The Fife Collection of Western American Folksong and Folklore

Abstract

The authors began their research and writing on the folklore of the Mormons and the West twenty-five years ago. Accounts of their collecting efforts, up to 1948, concentrated largely on Mormon folk- lore, have previously been published in the Bulletin of the University of Utah and Western Folklore Quarterly. Since then the authors -- have expanded their collections to encompass the folklore of the entire West, specializing to a large degree on folksongs and ballads-on what might well be called the primitive poetry of the American West.