Collection Of Folk Songs Research Articles

Theorizing Latvian Lives: The Quest for Identity

This article examines the nature of contemporary Latvian life stories. These accounts of the Soviet invasion and its long aftermath constitute a hybrid genre which unites personal and collective experience. They are intended by their authors to provide a literal representation ofthe past but in the process ofacquiring coherence they come to act as potent carriers of literary and cultural meanings, which confirm personal identity and national loyalties. The authors are engaged in a quest for meaning in often disrupted and chaotic lives. The common structure of the stories which result from this quest reflects large-scale historical events such as the post-war deportations ofthe Balts, as well as the incorporation of literary and folkloric paradigms. Life stories form the core of this article. Their central position was dictated by the insistence of my informants who transformed a modest research project on neurasthenia into one which addressed fundamental problems of violence and destiny.1 My research was carried out between 1992 and 1993 when the euphoria of independence united Latvians in a common cause. It seemed as though floodgates to the past had burst open. Wherever I turned I encountered stories of the past so powerful and compelling that it was difficult to know whether they were pursuing me or I them. Each spoke of an individual life and yet rested on a common structure. My argument in this article is that the similarities between these life histories derive both from Latvian history and from membership of a symbolic and textual community. The collective nature of these narratives derives from several sources. Undeniably, narratives reflect similar experiences. However, in so far as they claim testimonial status, these stories assume a responsibility for representing Latvian destiny generally Thus individuals frame their accounts as typical of other Latvian lives. Since 1990 extensive publication of the lives of deportees and prisoners has unwittingly provided literary models of story-telling. Finally, but not least, stories and histories familiar from childhood listenings and readings are borrowed to create coherence. Such borrowings have historical precedents. The National Awakening of the 1860s had as one of its goals the rehabilitation of Latvian peasant identity and Latvian literature was central to this project. Whereas literature had earlier been a distinguishing feature of the Baltic Germans, the pastoral literature of the second half of the nineteenth century rehabilitated and ennobled the Latvian peasant. The collection and publication of folk songs or dainas begun in the 1870s by Krisjans Barons consolidated national identity.2 Their classification according to the life

Peter Andrew Hall, 1936–1996

Peter Hall's death from cancer in December last year after a mercifully short illness, following close upon the similarly premature deaths of David Buchan, Alan Bruford and Kenny Goldstein, comes as a severe blow to the world of traditional music and song, for Peter possessed the very rare ability to combine the roles of performer, collector, musicologist and scholar. Born in London, he was brought up in Aberdeen and Newcastle. He came to Aberdeen University in 1955 to read first medicine, then after National Service, for a science degree. He entered the teaching profession, graduating B.Ed. from Aberdeen University in 1972, and spent a professional lifetime in the region as a dedicated and stimulating physics teacher, standing down only weeks before his death. In 1959 he married a fellow student Marion Maclennan, who was later to become an obstetrician and gynaecologist of international repute. With her he shared a love of music, and with the advent of the Folk Song Revival his obsession with jazz band playing turned to a passionate interest in folksong and folklore. The northeast of Scotland has been known to scholars for hundreds of years as one of the richest areas in the world for its vibrant tradition of folksong. When Francis James Child initiated a search for the great balladry of Britain in the middle of the last century he was directed to Aberdeenshire; at the beginning of this century the region produced the 3,500 songs of the Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection. Thanks to collectors such as Hamish Henderson, it became clear in the 1960s that the area was still rich in singers, especially amongst the travellers, of whom Jeannie Robertson became a famous example. Peter opened this treasurehouse, reading widely and collecting from tramps and travellers, farmworkers and northeast folk. In 1962 he was a founder member of the Aberdeen Folk Song Club, and went on to establish a group to perform the rich northeast material in 1967. The final line-up of the Gaugers (Peter Hall, Tom Spiers and Arthur Watson), issued Topic's Beware of the Aberdonian in 1976, and were completing an important series of commercial recordings for Aberdeen City Library at the time of his death (The Fighting Scot, SPRC 1031, 1990; Awa' wi' the Rovin' Sailor, CACD 101, 1994). He tape-recorded over six hundred items of folksong and folktale in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Banffshire, and in the west of Ireland. Many were employed in commercial recordings, or in broadcasts, and many were lodged with the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh. He was a spirited singer and able musician (having exchanged the jazz trumpet for the concertina and melodeon), and was invited to perform on radio and television and at concerts and festivals throughout Britain, France, Germany and Belgium. …

Fifteen Years of Folk Song Collection in Japan: Reports and Recordings of the "Emergency Folk Song Survey"

Evaluation du projet de collecte des chansons japonaises populaires (« min'yō ») et description des principales caracteristiques des rapports de recherche. Une attention particuliere est donnee aux problemes methodologiques lies a la classification des chansons

Irish Urban Cultures ed. by Chris Curtin, Hastings Donnan, and Thomas M. Wilson

elation of the “lived experience” of the recent Irish arrivals in Queens and the Bronx. The interviews which illuminate many of her findings provide vivid accounts of the rewards and difficulties they encounter. Most important, Corcoran makes her reader aware that Irish immigration to the United States is an ongoing cultural phenomenon with serious implications for both Ireland and America. —Lea Ann Flanagan Irish Urban Cultures, ed. by Chris Curtin, Hastings Donnan, and Thomas M. Wilson. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, The Queen’s University of Belfast, 1993, £5.95. At the beginning of his chapter “Dublin 16: Accounts of Suburban Lives” in this new study of Irish urban life, Hervé Varenne observes that “The only justification for anthropology, the only reason why it should be supported by non-anthropologists , lies in its struggle to construct holistic accoutns of the life of human beings in their local circumstances.” Varenne is correct in his call for a relevant inquiry and most of the thirteen chapters of this book successfully link detailed research into the day-to-day lives of urban residents with larger social theories. Without question, there has been a scarcity of Irish sociological literature based on solid urban research. In their introductory chapter the editors point out that most anthropological research in Ireland has focused on rural, instead of urban, communities. Where, as in Belfast, urban ethnographic themes have been addressed, they have too often focused narrowly on violence and sectarianism. Since 1977, the majority of Irish citizens have come to reside in cities or towns. Contemporary Irish cities, like all other postmodern urban areas, suffer their share of problems, including sprawling suburbanization, class conflict, gender inequality, and alienation . Irish Urban Cultures makes an important contribution to Irish social science literature in several ways beyond its obvious concern for urban themes and issues. First, it has a breadth of topics; any reader will find at least one chapter that will be of interest. Second, it does not confine its research to the Republic of Ireland but includes Northern Ireland in a significant way and thereby treats Irish cities in both the North and the South as part of one culture. Each chapter examines a different urban issue and locale. Chapters two and three document the urban planning process in Northern Ireland and critically analyze the implications of these plans for social groups and social change. Top-down planning is the norm within the centralized British system of Northern Ireland. This approach not only alienates many citizens, as shown in the example of transportation planning in Belfast, but also can produce wasteful mistakes—as in the case of the Craigavon new town. Dublin is the focus of chapters five and six, which discusses the importance of the personal dimension in local politics and the pecuBOOK REVIEWS 177 liarities of middle-class life in suburban Dublin. Traditional anthropological research into urban social groups is provided in chapters eight to ten where the values and behaviors of teenage girls in Cork, homeless men in Galway, and travelling people in Galway are explored. Finally, the two chapters provide historic ethnographic accounts that address the evolution of urban places and the nature of urbanization in an industrial town. Ireland is a European nation and one outcome of reading Irish Urban Cultures should be a greater appreciation of the similarities between the Irish and European urban experience. The editors argue that we need to highlight Ireland’s European commonalities instead of its differences. Furthermore, they contend that, owing to the smaller scale and size of its cities, Ireland could be a test case for implementing urban revitalization strategies. Irish Urban Cultures provides us with a more contemporary and sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of Irish urban life. —David O. Rafter Narrative Singing in Ireland: Lays, Come-All-Yes and Other Songs, by Hugh Shields, pp. 256, Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993, $39.50. Some of the most energetic folksong collecting activity of this century has gone on in Ireland, but despite this—and despite such extensive resources as the Irish Traditional Music Archive and the Folk Music Archives at University College Dublin— there has long been a dearth of published material on traditional Irish song...

Ron Edwards and the Rams Skull Press

ABSTRACTRon Edwards is a publishing and artistic phenonemon, an outstanding figure in Australian cultural history. His career as the owner of a small private press, printer and publisher spews 40 years, and he has worked with artists, writers, printers, and folklorists, who are important figures in the post-war Australian cultural renaissance. His interests are diverse, ranging from his early days in Victoria as a small press publisher of limited edition books (mainly vehicles for fine black and white lino-cut illustration), his work in Australian book illustration and as a landscape painter in oils and water colour, through his passionate and enduring devotion to the collection and publishing of folksongs and yarns and crafts of the North Queensland frontier.He is probably the most influential, and certainly the most versatile figure of the Australian folk revival, with work in folksong, folk yarns, bushcrafts and traditional leatherwork, and traditional Torres Strait Island cookery. He is still active i...

Folk Song Collecting in China - a Short Survey

Folk Song Collecting in China - a Short Survey

New England Singing Tradition

Lawrence Millman, in a review of several recent albums devoted to elderly traditional Anglo-American singers (JAF 96:114-116), makes seriously misleading statements about the Northeast heritage that cannot pass without comment. Millman uses Sara Cleveland (Philo 1020) as his springboard. I have no particular quarrel with his evaluation of the album per se (though he totally sidesteps the impact that folk music scholars like Kenneth Goldstein, plus folk concert adulation, have had upon her repertory and style), but I do wish to address his unfounded claims concerning Northeast folksong tradition. Millman asserts, Northeast is not exactly a haven for traditional vocalists. Perhaps this is a result of the New Englander's much-vaunted separateness, his lonely pursuit of his own granitic fate. In response to these pronouncements, one need only be reminded of the extensive folksong collections by Barry, Harkness and Flanders, Porter, Ives, and Cazden (among others). Various albums since the 1950s featuring New York State singers other than Cleveland-John Galusha, Grant Rogers, Lawrence Older, Ted Ashlaw-add to the list. Surely this evidence makes a mockery of the old chestnut about inexpressive Northeast folk, particularly as regards traditional song. A more accurate observation does warrant mention: namely, that New England voices haven't been captured on record to the same degree as Southern counterparts. Equally unsettling is Millman's claim that New England singers, in contrast to Southerners, seem to relish death and gore for purity's sake, irrespective of the social order. Murder and disaster are the bread-and-butter of Northeastern balladry. The remarks here sweep aside decades of observation about American ballad subject matter as found throughout the country, and certainly present a distorted picture of the repertory as actually found in the South. Intentionally or not, Millman sets up a gross stereotype that is equivalent to saying that Southerners collectively are hung up in songs renouncing this life for deliverance in the next. His additional point that, Few of the older New England singers have concerned themselves with [protest] in any overt way is more defensible, at least as worded, but then conditions in the lumberwoods weren't exactly on the order of the coal mining industry elsewhere (mill and canal work in the Northeast are another matter). It is always nice to find record reviews that give space to the New England tradition, such as we have it on vinyl. But let that exposure be an accurate one.

Greig Duncan Provisional Bibliography

ALTHOUGH the publication of the Greig Duncan Folk Song Collection is well under way, Volume 2 having appeared this Spring, no bibliography concerning the authors or their collection exists. I have been trying to remedy this situation and the following is an attempt at a provisional bibliography. I would be grateful for the assistance of readers of Folklore in making it as complete and accurate as possible, and would welcome amendments or additions,being aware that there may well be many gaps, especially in the musical references: the Buchan Observer of the time, for example, is held only by the British Library at Colindale and I have not had the time or resources to search it properly. I would be especially grateful for dates of first performances of Greig's dramatic productions, and for help with the unverified references. The majority of the references are either universally available or may be found in the University of Aberdeen Library; these are unmarked. Other sources have been the Aberdeen City District Library (ACDL), North East Scotland Libraries Association (NESLA), the National Library of Scotland (NLS) and the Scottish Record Office, and these have been indicated by bracketed abbreviations. I have made no attempt at this stage to indicate those references which are of major importance and those which are frankly trivial (many of the latter appear in listings of the above libraries and have had therefore to be included) but would be more than willing to so do for any interested research worker.

The Song beyond the Song Aesthetics and Social Interaction in Greek Folksong

body of meaning that is accessible to the outsider.1 Either a plot, however nominal, or the clarity of the situation, such as death, becomes the means for thematic organization and the conveyance of meaning. Though layers of additional meaning are created, for example, in performance or through metaphors and allusions with traditional, regional associations, there is, nonetheless, a degree of apparent accessibility in the content of the song that allows even an audience unfamiliar with folk poetry to apply, to some degree, the western aesthetics of written poetry to the interpretation of it. There is, however, a considerable corpus of folksongs and range of performance styles in most local repertories that appear to lack any of these devices for making sense common to other more familiar types of poetry: beginnings, middles or endings, smooth transitions from theme to theme, even minimal plot, etc. It is performance, rather than song type, which renders this body of folk poetry incomprehensible by western aesthetics. Whereas written collections of folksongs (Aravandinos 1880; Fauriel 1824; Petropoulos 1959; Politis 1914; etc.) present us with apparently complete versions of songs, performance often yields songs which appear fragmentary. Performance and social context reveal a body of meaning connected with the usage of songs, particularly when these are components of a larger performance event. In the past few years, a significant number of performance studies in folkloristics has provided us with useful models and methodologies for understanding oral events (see, e.g., Ben-Amos and Goldstein 1975; Bauman 1977; Paredes and Bauman 1972). An important source of folk aesthetics can be extracted from folk criticism-the criticism of the tradition bearers themselves. On the other hand, Albert Lord in his book The Singer of Tales demonstrates the existence of a

Folk Song Collecting in Sussex and Surrey, 1843–1914

Folk Song Collecting in Sussex and Surrey, 1843–1914

The Karl Becker Manuscripts: A German Folk Song Collection in the Library of Congress

The Karl Becker Manuscripts: A German Folk Song Collection in the Library of Congress

Modern Greek Folk Music and Dance in the New York Public Library

In January of 1970 the Music Division of The New York Public Library had the opportunity to acquire part of the personal library of the late Minos Dounias, music critic in Athens for a quarter of a century. He had long been interested in the folk music of his country (he authored the article on Greek folk music for Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart), and a number of volumes in his collection filled important gaps in the Library's holdings. Subsequently, Mrs. Evro Layton, under the aegis of the Modern Greek Studies Association, entered into an agreement to supply to the Library all current imprints from Greece which fall within the scope of NYPL's collecting policies, including, of course, folklore. (A number of other large research libraries have also subscribed to this plan.) Then, in 1973, the Library surveyed its collections in order to contribute to the forthcoming Handbook of Research Resources on East Central and Southeastern Europe, sponsored by the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. These three circumstances following closely upon one another provided the impetus for a thorough examination of the Greek folk music and dance collections at NYPL, and this bibliography is the result. As early as 1907 it was recognized that the folk song collections of the Reference Department (now known as the Research Libraries) of The New York Public Library were particularly strong. (See List of works in The New York Public Library relating to folk songs, folk music, ballads, etc. in the Bulletin of The New York Public Library, Vol. XI, No. 5, May 1907, p. 187-226.) And then with the publication of Donald C. Swanson's important Modern Greek Studies in the West (New York, The New York Public Library, 1960), which was largely based upon the Library's own collections, it became generally recognized that serious American scholars of modern Greek language and culture could not ignore NYPL's resources. It is difficult to make comparisons

Poljske ljudske pesmi v priredbi Ludwiga van Beethovna

Poljske ljudske pesmi v priredbi Ludwiga van Beethovna

A Small Bag Of Ballads From The Hills

A Small Bag Of Ballads From The Hills (With comments about origin and background plus musical notations by student musicologist, Richard Shelby) In our essay-editorial, "The Keepers of The Garden", we said all we felt necessary about ballad-pushers and folklore collectors. If we seem here to hedge on our earlier pronouncements, so be it. But, not so. For our purposes (longrange ) and for our anticipated readers these ballads have relevance. They prove that old "traditional" ballads still have sparse existence in true oral transmission and that the hill folk composed ballads of their own. Although they may provide the superficial interest of novelty, they also have relevance as historical and cultural artifacts. Later we expect to use more of them in more comprehensive, interpretive essays. During the summer we spent a great deal of time building a collection of folk songs transcribing and filing hoping eventually to have records and examples ranging from English and Scottish traditional ballads all the way up to Modern Bluegrass. We transcribed from tapes already made and added new ones. From this collection we elected to present three "murder" ballads, two American (one local) and one "traditional" for the first issue. Ballads, of course, tell a story and are songs, but often the "story" of the circumstances and events that inspired the ballads, the background, or the history of the ballad, especially when traditional, increases the interest of the ballads themselves. So, we include the words and tunes as we found them and some "story" material about them. "Floyd Frazure" (or Frazier) and the "Ballad of Charles J. Guiteau" were received from Mrs. Thelma Osborne and her mother-in-law, Mrs. Vada Smith Osborne of Maytown, Kentucky. Mrs. Vada Smith Osborne said she first heard 'Floyd Frazure'"sung at a square dance when Linvell Perkins sung it". She also said that when she herself was a child her mother, Lina (Linie) Tignor of Troublesome Creek in Knott County, sang the "Ballad of Charles J. Guiteau". Vada Smith Osborne was born in 1897. "Floyd Frazure" tells of a murder committed in Letcher County, Kentucky , at about the turn of the century. Legend has it that Floyd's mother and Ellen Flannery were courting the same man and that Floyd's mother hired him to kill her rival with promise of a new suit of clothes. Further, Floyd supposedly helped build the scaffold on which he would hang and picked the banjo seemingly without knowing the full extent of his crime or coming punishment. Today, we would probably say he was retarded. However, from the scaffold he is reported to have cried out: "Goodbye to everybody, forever and forever. My mother, oh my mother, oh Lord, oh Lord." The "Ballad of Charles J. Guiteau" had particular interest to the people along the Big Sandy River because James A. Garfield's first major assignment as a Union officer was to clear out the Rebels from the Big Sandy. He was remembered for his fairness and for forbidding his soldiers to do any looting. Shortly before his assassination he sent the man who acted as scout for him along the Big Sandy $100 for a visit to the White House, but the President was dead before the visit could materialize. As so often happens with murder and hanging ballads, in this case the convicted man is reported to have composed the ballad and sung it on the scaffold. "Lovin' Henry" is a famous old Scottish ballad, known to folklorists as Child 68, "Young Hunting". Many variants have been collected in the United States, of which this seems one of the better ones. But, as with the others, it has lost almost all of the supernatural effects that made it more interesting and exciting in the "old country". It came to us from Letcher County, Kentucky, under the shadow of Black Mountain; 31 APPALACHIAN HERITAGE but the tape does not make clear which of the old ladies sang it, and the students who did the taping failed to give identification before leaving. We turned the tapes over to Richard Shelby without comment for musical notation. Here is what he told us, and then the ballads. ./soocsocsoecsoacos«'* "Floyd Frasure...

Repertoire Categorization and Performer-Audience Relationships: Some Newfoundland Folksong Examples

In 1951, Herbert Halpert pointed out that ... the song is much more significant for understanding the function of folk song in a community than is an infrequently sung or little known older ballad, no matter how much more satisfying the rare ballad may be to our aesthetic sensibilities, or our egos (Halpert 1951:40). Halpert's conclusions suggest that the folksong collections aptly described by D. K. Wilgus as Child and (Wilgus 1959:145ff.) tend to bias our perception of the repertoires of folksingers. Unfortunately the question is a song? is not easily answered. Considerations of composition and content raised by the term local may lead to a classification process which differs only semantically from that pursued by the disciples of Child. Every song in a singer's repertoire is in some way a song, no matter what its content or source. One way of avoiding such classificatory problems is to examine the ways in which folksingers consciously or unconsciously categorize their own repertoires. In a recent paper Kenneth S. Goldstein restated Von Sydow's concepts of active and inactive tradition bearers, showing that particular songs in a singer's repertoire move from active to passive status and vice versa in response to specific factors (Goldstein 1971). Goldstein discusses the informant and his repertoire largely in terms of the informant's personal history. In describing the ways in which singers categorize their repertoires, another dimension becomes important: the relationship between the performer and his audience. A singer interacts with his audiences in the way that a politician interacts with parts or all of his constituency. The good singer is aware of the likes and dislikes of the groups and individuals for whom he performs. He manipulates his repertoire in response to perceived or anticipated performances, giving his constituents what he thinks they would like to hear. He is more or less sensitive to their feedback and thus quick to react in situations in which either his or their expectations are not fulfilled. Most of the data cited in the following discussion was collected in two widely separated Newfoundland communities, one of Irish background, the other of English.

The Wren Hunt Song

IT may be of interest to compare a few versions of the Wren Hunt song' which was formerly well known in Britain2 which have been recorded in this century from both sides of the Atlantic. One version is sung today in County Durham, and was published last year.3 The other versions were recorded some years ago in America (some of them antedate versions mentioned by E. A. Armstrong and by Iona and Peter Opie), and have been published in collections of folksongs. Three versions, the Durham one and two of the Texan ones, are published with their tunes. In the version from County Durham, the wren has become a cock sparrow, and the song cheerfully goes off at a tangent, suggesting a youthful Saturday frolic, while retaining some idea of the carriage on which the wren was carried home, in the train which the hunters themselves propose to take. A similar thing happened in a Yorkshire variant discussed by E. A. Armstrong, where the hunters suggest hiring a cab to take them home.

Pentatonicism in Hungarian Folk Music

t should not surprise anyone who is already aware of the restricted content of our published folksong collections and superficial samplings of folksong from a few of our regions, that recent research, more thorough and wider in geographical scope, has brought to light fresh material which has provided us with new notions hitherto unsuspected from such folksong publications as Matray's, Szini's and Bartalus'. We now know that the five-tone scale, a criterion for judging the beginnings of many, if not all peoples', musical culture, exists and flourishes in our tradition since Bela Bart6k first discovered a large number of pentatonic melodies among the Szekely of Transylvania in 1907. Where are such melodies to be found? Besides the Szekelys, we are able to ascertain that melodies of the pentatonic type are well known among the Csangos of Bukovina. There are traces of pentatonicism in the folklore of Trans-danubia as well as among the Hungarian population of the Northern Carpathian Mountains. In other words, everywhere where vestiges of an old folk culture still survive. That this folk culture was once unified is conjecturable from the surprising analogy among the fragments that have been collected from the various regions. At one time, the so-called was regarded as the most characteristic feature of Hungarian music. This has long since been recognized as a misconception. If we look for features which distinguish the music of the Magyar folk from that of her neighbors, we single out as the foremost feature, next to rhythm, the presence of pentatonicism. Construction of the scale. Our five-tone scale is a natural, or melodically descending, minor scale from which the second and sixth degrees are omitted. If we select, for instance, g as the tonic note, the scale comprises the notes g'-b-tlat-c-d-f. The majority of melodies extend below the finalis g' to f', and touch the octave of the tonic, g. On rare occasions it also extends to the upper 3rd, the b-flat. Thus, the widest possible melodic range is: f-g'-b-flat-c-d-f-g-b-flat'; and the narrowest: g'-b-flat-c-d. The latter melodies comprise only four notes, in which case one could speak of tetratonicism. However, these melodies are exceptional. Since half steps do not occur, our scale is of the anhemitonic pentatonic type.

The Case of the Angels: The Relevance of the Research by Classical Scholar John Cuthbert Lawson (1874-1919) on Modern Greek Culture

Case of the Angels: The Relevance of the Research by Classical Scholar John Cuthbert Lawson (1874-1919) on Modern Greek Culture
 In my paper I focus on the well-known John Cuthbert Lawson’s study about Modern Greek folklore (1910) and I venture to verify if it may be regarded as a reliable source of information about Greek folk beliefs. I base my argument on the eschatological remarks Lawson made concerning the personification of Death – Charos and his relationship to the Christian Angels. Confronting Lawson’s views and his source material with other similar demotic songs, mainly from the collections he had had access to, I try to show in what way the older collections of folk-songs might have distorted or falsified the eschatological images of Charos and the Angels, and what he overlooked while analyzing the sources. I also shed some light on possible influences of Byzantine orthodoxy on Modern Greek folk tradition to which Greek demotic songs belong.

Srbske teme v ruski glasbi druge polovice 19. stoletja

Srbske teme v ruski glasbi druge polovice 19. stoletja

Southwest Writers Anthology ed. by Martin Shockley

Reviews 257 Mexico to Colorado. His life ended in Brown’s H ole in 1900, when he was shot from ambush by “regulator” Tom Horn. Accounts of Huddleston’s adventures and misadventures are scattered, fragmentary, sometimes contradictory. They suggest more than they tell, and they tease a historian with short glimpses of what must have been a sometimes heroic, sometimes pathetic, always complex man. T he dearth of reliable bio­ graphical material helps to make Huddleston a nearly fabulous figure. In One M ore R iver to Cross, W illHenry has taken Ned Huddleston’s career and set out “to follow it in spirit,to mark it in memory, to restore it to its rightful place among the classic strange true tales of the American herit­ age.” And so he has written an exciting novel that is remarkably faithfulto the known facts of the black cowboy’s early life and young manhood. Yetit is unmistakably a novel with all the usual W ill Henry gusto, drive, and crafts­ manship in characterization, action, and dialogue. As a novelist, Henry is somewhat handicapped by his fidelity to available facts. Occasionally characters are introduced who seem to be supernumeraries, unnecessary to move the story or heighten a conflict. They were discovered, one suspects, by conscientious research, and the novelist has used them because they were “really there.” But these are minor, very occasional distractions in an absorbing and unusual novel. T he dramatic resolution of the story’s final conflict could easily occasion the kind of criticism and defense recently provoked by W illiam Styron’s attempt to recreate the life of Nat Turner. Any novelist who deals with the struggles of a black man in a racist society must inevitably make hard choices in the development of character and plot. W ill Henry has faced his own choices squarely and has written a fascinating, provocative novel. E v e r e t t L. J ones, University of California, Los Angeles Southwest W riters Anthology. Edited by Martin Shockley. (Austin: SteckVaughn , 1967. 348 pages, $2.95.) Professor Shockley’s handy, soft-cover anthology overlaps and yet comple­ ments such regional collections as C. L. Sonnichsen’s Southwest in Life and Literature (1962), George Sessions Perry’s R oundup Tim e (1943), and Mabel 258 Western American Literature Major and Rebecca W. Smith’s Southwest in Literature (1929). Also, this latest Southwest anthology is a handmaiden to the first of a continuing series of critical pamphlets in Steck-Vaughn’s attractive Southwest Writers Series. In this collection of folk songs and tales, biographical and historical essays, poetry, and fiction, the state best represented is the editor’s own Texas —perhaps because Texas, along with less populated New Mexico, lures more artists than either Arizona or Oklahoma. Besides adhering to geographical stipulation—Southern Colorado but not Southern California is “Southwest”— the editor has made his selections with an objective eye to their cultural and formal values. But each selection also has passed the editor’s subjective test of memorableness. The volume’s simple-to-complex organization and full critical- histor­ ical apparatus advance its pedagogical utility, but should not alienate the general reader or Western scholar. Mountain and desert, pine and cactus, flood and drouth naturally figure as background or foreground for a variety of peoples and occupations in the Land of Extremes. Selections treating Anglos and Cattle Culture outnumbers others, but in the non-Melting Pot of the Southwest, Indian, Spanish-American, and Negro, too, have added their mite to English Southwest literature— as the efforts of John Joseph Matthews, Amcrico Paredes, and J. Mason Brewer testify. Other contributors: John C. Duval, Mary Austin, J. Frank Dobie, Charles Goodnight, Marquis James, Paul Horgan, Joseph W ood Krutch, W illiam A. Owens, George Sessions Perry, Walter Prescott Webb, Charles A. Sirengo, Stanley Vestal, John Graves, Roy Bedichek, Oliver La Farge, Ruth Averitte, Berta Hart Nance, Haniel Long, W itter Bynner, W hitney Montgomery, Vaida Montgomery, Fay Yauger, Arthur Sampley, Gene Shuford, Everett A. Gillis, Thomas Whitbread, W illiam D. Barney, George Milburn, Larry McMurtry, Conrad Richter, Fred Gipson, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Alice Marriott, Andy Adams, John Thomason, Tom Lea, O. Henry, Katherine Anne Porter...