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And Other Neighborly Names Social Process and Cultural Image in Texas Folklore
'And Other Neighborly Names'—the title is from a study by Americo Paredes of the names, complimentary and otherwise, exchanged across cultural boundaries by Anglos and Mexicans—is a collection of essays devoted to various aspects of folk tradition in Texas. The approach builds on the work of the folklorists who have helped give the study of folklore in Texas such high standing in the field-Mody Boatright, J. Frank Dobie, John Mason Brewer, the Lomaxes, and of course Paredes himself, to whom this book is dedicated. Focusing on the ways in which traditions arise and are maintained where diverse peoples come together, the editors and other essayists—John Holmes McDowell, Joe Graham, Alicia María González, Beverly J. Stoeltje, Archie Green, José E. Limón, Thomas A. Green, Rosan A. Jordan, Patrick B. Mullen, and Manuel H. Peña—examine conjunto music, the corrido, Gulf fishermen's stories, rodeo traditions, dog trading and dog-trading tales, Mexican bakers'lore, Austin's'cosmic cowboy'scene, and other fascinating aspects of folklore in Texas. Their emphasis is on the creative reaction to socially and culturally pluralistic situations, and in this they represent a distinctively Texan way of studying folklore, especially as illustrated in the performance-centered approach of Paredes, Boatright, and others who taught at the University of Texas at Austin. As an overview of this approach—its past, present, and future—'And Other Neighborly Names'makes a valuable contribution both to Texas folklore and to the discipline as a whole.
The Best of Texas Folk and Folklore, 1916-1954
The state of Texas is fortunate in possessing a rich and varied folklore. This volume is composed of materials published originally in the first twenty-five volumes of the Texas Folklore Society. From the preface by Francis Edward Abernethy: "Those old annuals are filled with real, field-collected folklore. Most of that early collected folklore had never been in print before."
Black Cats, Hoot Owls & Water Witches
Everyone worth his salt knows that a snappin’ turtle won’t let go until it thunders, but did you know that more than thirteen blackbirds on a fence with their tails to the north is a sure sign of a coming blue norther? Or that you should eat every grain of rice in your bowl or you will have a spouse who has chicken pox marks? Think of the needless human suffering the world has endured simply because no one bothered to collect the combined wisdom of the folk and to make it available for quick reference! Thanks to Kenneth W. Davis and Everett A. Gillis, those dark days are now at an end. Whether you need advice on the moon and stars; weather; water witching; planting and growing; worms, frogs, roosters, crickets and other critters; clothing; or love, marriage, home and family, it’s all here in this handy little compendium.
Both Sides of the Border: A Scattering of Texas Folklore
Texas has a large population who has lived on both sides of the border and created a folkloric mix that makes Texas unique. Both Sides of the Border gets its name from its emphasis on recently researched Tex-Mex folklore. But we recognize that Texas has other borders besides the Rio Grande. We use that title with the folklorist's knowledge that all of this state's songs, tales, and traditions have lived and prospered on the other sides of Texas borders at one time or another before they crossed the rivers and became "ours." Chapters are organized thematically, and include favorite storytellers like James Ward Lee, Thad Sitton, and Jerry Lincecum. Lee's beloved "Hell is for He-Men" appears here, along with Sitton's informative essay on Texas freedman's settlements. Both Sides of the Border contains something to delight everyone interested in Texas folklore.
The Bounty of Texas
In addition to reminiscences of trapping and hunting in the Big Bend of West Texas during the 1920s and 1930s, this Texas Folklore Society 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. Elmer Kelton, Joyce Roach, and Robert Flynn take a humorous look at their work and hometowns, and 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.
Branding Texas: Performing Culture in the Lone Star State
Ask anyone to name an archetypal Texan, and you're likely to get a larger-than-life character from film or television (say John Wayne's Davy Crockett or J. R. Ewing of TV's Dallas) or a politician with that certain swagger (think LBJ or George W. Bush). That all of these figures are white and male and bursting with self-confidence is no accident, asserts Leigh Clemons. In this thoughtful study of what makes a "Texan," she reveals how Texan identity grew out of the history--and, even more, the myth--of the heroic deeds performed by Anglo men during the Texas Revolution and the years of the Republic and how this identity is constructed and maintained by theatre and other representational practices. Clemons looks at a wide range of venues in which "Texanness" is performed, including historic sites such as the Alamo, the battlefield at Goliad, and the San Jacinto Monument; museums such as the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum; seasonal outdoor dramas such as Texas! at Palo Duro Canyon; films such as John Wayne's The Alamo and the IMAX's Alamo: The Price of Freedom; plays and TV shows such as the Tuna trilogy, Dallas, and King of the Hill; and the Cavalcade of Texas performance at the 1936 Texas Centennial. She persuasively demonstrates that these performances have created a Texan identity that has become a brand, a commodity that can be sold to the public and even manipulated for political purposes.
Death Lore : Texas Rituals, Superstitions, and Legends of the Hereafter
Death provides us with some of our very best folklore. Some fear it, some embrace it, and most have pretty firm ideas about what happens when we die. Although some people may not want to talk about dying, it's the only thing that happens to all of us--and there's no way to get around it. This publication of the Texas Folklore Society examines the lore of death and whatever happens afterward. The first chapter examines places where people are buried, either permanently or temporarily. Chapter Two features articles about how people die and the rituals associated with funerals and burials. The third chapter explores some of the stranger stories about what happens after we're gone, and the last chapter offers some philosophical musings about death in general, as well as our connection to those who have gone before.
Folklore : In All of Us, in All We Do
Folklore is everywhere, whether you are aware of it or not. A culture's traditional knowledge is used to remember the past and maintain traditions, to communicate with other members within a community, to learn, to celebrate, and to express creativity. It is what helps distinguish one culture from another. Although folklore is so much a part of our daily lives, we often lose sight of just how integral it is to everything we do. If we look for it, we can find folklore in places where we'd never think it existed. Folklore: In All of Us, In All We Do includes articles on a variety of topics. One chapter looks at how folklore and history complement one another; while historical records provide facts about dates, places and names, folklore brings those events and people to life by making them relevant to us. Several articles examine the cultural roles women fill. Other articles feature folklore of particular groups, including oil field workers, mail carriers, doctors, engineers, police officers, horse traders, and politicians. As a follow-up article to Inside the Classroom (and Out), which focused on folklore in education, there is also an article on how teachers can use writing in the classroom as a means of keeping alive the storytelling tradition. The Texas Folklore Society has been collecting and preserving folklore since its first publication in 1912. Since then, it has published or assisted in the publication of nearly one hundred books on Texas folklore.
Folklore in Motion: Texas Travel Lore
The adventurous spirit of Texans has led to much travel lore, from stories of how ancestors first came to the state to reflections of how technology has affected the customs, language, and stories of life on the go. This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society features articles from beloved storytellers like John O. West, Kenneth W. Davis, and F. E. Abernethy as well as new voices like Janet Simonds. Chapters contain traditional Gone to Texas accounts and articles about people or methods of travel from days gone by. Others are dedicated to trains and cars and the lore associated with two-wheeled machines, machines that fly, and machines that scream across the land at dangerous speeds. The volume concludes with articles that consider how we fuel our machines and ourselves, and the rituals we engage in when were on our way from here to there.
Folklore of Texan Cultures
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.
Folk Travelers: Ballads, Tales, and Talk
This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains popular folklore of Texas and Mexico, including traveling anecdotes, folk ballads, folklore in natural history, as well as information about black and white magic, Western animals, and cattle brands.
From Hell to Breakfast
This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society contains African-American baptizings; adventures of a ballad hunter; Carrie-Dykes, a midwife; Big Sam and De Golden Chariot; tale of the two companions; Mexican Münchausen; some odd Mexican customs; legend of the tengo frío bird; leaves of mesquite grass; dancing makes fun; dancing makes rain; Indian sign on the Spaniard's cattle; ear marks; white Comanches; panther yarns; more about "Hell in Texas"; oil patch talk; Old Newt, the practical joker; moron jokes; the musical snake; the song of the little Llano; the threshing crew; and the low down on Jim Bowie.
The Golden Log
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. The Texas Folklore Society offers these tales of early Texas days, told as they were told of old.
Hoein' the Short Rows
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 revival meeting; the ritual of a hog drive; and sagas of families, the Santa Rita rig, poetry by cowboys and common folk alike, and more in this rich acreage.
Hunters & Healers: Folklore Types & Topics
Variety and richness are indeed found in this Publication by the Texas Folklore Society. The first folk type to appear in the book is the hunter, in Francis Abernethy's account of the East Texas communal hunt, which he sees in relation to man's ancient hunting habits. Folk medicine is the topic of the second article, in which Doctor Paul W. Schelder tells about his discovery of the cures used by some of his patients in Denton. In all, this volume consists of sixteen folk tales, with topics ranging from traditional ways of doing things to popular entertainment.
I Heard the Old Fishermen Say folklore of the Texas Gulf Coast
I Heard the Old Fishermen Say is both a lively collection of folk beliefs, magic belief legends, tall tales, buried treasure legends, and other folk narratives and a scholarly analysis of the context and function of these oral accounts from Texas Gulf fishermen. As such, it is an important contribution to the study if regional and occupational folklore.
Juneteenth Texas: Essays in African-American Folklore
Juneteenth Texas, Publications of the Texas Folklore Society #LIV, received a San Antonio Conservation Society award for the preservation of historic buildings, objects and places relating to the history of Texas and its natural beauty and all that is admirably distinctive of our state, and to educate the public with knowledge of our inherited regional values.
Rainbow in the Morning
This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society contains a Texas version of "The Frog's Courting"; a Texas border ballad; folklore of reptiles of the South and Southwest; sayings of old time Texans; episodes at ranch community dances; pioneer Christmas customs of Tarrant County; superstitions of Bexar County; buffalo lore and boudin blanc; old time plantation melodies; the African-American as interpreter of his own folk songs; and South Texas African-American work songs. Appended is the first item published by the Society, a pamphlet by Will H. Thomas on African-American folksongs, which appeared in 1912.
Sonovagun Stew: A Folklore Miscellany
This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society is a traditional Texas literary sonovagun. Cowboy ballads, bateaus, gaucho songs, mineral wells, corridos, Aggie war stories, songs of Bob Wills, Baptist kids, coyotes, and old-time cowboys are all simmered together and spiced with discussions of folklore, heaven, neighborhood gatherings, cotton growing, and family characters.
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Folk Art in Texas
This coffee-table size 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.
Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border
In an illustrious career spanning over forty years, Américo Paredes has often set the standard for scholarship and writing in folklore and Chicano studies. In folklore, he has been in the vanguard of important theoretical and methodological movements. In Chicano studies, he stands as one of the premier exponents. Paredes's books are widely known and easily available, but his scholarly articles are not so familiar or accessible. To bring them to a wider readership, Richard Bauman has selected eleven essays that eloquently represent the range and excellence of Paredes's work. The hardcover edition of Folklore and Culture was published in 1993. This paperback edition will make the book more accessible to the general public and more practical for classroom use.
I Heard the Old Fishermen Say: folklore of the Texas Gulf Coast
I Heard the Old Fishermen Say is both a lively collection of folk beliefs, magic belief legends, tall tales, buried treasure legends, and other folk narratives and a scholarly analysis of the context and function of these oral accounts from Texas Gulf fishermen.
Inherit the Alamo : myth and ritual at an American shrine
Long overshadowed by the towering buildings of downtown San Antonio, the modest little Alamo still evokes tremendous feeling among Texans and, indeed, many other Americans. For Anglo Texans, the Alamo is the Cradle of Texas Liberty and a symbolic confirmation of Manifest Destiny. For Hispanic Texans, however, the Alamo has increasingly become a stolen symbol, its origin as a Spanish mission forgotten, its famous defeat used to exclude Hispanics from an honorable place in Texas history. In this important new book, Holly Beachley Brear explores in fascinating detail what the Alamo means to the numerous groups that lay claim to its heritage. She shows how Alamo myths often diverge from the historical facts--and why. She decodes the agendas of various groups, including the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (who maintain the Alamo buildings and grounds), the Order of the Alamo, the Texas Cavaliers, and LULAC. And she probes attempts by individuals and groups to rewrite the Alamo myth to include more positive roles for themselves, as she explains the value in laying claim to the Alamo's past. With new perspectives on all the sacred icons of the Alamo and the Fiesta that celebrates (one version of) its history each year, Inherit the Alamo is guaranteed to challenge stereotypes and offer new understanding of the Alamo's ongoing role in shaping Texas and American history and mythology. It will be of interest to a wide popular and scholarly audience.
Juneteenth
Shot on the Senate floor by a young Black man, a dying racist senator summons an elderly Black Baptist minister from Oklahoma to his side for a remarkable dialogue that reveals the deeply buried secrets of their shared past and the tragedy that reunites them.
Legends of Texas
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.
On Juneteenth
Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed's On Juneteenth provides a historian's view of the country's long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed-herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s-forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all. Combining personal anecdotes with poignant facts gleaned from the annals of American history, Gordon-Reed shows how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state, African-Americans played an integral role in the Texas story. Reworking the traditional "Alamo" framework, she powerfully demonstrates, among other things, that the slave- and race-based economy not only defined the fractious era of Texas independence but precipitated the Mexican-American War and, indeed, the Civil War itself. In its concision, eloquence, and clear presentation of history, On Juneteenth vitally revises conventional renderings of Texas and national history. As our nation verges on recognizing June 19 as a national holiday, On Juneteenth is both an essential account and a stark reminder that the fight for equality is exigent and ongoing.
Tall Tales from Texas
An entertaining collection of humorous and outrageous stories from the great state of Texas, capturing the unique spirit and culture of this iconic American region. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Texas Myths
Collection of fourteen essays reflecting on aspects of Texas myths including wealth and power, the nature of the family, the "good life," the role of women, and the freedom heritage of African-Americans.
Texian Stomping Grounds
A Publication of the Texas Folklore Society, which examines how Texans of many races have shaped their lives and shaped the state.
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