Eleanor R. Long-Wilgus (1923-2005)

Abstract

Folklore and balladry scholar Eleanor R. Long-Wilgus died on 8 May 2005 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, after a long period of declining health, just a few days after publication of her last book, On the Banks of Mulroy Bay: Stories and Songs about William Sydney Clements, Third Earl of Leitrim (Chapel Hill: Chapel Hill Press, 2005), co-authored with her late husband, D. K. Wilgus. Long-Wilgus was born on 9 February 1923 in Seattle, Washington, eldest daughter of Earl Percy Jones and Myrtle Eleanor Jones. She earned a BS with honours in general studies from Portland State College (now Portland State University) in 1957 and an MA in English Literature from the University of Portland in 1958. In 1968 she received a PhD with distinction in English literature and folklore from the University of California at Los Angeles. Her dissertation, 'The Maid' and 'The Hangman': Myth and Tradition in a Popular Ballad (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), was a historic-geographic study of the Anglo-American ballad designated Child 95, 'The Maid Freed from the Gallows', and its long evolution from folktales of ancient Egypt and Greece. It was awarded the Chicago Folklore Prize in 1971. From 1968 to 1985 she taught folklore, comparative mythology, and medieval literature at Santa Clara University (California), the University of Saskatchewan (Canada), the University of California at Los Angeles, and California State University at Long Beach. From 1983 to 1989 she served as senior editor of the publications of the Oriental Healing Arts Institute of Long Beach, California. She was a member of the Modern Language Association, the American Folklore Society, the Irish Folklore Society, the Canadian Society for Traditional Music, the International Arthurian Society, the International Commission for Ballad Research, and the North Carolina Folklore Society. A major focus of her scholarly career was the comparative study of narrative folk song and popular traditions, doubtless influenced by her two distinguished teachers at UCLA, Wayland Hand and D. K. Wilgus. With Wilgus she put considerable effort into the problems of ballad classification, with particular attention to Irish balladry. In 1993, not long after Wilgus's death, she relocated to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she resumed her research and writing, and quickly became an active member of the local folklore community. Through the curriculum in folklore, she also established the D. K. Wilgus Fellowship in Comparative Ballad and Folksong Study. Designed to honour the life and work of her husband, the fellowship will allow future students to continue the scholarly tradition exemplified by 'DK' and his students. I first met Eleanor when I was helping to run the John Edwards Memorial Foundation at UCLA in the early 1960s. …