Tongue Tanglers from Central Pennsylvania

Abstract

C OFFIN'S carefully compiled and already indispensable Analytical Index to the JAF, complete to 1958, shows Pennsylvania to be one of our most poorly represented states with respect to the collection and study of its folklore. Indeed, in the area of folk sayings, as distinct from folktales and folksongs, there has been but one short article pertaining to Pennsylvania (a brief Notes and Queries item) published in the JOURNAL during the last twenty years. Dialect dictionaries, as well as bibliographical and other sources, similarly emphasize the insufficiency of studies of the oral traditional heritage of the Keystone State. In view of the folk and near folklike characteristics of large segments of Pennsylvania's population, with its numerous ethnic communities, both rural and urban, it is impossible to believe the state to be as lacking in oral art and traditional speechways as the published literature of folkloristic scholarship seems so strongly to suggest. During the spring and summer of 1958, students in two undergraduate anthropology courses at The Pennsylvania State University evidenced a somewhat morethan-usual interest in the subject of Charles Francis Potter's sprightly article on Tongue Twisters in the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend.' Several students felt that they knew better examples of tongue teasers than those quoted or cited in this article. This, of course, led to their being invited to submit examples of those they had heard in their own communities. I herewith record those offered by students representing central Pennsylvania, an area here regarded as consisting of Centre County and counties surrounding it to the east, south, and west. The Pennsylvania State University is located in approximately the center of this central area of the state.