A Treasury of Southern Folklore

by B.A. Botkin

With index.

Genres: Folklore, History, Nonfiction

613 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1949

Reviews

[Pam]

Pretty good but some weird stuff this Southerner hasn't heard of.

[Angela Hiott]

So far, I'm really enjoying this book. It is a great lesson in history but its the tall tales of history. I love folktales and fairy tales so I'm constantly looking for stories to create new fairy tales. This book gives me ideas as to what stories are out there and how the author related or wrote the tale. "A Treasury of Southern Folklore" has all sort of interesting bits of information such as how, it is said the "rebel yell" came about. The cool thing about these stories is they could be complete fabrications but there is most likely some truth to them!

[Carolyn Page]

It's funny when you think about how much more isolated the different parts of our huge nation were. It was almost a completely different culture North to South--as different as England is from Ireland.

[Ralph]

This is a collection of all manner of stories, legends, fables and historical snippets pertaining to the south, and the range of subject matter is indeed exhaustive. B.A. Botkin, in his introduction, opined that the corpus of southern-related folklore developed just before the War Between the States, through the period of the War, and into the rapacious Reconstruction Era following. It's an opinion that makes sense, for when cultures and civilizations are under attack, they seem to gather together all the hearth and campfire stories, all the porch tales that previously existed as nebulous oral traditions, as happened to the Mycenaeans when threatened by the Greeks, the Greeks when threatened by the Romans, and the Romans when threatened by a barbaric world. While I enjoyed many of the tales of Southern lifestyle and traditions, oddities of weather, and social foibles and eccentricities, I found myself more drawn to stories of buccaneers and bandits, of lost treasures and hidden history, and dark tales of magic and monsters, of which there is no dearth in the South.The last section of the book is dedicated to "The Singing South," and except for a few well-worn chestnuts I really didn't get much out of it, though, admittedly, because of my own lack of musical skills than any deficiency in the material. The book is certainly an eye-opener for those who think the South has little or nothing to offer in the way of cultural folklore and historical miscellany, but the faint of heart might want to skip several of the entries out of step with modern sensibilities.

[Mikhail Skinner]

What is past is prologue.