This volume presents a new Bison Books edition of essays written and published in various journals by Louise Pound between 1913 and 1957 and first published in this collection in 1959. Most of the essays pertain to Nebraska folklore, and Pound herself collected and edited them shortly before her death in June, 1958. This new edition of Pound’s essays is valuable because it testifies to her lasting significance as a pioneer in folklore studies and a trailblazing woman and academic worthy of continued admiration. The cover photograph, which depicts Pound in a long skirt and high-collared blouse standing beside a bicycle, reinforces Pound’s status as a legend in her own right. Though the photograph remains uncredited and unexplained in the book, it probably is meant to refer to a legend about Pound with which Roger Welsch concludes his new introduction, according to which Pound, upon hearing that the police planned to raid a Lincoln sporting club where her brother Roscoe happened to be, hopped on her bicycle and rode there to warn him, only to be apprehended herself. In his fun and appreciative biographical introduction, Welsch, who has taught classes on folklore in the same classrooms at the University of Nebraska as Pound once did, characterizes Pound as a frontier scholar whose life began and played out in Nebraska. The true frontier, inhabited by immigrants of varying European backgrounds as well as Native Americans, Nebraska during Pound’s lifetime (1872-1958) surrounded her with a unique mixture of folk traditions. It was also a place that bred individuality and pioneering spirit. Yet, Welsch emphasizes, Pound’s success in folklore studies was not due solely to her fortuitous circumstances but also to her fiery and independent personality. He describes her as “an explosive iconoclast who regularly lobbed bombs into the quiet halls of academia” in Nebraska and worldwide (viii-ix).
The final three essays appearing in the appendix are the most important, because in them Pound explicates her pioneering view of folklore. These essays extend beyond the title’s promised topic, yet provide context for understanding the case studies on Nebraska folklore in the rest of the volume. In “Folklore and Dialect” and “The Scholarly Study of Folklore,” Pound makes it clear that folklore is not defined by its origins, a common view among her predecessors, who insisted that folklore had to originate among the common people: “My personal definition of folklore would omit all delimitations of origin, characterizing it simply as lore traditional among homogeneous groups,” groups which can be circumscribed by occupation, class, race, or nationality (217-218). Folklore must be traditional, but it need not be ancient (231). Furthermore, folklore is not static but changing, and its origins (or authorship, in the case of songs or stories) are unknown, at least among the people who pass it down. In these two articles, Pound also details the history of the study of folklore in Europe and America and discusses the contemporary state of the increasingly popular field. In “Folklore and Dialect,” moreover, Pound likens dialect to a species of folklore, providing insight into the relationship of her overlapping interests in folklore and linguistics. In the third essay in the appendix, “American Folksong,” Pound applies the same "folklore" criteria to American folk songs in particular and discusses the primary venues and modes of their transmission in the nineteenth century.
In the essays specifically on Nebraska folklore, which comprise the bulk of the book, Pound exemplifies her pioneering view of folklore and models rigorous methods for its study using the “raw material” (viii) provided by her home state. The first three essays, “Nebraska Cave Lore,” “Nebraska Snake Lore,” and “Nebraska Rain Lore and Rain Making,” are collections of lore on these topics garnered with the help of graduate students by direct inquiry with rural Nebraskans and by perusing old newspapers and other archival sources. In the next three essays, “The Nebraska Legend of the Weeping Water,” “Nebraska Legends of Lovers’ Leaps,” and “The Legend of the Lincoln Salt Basin,” Pound recounts particular legends and finds their origins through comparative analysis, making use of European Romantic stories as well as historical geographic surveys based on tales by white settlers falsely attributed to Indians. In “The John G. Maher Hoaxes,” Pound uses oral and newspaper reports to preserve for posterity the life of Maher, a western correspondent of the New York Herald. Legends and rumors often begin as hoaxes, and Maher perpetrated a number of them. In “Nebraska Strong Men,” Pound attempts to trace the origins of three Nebraska strong men, Febold Feboldson, Antoine Barada, and Moses Stocking. She revisits the story of Antoine Barada in more detail in “Nebraska’s Antoine Barada Again” to separate folklore about the “half-breed” born of a French nobleman and an Indian woman from his true biography, for “[f]olklore is of interest and it has its degree of importance, but it should be distinguished from history” (143). In “Olof Bergstrom: Swedish Pioneer,” Pound again uses oral history interviews to record the life of a Nebraska pioneer, a leader of Swedish immigrants in Dawson County.
Two essays follow, which like those of the appendix do not specifically relate to Nebraska yet are included here because of their importance in Pound’s work on folklore. In a brief introduction, Pound characterizes her 1912 article, “The Southwestern Cowboy Songs and English and Scottish Popular Ballads,” as “a pioneer venture questioning the then accepted position…in American ballad literature” of their communal composition. In “Yet Another Joe Bowers,” she details numerous, conflicting accounts of the origin of the popular song. Finally, the anthology ends the way it began with a collection of “Old Nebraska Folk Customs” from the nineteenth century, many of which Pound recalled from her own experience.
This book has historical value for the folklorist as a celebration of Louise Pound’s life and accomplishments, and entertainment value for all readers, who will enjoy not only the old Nebraskan legends, personalities, customs, and amusing anecdotes preserved in its pages but also Pound’s straightforward and logical prose.
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[Review length: 1011 words • Review posted on February 15, 2007]