Friday 21 February 2020

A Fox Terrier Moment

Ten years ago, reviewing Gillian Mitchell’s The North American Folk Revival (i), I commented on a strange and misleading formulation in the author’s survey of historical folklore research. She had written: ‘Influenced by the activities of British folksong collectors, particularly Cecil Sharp, scholars such as Francis James Child and his pupil, George Lyman Kittredge, began to involve themselves in the study and classification of folksongs’ (p.27). This seemed unlikely, to say the least: Child died in 1896, while Sharp only heard his first Morris tunes in 1899 and did not begin the field collection of song with which he is most associated until 1903. Further, there was no evidence elsewhere that Mitchell really thought this was the case.

I attributed the comment at the time to an unnecessary compression of writing, a problem I came to sympathise with more as I wrote up my PhD. I did also acknowledge that ‘It is impossible to eliminate typos altogether, of course’. (I am glad of this, as my review erroneously gave Child’s death as 1898). I attributed it to individual circumstances, but it was odd enough to remain in my memory.

I now suspect it was not just an individual wrinkle in Mitchell’s writing. Reading Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt’s American Folklore Scholarship (ii), one of the important historical works published around the centenary of the American Folklore Society, I came across this in her survey of Child and Kittredge’s orientation to European scholarship: ‘[Child] maintained extensive correspondence with Andrew Lang in Britain, Reinhold Kohler in Germany, Kaarle Krohn in Finland, Giuseppe Pitré in Italy … and was influenced by Cecil Sharp in England’ (p.101).


Mitchell gave no attribution for her comment on Child and Sharp, but Zumwalt’s book is listed in her bibliography so may well have been an influence. Zumwalt did give a reference for her claim, citing a 1966 article by Alan Dundes. The argument seemed peculiarly un-Dundes-ish, so I went back to his article (iii). Discussing European influence on American scholarship, here is what Dundes actually wrote about Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads: ‘Francis James Child … specifically mentions that he “closely followed the plan of Grundtvig’s Old Popular Ballads of Denmark” … With regard to the collection of Child ballads in the field, one must note that such fieldwork was largely stimulated by the work of an English collector, Cecil Sharp, in the southern Appalachians’ (p.12).

Dundes, then, very much wasn’t saying Child was influenced by Sharp, but that (American) collection of ‘Child ballads’ in the field was. This is actually rather important for Zumwalt’s book, which sometimes does not clarify adequately that the American ‘literary folklorists’ did also engage in fieldwork, although perhaps not as systematically or routinely as their  ‘anthropological’ counterparts. (The less than ideal labels compound Zumwalt’s problems, but playing the terminological hands history has dealt us is a major part of folklorists’ theoretical work).

Given Zumwalt’s reference, it seems likely that this is the earliest point of this confusion. Given Mitchell’s later repetition of the error, clarification was clearly worthwhile.

My aim was not just to clear that up or score one over on Zumwalt, however. In one of his classically witty and smart Natural History essays, the late biologist Stephen Jay Gould examined the place of the fox terrier in what he called ‘the case of the telltale textbook’ (iv). Gould examines the frequently repeated textbook comparison of the size of the early horse Hyracotherium with ‘a fox terrier’. He was intrigued, because he realised he had no idea how big a fox terrier was, prompting his inner voice to say ‘I can’t believe that the community of textbook authors includes only dog fanciers – so if I don’t know, I’ll bet most of them don’t either’ (p.159).

This is how big a fox terrier really is. NB no size referent is given.
He traces the textbook repetition backwards historically. Reading Zumwalt I had a Gouldian fox terrier inner voice moment. Hopefully, in identifying her thankfully well-referenced misrepresentation of Dundes, I have similarly found the earliest appearance of this particular error, albeit working with a much smaller sample than Gould. (I would be interested to know if the mistake is replicated in other scholarship, especially if it transpired that the confusion had been made independently of – or earlier than – Zumwalt).

However, Gould’s broader point also applies. We need to be careful of a temptation simply to reproduce statements from previous scholarship, especially if they seem (suspiciously) neat and succinct. We need to check our sources more carefully, and our writing, to ensure that we have evidence and that we have represented it accurately.

I’m above all mindful of these questions as I start to think about my paper for the Folklore Society’s forthcoming conference, one of the themes of which is precisely learning and the transmission of knowledge. I won’t be speaking directly to my fox terrier moment, but I will try to remember it as I put pen to paper.

*  *  *

ii: Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt, American Folklore Scholarship: A Dialogue of Dissent (Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1988).
iii: Alan Dundes, ‘The American Concept of Folklore’, Journal of the Folklore Institute, 3 (1966), 226-249. I am quoting the article from its reprinting in Alan Dundes, Analytic Essays in Folklore (The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1975), pp. 3-16.
iv: The essay ‘The Case of the Creeping Fox Terrier Clone’ is in Stephen Jay Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus: Further Reflections in Natural History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), pp. 155-167.

Friday 17 January 2020

Suitably chastened ...

Last year was rather grimly preoccupying for me, and most of my available mental time and space was spent dealing with fallout of family loss. It was a pleasant relief over Christmas, therefore, to find that I was thinking again about folklore projects and topics. I found myself thinking about blog posts again, and was looking forward to reviving this rather neglected blog. I hadn't got round to it yet, obviously, but was reassured that the folkloristic engines seemed to be starting up again.

I was even more delighted today to get absolutely right kind of folkloric fillip. Seven previous posts here (not consecutive, of course) were treated this afternoon to the same spam comment advertising the services of a traditional healer. Thank you 'Fatema Davis' for this [email address removed, but otherwise as posted]:

'my partner and I have been trying for a baby for over two years now, We were going to a fertility clinic for about 5 months before somebody at baby center told us to contact this spell caster who is so powerful, We contacted him at this email; babaka.wolf@xxxxx.xxx or Facebook at priest.babaka , for him to help us, then we told him our problem, he told us that we will conceive once we follow his instructions ,but after two years of trying we were at a point where we were willing to try anything. And I'm glad we came to Priest Babaka, Because his pregnancy spell cast and herbal remedy help us, and I honestly believe him, and his gods really helped us as well, I am thankful for all he has done. contact him via email: babaka.wolf@xxxxx.xxx or Facebook at priest.babaka if you are trying to have a baby or want your lover back. he has powers to do it, he has done mine'



It's not quite as beautiful as the healers' cards I used to find around London, but I'm glad cyberspace is filling a gap in my folkloric vistas.

And with that, I'm back.