Customer Reviews

Myths & Legends of Our Own Land: Volume 1

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If you're looking for a great collection of folklore and can look beyond the obvious prejudices of Victorian America, then Skinner's two volume compilation is for you. Published in the years before the establishment of the American Folklore Society, and well before folklore and ethnography became real topics of study in the U.S., this compilation is a treasure trove of information tricked out in Victorian gingerbread prose. Skinner takes us from the Notheast to the South, across the heartland, and on to the West coast stopping along the way to consider marvelous happenings, "Indian" lovers' leaps, pacts with the devil, buried treasure, rains of stones, lake monsters, and other local lore. Unfortunately, documentation is missing. In addition I sometimes have the feeling that Skinner cribbed from the old boiler plate subscription services that editors of country newspapers often padded out their issues with, meaning that some of the stories may simply be "fake" lore. Many stories also seem to echo each other in plot, word choice, and idiom, which may be more an indication of Mr. Skinner's artistic limitations than a reflection on the veracity of the contents. Warts and all, however, this set is a must have for serious students of American folklore, if only to see what written form it took at the turn of the nineteenth century.