-purposes of the different organizations. In addition, the English inheritance, representing the dominant cultural source of America, was often passed over in American folklore study in a search for the subcultural diversity of life in the New World.

STRUCTURES AND AESTHETICS OF ANGLO-AMERICAN TRADITIONS

Just what is it we need to know about the Anglo-American connection in folklore and folklife? Henry Glassie, for example, in his Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (1968), examined the infusion of European ideas into America and their diffusion in material form across the landscape. Tracing the various cultural hearths established by different European settlers, Glassie showed that America's regional development owed much to the nature of the original ethnic settlement and spread. This geographic approach to folk materials helped to answer nagging questions about what happened to the British inheritance once it had arrived on American shores. Folk materials seemed especially useful because they tended to be variable over space and stable over time. Geographically minded scholars could thus trace longstanding cultural traditions. Vernacular buildings, set in relation to the landscape, offered visible proofs of diffusion and adaptation to the environment. To study such phenomena raises basic issues concerning the effect on regional and national character as cultures separate, spread, integrate, settle, adapt, and change. It is essentially a search for traces of a common and divergent heritage, an exploration for roots of a complex and diverse nation.12

Maybe the reluctance to draw specifically Anglo-American connections in oral lore stems from the international nature of many verbal forms. The process of disseminating material culture is slower and more cumbersome; architecture and art are often assumed to be better representatives of limited cross-national, rather than of broad cross-cultural, movement. These assumptions are based on the old emphasis on genre, and the split between material and oral genres, for the analysis is based on the separation, rather than integration, of forms in cultural patterning. Material traditions are expected to stabilize into relatively unchanging features of the physical environment, whereas oral traditions, being fleetingly spoken, are expected to vary and move quickly. As the experience of English settlement became more distant, American folklorists turned to the development of a distinctive American civilization, shown in traditions peculiarly suited to the American experience. This was 'American folklore' Dorson claimed, as opposed to a derivative 'folklore in America'."

Another kind of question looks for continuities rather than dichotomies. Questions of structure and aesthetics ask about the underlying guiding principles that direct the creation and performance of cultural traditions. Looking at structure and aesthetic in houses, fiddle




tunes, and stories, I see integration possible, indeed crucial, in the analysis of folklore and folklife. Here I will offer some perspectives on this kind of examination by tracing basic concepts of linear order, binary construction, and rectangular foundation in Anglo- American traditions.

It is on the basis of structure, in fact, that the argument for expanding the definition of 'folklore' to include non-verbal forms was made. Alan Dundes in 'On Game Morphology: A Study of the Structure of Non-Verbal Folklore' (1964) pointed out that children's games follow a linear sequence similar to one found in most folktales. Dundes's example was the Anglo-American game of Hare and Hounds, which he found followed Vladimir Propp's structural scheme for fairytales. The game contains a protagonist (hare) and antagonist (hounds), and it moves sequentially from a lack (for the hare, wanting to go home) to the elimination of a lack (returning home), with intervening moves of an interdiction (without being caught by hounds) and violation (being caught by hounds). The game then is visually shaped rectangularly with a binary pair forming the action, which moves linearly through four (two pairs) moves. The rectangular shape is indeed a fundamental building-block of Anglo-American vernacular architecture and other material forms. If the structures of games and tales, or games and houses, are similar, then they can be analyzed as part of a unified whole, that of tradition in culture.'4

Differences in structure are apparent in various cultures. The Western fondness for three sections cited by Axel Olrik in his epic laws for folk narrative, and by Henry Glassie for the design of folk art, contrasts with American-Indian uses of four or Chinese uses of five. Three can be read as a symbol of human control, representing the shape of the human head in relation to two arms. Studies of American Indians have shown that the number four is a natural symbol relating to four cardinal points. Many Asian cultures add one more for the self or centre-a pattern which has also been discerned in archaic Irish traditions. In these assumptions are contained different attitudes toward the landscape; the Western eagerness for technological progress and control of the environment is expressed in the very structure of tradition based on human power. Similarly, the circle as a basis for housing is a natural symbol used in many African and American-Indian cultures, but the rectangle, a technological symbol, is the primary base concept in Western tradition.15

My pointing out of structural patterns answers the puzzle over why more. British construction techniques did not cross the Atlantic with the original settlers. Adapting to the new environment, Anglo-Americans used local forms and devised new ones based on the structuring patterns they learned as part of their culture. Although an occasional half-timber or wattle-and-daub house of English style exists in America, Americans mostly took up construction in log, brick, and stone. The abundance of wood and land in America, especially, made a difference in the cultural look of the countryside. Following the route of human control, the architectural sequence in the early days of the Republic began with the clearing of the wilderness, continued with announcing ownership of property through the erection of linear fences and private outbuildings, and culminated in the establishment of a new classic civilization with application of Greek Revival ornamentation. 16

Despite the feeling of creating a new material civilization, American folk architecture owed much to the sense of eighteenth-century geometric order popularized by British thinkers and designers. The order was influenced by the spread of literacy during the



52 SIMON J. BRONNER

period; writing, the ultimate statement of rational human control, produced neat rows and tabular forms. Geometric order announced rational human control over nature, again well suited to American designs on its future.

This conception of geometric order was informed by classical Greek and Roman celebration of erect form. The classical numbering system, for example, emphasized vertical lines, in contrast to systems in the Far East which featured horizontal lines. The classical form is one indication of a reference to a human unit either in the upright finger or the body; we still insist, for example, on 'standing up to be counted' or 'looking out for number one,' with reference to the self. While the single vertical line could suggest the self, its image may be taken as incomplete. In our society, the pair of erect forms is often read as conveying balance, since together the forms suggest an expanded structure based on equal parts. To again use as an indicator folk speech referring to the body, one doesn't want 'to stand on one leg' but 'to have both feet on the ground'. The pair can also suggest union, especially in a society practicing monogyny. It was common, for example, in American vernacular architecture to plant a large tree on either side of a doorway to signify the union of the couple inside the house.

The binary pair in folk architecture is an example of the structuring power of geometric order. The layout of the single pen unit, the basic unit of the home, consisted of four sides, or two squared. The proportions of the room were typically four squared, or sixteen feet square. The rectangular base concept then was formed with two such units. The bodily shape represented by threes took form when the binary pair was situated around a central door. Their doors centrally located on the non-gable end, their plan proportioned in an even ratio of two to one, barns in New England even took on the name of 'English' barns. The grammar of construction continued to use binary pairs when the need for space increased. Rather than extend the house by making three pens, builders designed the house to rise upwards with two rooms over two rooms. The persistence of this aesthetic is shown in the harsh conditions of the Great Plains of the American West, where in the absence of trees settlers turned to sod for their building material. Although circular and dugout designs might have actually proved more practical for sod constructions, the settlers insisted on the rectangular base concept, reminiscent of forms back east."7

Houses are not the only keys to identifying these base concepts. Gravestones, especially in New England, borrow heavily from British iconography. Cemetery design retained the ordered, linear format of British churchyards, and stood in stark contrast to the random nature of American-Indian burying grounds. The Indian grounds fitted their cosmology of returning to the earth and establishing a cycle to life. The rectangular emphasis is a cosmological statement as well, giving emphasis to the material life spent on earth. The stones themselves showed a sense of the permanence of the individual, and were shaped like the top of a body with a head and shoulders forming a binary pair around a central unit.'"

Perhaps the most noticeable evidence for an Anglo-American connection is the fiddled dance tune. My fieldwork in upstate New York State uncovered many fiddlers who learned the tunes with British roots such as 'Soldier's Joy', 'Lamplighter's Hornpipe', and 'McLeod's Reel'. These tunes have the 'endless' repetitive quality arising out of an aabb form, two sets of binary pairs. In performance, the solo fiddler dominated, but one often ran across twin fiddle arrangements, although in the tradition of New England, precision and repetition were stressed in the ability to play in unison rather than in harmony. New England is associated today with the preponderance of the English 'longways' or 'line'




dance, and the South is especially well known for development of the basic 'square' dance. The make-up of these squares is of 2 x 2 x 2, or four sides containing two persons on each side. In performance, the squares are arranged in lines, typically two.'9

In oral tradition, an important area of living lore showing Anglo-American connection is children's folklore. The work of Peter and Iona Opie in Britain has offered a valuable collection for comparative analysis, not just in content but in structure. It does appear that in America children's folklore has been perhaps the most persistent reminder of British folkloric connections. Just listen to American children singing 'London Bridge is Falling

Down', which you can almost every day, or counting out 'One, two, three, four, Mary's at the kitchen door'. An integrated tradition, so to speak, is that of handclapping games. Such games combine gestures, music, and words creatively arranged in rhyme. Typically played between two girls, each using two hands, the handclapping games involve speaking four-line verses, usually with alternate lines rhyming. In performance, the number of verses remembered is usually two, three, or four. One common game begins: 'My mother gave me a nickel, My father gave me a dime, My sister gave me a lover boy, Who loved me all the time.' It continues: 'My mother took her nickel, My father took his dime, My sister took her lover boy, And gave me Frankenstein. He made me do the dishes, He made me mop the floor, I got so sick and tired of him, I kicked him out the door.' Often, however, the action of giving and returning, and characterizations of mother and father, offer other binary pairs: 'My mother gave me peaches, My father gave me pears, My boyfriend gave me fifty cents, And kissed me up the stairs. My mother took my peaches, My father took his pears, My boyfriend took his fifty cents; So I kicked him down the stairs.' This is the contemporary form of an old skipping rhyme: 'Nine [or twelve, or seven] o'clock is striking. Mother may I go out? All the boys are waiting, For to take me out. One will give me an apple, One will give me a pear, One will give me fifty cents, To kiss behind the stair.' Even in the skipping version, performed between two holders of a single rope, the emphasis is on the construction of a rectangular base concept from the use of binary pairs.20

Identifying such base concepts and the aesthetics arising from them helps to put emergent forms in cultural perspective. The strength of American popular culture, for example, brings new characters and commonplaces into children's folklore. The influence, then, is moving back across the Atlantic, and into other English-speaking cultures such as Australia and New Zealand. One example that has attracted notice in Australia as well as the United States and England is 'Ronald McDonald' the clown character in McDonald's Hamburgers advertising. In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I have recorded children clapping to the words: 'Ronald McDonald, a biscuit oh McDonald, A biscuit oh she she wa wa, A biscuit I got a boyfriend.' The second verse is: 'A biscuit she's so sweet, A biscuit like a cherry tree, Baby down down the roller coaster, Sweet sweet babe I never let you go.' And the third verse is: 'Shimmy shimmy coco pop, Shimmy shimmy pal, Shimmy coo pop, Shimmy shimmy pow!' Influenced by post-World-War-II rhythm and blues music, this clapping game is syncopated when compared to older Anglo- American rhymes, but the routines that accompany these jive clapping verses still retain some binary base concepts. The movements are first clapping, then snapping fingers, one hand up and the other down, hitting the other person, right-hand thumb over shoulder and then left, make a fist, hug the other person, imitate a gun with the hand and point at other person (at 'pow').21 These examples remind us that while the content and performance of lore adapt readily, the structures underlying them are slow to change, although when they do we have signs of cultural shift.



54 SIMON J. BRONNER

While I have emphasized the historical and structural connections of Anglo-American lore, modern conditions force us to see connections in our technological-industrial legacy extending far beyond national boundaries. Rather than seeing arrows of diffusion from one nation to the other, here we are looking at folkloric responses to similar conditions. The emphasis on human control and progress seen in the structure of tradition has led to a technological revolution, and now people are working hard to regain or restructure lore to establish their human and group identity. Folklorists document this process, especially in the creation of ethnic and occupational identity. In modern commercial life, the mountains of paperwork result in new forms such as photocopied cartoons and memos which constitute emergent folklore genres.22 While often being understated, and denying what is seen with what is said, these forms follow structural and grammatical rules. Using the standard size of paper as the base, the illustrations and satirical memos follow the rational geometric models of office communication. But oppositions and incongruities emerge from the conflict between what is seen and what is said. In a cartoon known as 'The Job Isn't Finished Until the Paperwork is Done' a child is usually depicted sitting on a toilet with a large roll of toilet paper beside him or her. Here nature contrasts with the organization, the child with the adult message, the informal circular roll with the official rectangular paper. In these genres, folklorists have difficulty assessing the national origins of texts; rather they are faced with the character of human responses to a modernizing, organizational world.

TOWARDS A COMMON AGENDA

Entering the twentieth century, Victorian folklorists sought to comprehend the primitive roots of humankind as a way to justify and explain industrial expansion and scientific advance. Today, with the twenty-first century awaiting us, we are looking at a world apparently more uniform and homogenized by information and technology. While many traditional texts seem to pass from the round of life, they often take on new faces yet retain basic structures of folk performance. Folkloric forms are often compressed and intensified, given meaning in celebrations and rituals apart from the daily round of life, yet they are ever significant for providing the sense of interpersonal relation and human meaning amidst today's modern ways. To meet this challenge, American folklorists have expanded from experts on texts to analysts of social and artistic behaviour in general. Having become essential to American academe, folklorists are moving back out into the public sector, taking up positions involving the collection and interpretation of tradition in public forums and community programmes.23

I have hopes that in Britain the Folklore Society will make similar inroads in the public and academic sectors, and expand its base. I have presented one item on a future agenda for our work: attention to the structure and aesthetics of traditions in the Anglo-American connection, and for that matter the connection among Western and industrialized nations. By such studies, I believe we comprehend the complex and variable nature of human action in a modernizing world; we approach diverse cultural patterns in an integrative manner. In future, American and British folklorists will, I hope, find ways to learn more about the legacy we share from the past, while comprehending the conditions and situations, the structures and aesthetics, from which folkways will emerge in the future. American Studies Program The Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg Middletown, Pennsylvania




NOTES

1. This essay is revised from a presentation to the Folklore Society, 27 September 1988, London. I extend my gratitude to all those attending for the perceptive comments; special thanks to Steve Roud for hosting the event and to Gordon Ashman for his help.

2. See Francis Jimes Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols. (1884-1898; rept., New York: Dover, 1965); Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1932); Vance Randolph, The Devil's Pretty Daughter, and Other Ozark Folk Tales (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), and Ozark Magic and Folklore (1947; rept., New York: Dover, 1964); Richard M. Dorson, The British Folklorists: A History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).

3. William Wells Newell, 'On the Field and Work of a Journal of American Folklore,' Journal of American Folklore 1 (1888): 3-7, and 'Notes and Queries,' Journal of American Folklore 1 (1888): 79-82.

4. See Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology (New York: D. Appleton, 1873); John Fiske, Myths and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900); Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society: Or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (1877; rept., Gloucester, Mass., Peter Smith, 1974); William Graham Sumner, Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores and Morals (Boston: Ginn, 1906). See also Simon J. Bronner, ed., Folklife Studies from the Gilded Age: Object, Rite, and Custom in Victorian America (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1987).

5. See George Laurence Gomme, 'Folk-Lore Terminology' Folk-Lore Journal 2 (1884): 347-48; Alan Dundes, 'The American Concept of Folklore' Journal of the Folklore Institute 3 (1966): 226-49; Donald M. Hines, 'The Development of Folklife Research in the United Kingdom, Pennsylvania Folklife 21 (Spring 1972): 8-20.

6. See Fletcher S. Bassett, The Folk-Lore Manual (Chicago: Chicago Folk-Lore Society, 1892); Charlotte Sophia Burne, The Handbook of Folklore (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1914).

7. See John F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in the Olden Time, 2 vols. (1830; rept., Philadelphia: Elijah Thomas, 1857); Simon J. Bronner, American Folklore Studies: An Intellectual History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986), pp. 4-40.

8. William Wells Newell, 'Folk-Lore at the Columbian Exposition' Journal of American Folklore 5 (1892): 239-40. For further discussion of the anthropological emphasis, see Rosemary Zumwalt, American Folklore Scholarship (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 13-21, 68-98.

9. See Samuel Bayard, Hill Country Tunes (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1944); MacEdward Leach, ed., The Ballad Book (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1955); MacEdward Leach and Tristram P. Coffin, eds., The Critics and The Ballad (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1961); D. K. Wilgus, Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1959); Francis Lee Utley, 'The Migration of Folktales: Four Channels to the Americas,' Current Anthropology 15 (1974): 5-27; Louis C. Jones, 'The Little People,' New York Folklore Quarterly 18 (1962): 243-64. See also Richard M. Dorson's post-war collection of Cornish lore in America reported in Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers: Folk Traditions of the Upper Peninsula (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 103-22, and his later formulation of ideas about Anglo-American tradition in 'Esthetic Form in British and American Folk Narrative' reprinted in his Folklore: Selected Essays (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972), pp. 80-98.

10. Dorson, British Folklorists, p. v. 11. See Richard M. Dorson, 'Oral Styles in American Folk Narrators' reprinted in his Folklore:

Selected Essays, pp. 99-146; Roger D. Abrahams, 'Introductory Remarks to a Rhetorical Theory of Folklore' Journal of American Folklore 81 (1968): 143-58; Richard Bauman and Americo Paredes, eds., Toward New Perspectives in Folklore (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972); pan Ben- Amos and Kenneth S. Goldstein, eds., Folklore: Performance and Communication (The Hague: Mouton, 1975).

12. See Henry Glassie, Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968); Fred B. Kniffen, 'Folk Housing: Key to Diffusion,' and Fred B. Kniffen and Henry Glassie, 'Building in Wood in the Eastern United States: A Time-Place Perspective' reprinted in Common Places: Readings in Vernacular Architecture,



56 SIMON J. BRONNER

ed. Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), pp. 3-26, 159-81; Terry G. Jordan, American Log Buildings: An Old World Heritage (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985); John E Moe, 'Concepts of Shelter: The Folk Poetics of Space, Change, and Continuity,' Journal of Popular Culture 11 (1977): 219-53.

13. Richard M. Dorson, 'Folklore in America vs. American Folklore,' Journal of the Folklore Institutel5 (1978): 97-112, and 'The America Theme in American Folklore,' Journal of the Folklore Institute 17 (1988): 91-93.

14. See Alan Dundes, 'On Game Morphology: A Study of the Structure of Non-Verbal Folklore' New York Folklore Quarterly 20 (1964): 276-88. Dundes is referring to the following studies: Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott and revised by Louis A. Wagner (2nd edition, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968); Kenneth Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior (The Hague: Mouton, 1967).

15. See Axel Olrik, 'Epic Laws of Folk Narrative,' reprinted in The Study of Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 129-41; Henry Glassie, 'Folk Art,' in Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 253-80; Alan Dundes, 'The Number Three in American Culture,' reprinted in his Interpreting Folklore (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), pp. 134-59; Paul Oliver, Dwellings: The House Across the World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987). For spatial patterning in Celtic traditions, see Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales (London: Thames and Hudson, paperback ed., 1978), pp. 146-175. For the architectural basic concept in Western and American tradition, see Henry Glassie, 'Structure and Function, Folklore and the Artifact,' Semiotica 7 (1973): 313-51, and Folk Housing in Middle Virginia (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1975).

16. See John R. Stilgoe, Common Landscape of America, 1580 to 1845 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (New York: Pantheon, 1981). See also Simon J. Bronner, Grasping Things: Folk Material Culture and Mass Society in America (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986).

17. For units of the house, see Glassie, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia, pp. 19-40; for the English barn, see Henry Glassie, Barn Building in Otsego County, New York (1974; rept, Cooperstown: New York State Historical Association, 1976); Allen G. Noble, Wood, Brick and Stone: The North American Settlement Landscape, Volume 2: Barns and Farm Structures (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), pp. 16-18; see also Simon J. Bronner, 'Anglo-American Aesthetic,' in Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, ed. William Ferris and Charles Wilson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989). For sod building, see Roger L. Welsch, Sod Walls: The Story of the Nebraska Sod House (Broken Row, Nebraska: Purcells, 1968); Cass G. Barns, The Sod House (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1930).

18. See Glassie, 'Folk Art,' pp. 269, 273-74; James Deetz and Edwin S. Dethlefsen, 'Death's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow,' reprinted in Material Culture Studies in America, ed. Thomas Schlereth (Nashville, Tennessee: American Association for State and Local History, 1982), pp. 295-305.

19. See Simon J. Bronner, Old-Time Music Makers of New York State (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987); Alan Jabbour, ed., American Fiddle Tunes (brochure to recording AFS L62, Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, Archive of Folk Song, 1971); Paul F. Wells, ed., New England Traditional Fiddling (brochure to recording JEMF-105, Los Angeles: John Edwards Memorial Foundation, 1978); S. Foster Damon, The History of Square Dancing (Barre, Mass.: Barre Gazette, 1957).

20. For the range of correspondence between British and American children's lore, see Loman D. Cansler, 'Midwestern and British Children's Lore Compared,' Western Folklore 27 (1968): 1-19. For sources of the rhymes given here, see Simon J. Bronner, American Children's Folklore (Little Rock, Arkansas: August House, 1988), pp. 62-63. British versions of the rhyme appear in Peter and Iona Opie, The Singing Game (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Frank Rutherford, All the Way to Pennywell: Children's Rhymes of the North East (Durham, England: University of Durham Institute of Education, 1971), p. 76. American versions are documented in David Winslow, 'An Annotated Collection of Children's Lore,' Keystone Folklore Quarterly 11 (1966): 151-202; Marice C. Brown, Amen, Brother Ben: A Mississippi Collection of Children's Rhymes




(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1979); Roger D. Abrahams, 'Some Jump-Rope Rhymes from South Philadelphia,' Keystone Folklore Quarterly 8 (1963): 3-15. For early recorded American versions of the 'nine o'clock is striking' rhyme, see Winifred Smith, 'A Modern Child's Game Rhymes,' Journal of American Folklore 39 (1926): 84; Frederick Johnson, 'More Children's Jumping Rhymes,' Journal of American Folklore 42 (1929): 306.

21. Versions of this handclapping routine are documented in Sylvia Grider, 'The Supernatural Narratives of Children' (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1976), pp. 752-53; John and Carol Langstaff, Shimmy Shimmy Coke-Ca-Pop! A Collection of City Children's Street Games and Rhymes (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1973); 'Clapping Rhyme,' Australian Children's Folklore Newsletter, No. 9 (November 1985): 12.

22. See Alan Dundes and Carl Pagter, Work Hard and You Shall Be Rewarded: Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), and When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987); Paul Smith, The Complete Book of Office Mis-Practice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), and Reproduction is Fun: A Book of Photocopy Joke Sheets (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986). See also Simon J. Bronner, 'Folklore in the Bureaucracy,' in Tools for Management, ed. Frederick Richmond, Barry Nazar, and Kathy Nazar (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: PEN Publications, 1984), pp. 45-57.

23. The American folklorist in the academy and in the public sector is described in Ronald L. Baker, 'The Folklorist in the Academy' and Burt Feintuch, 'The Folklorist and the Public,' in 100 Years of American Folklore Studies: A Conceptual History,ed. William M. Clements (Washington, D.C.: The American Folklore Society, 1988), pp. 65-69, 70-74. For further discussion of public sector work, see Burt Feintuch, ed., The Conservation of Culture: Folklorists and the Public Sector (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988).



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