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The Business Man in American Folklore1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Kenneth Wiggins Porter
Kenneth Wiggins Porter
Affiliation:
Vassar College.
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Extract

Perhaps the most significant thing about the business man in folklore is that he is far from an important figure in it. From this we may deduce that among those people who have created what we call folklore the business man has either not played an important rôle or his function and contribution have not been understood. He is not, however, altogether missing; we might not recognize him, since he is a remote and shadowy figure compared with the business man as we think of him today. But he is there, and the very form and circumstances in which he appears have meaning.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 18 , Issue 5 , November 1944 , pp. 113 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1944

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References

2 Cf. Eddy, Mary O., Ballads and Songs from Ohio (N. Y., 1939), pp. 167–170Google Scholar; Gardner, Emelyn Elizabeth and Chickering, Geraldine Jenks, Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan (Ann Arbor, 1939), pp. 247–249CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and many others.

3 Linscott, Eloise Hubbard, Folk Songs of Old. New England (N. Y., 1939), p. 214Google Scholar. Kingsley, Charles, Westward Ho! (1st edition, 1855), vol. iGoogle Scholar, chap. v. Cf. “When a miller's knocked on the head, the less of flour makes the more of bread.”

4 “Paul Bunyan,” 1919, the second volume in the trilogy, U. S. A.

5 The best source of information on Paul Bunyan is Shephard, Esther, Paul Bunyan (Seattle, 1924Google Scholar). See also Stewart, K. Bernice and Watt, Homer A., “Legends of Paul Bunyan, Lumberjack,” Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Arts and Letters, vol. xviii (1916), pp. 639–651Google Scholar.

6 Sandburg, Carl, The American Songbag (N. Y., 1927), pp. 52–53Google Scholar; John, A. and Lomax, Alan, American Ballads and Folk Songs (N. Y., 1934), pp. 317–320Google Scholar.

7 John, and Lomax, Alan, Our Singing Country (N. Y., 1941), pp. 317–319Google Scholar.

8 For a few examples, see Skinner, Charles M., Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia, 1896), vol. i, p. 64Google Scholar, and vol. ii, pp. 36, 182–183.

9 Sandburg, op. cit., p. 419.

10 Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs, p. 41; Sandburg, op. cit., pp. 304–305.

11 From memory. The contrast between the Gould and Vanderbilt versions occurred to me when I encountered them in the course of a study (1927–28) of the railroad administrators of the nineteenth century.

12 Phonograph record, Victor 21343-B (42137).

13 Friedman, Samuel H., compiler and editor, Rebel Song Book (N. Y.: Rand School Press, 1935), p. 55Google Scholar.

14 Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs, p. 21.

15 This couplet from “The Old Chisholm Trail” appears in many variations; see Sandburg, op. cit., p. 267.

16 Phonograph record. A coal-mining song contains almost identical stanzas (Korson, George, Coal Dust on the Fiddle, Philadelphia, 1943, p. 319Google Scholar).

17 Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs, p. 391.

18 Dobie, J. Frank, “A Buffalo Hunter and His Song,” Backwoods to Border, in Texas Folk-Lore Society Publications, vol. xviii (Austin, 1943), pp. 1–6Google Scholar.

19 Childs, Francis James, editor, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston, 1886), vol. ii, pp. 320–342Google Scholar.

20 Spaeth, Sigmund, Weep Some More, My Lady (Garden City, 1927), pp. 235–236Google Scholar.

21 Lomax, Our Singing Country, pp. 276–278; Sandburg, op. cit., p. 319.

22 The coal-mining material is drawn from three works edited by Korson, George G.: Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miner (N. Y., 1927), pp. 90, 161, 173Google Scholar; Minstrel of the Mine Patch (Philadelphia, 1938), pp. 234–236Google Scholar; and Coal Dust on the Fiddle (Philadelphia, 1943), pp. 72, 78, 128, 175, 239, 311, 319, 321–322, 403, 423. 429, 436–437Google Scholar.

23 Sandburg, op. cit., pp. 282–283. Cf. Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs, p. 333, and Our Singing Country, p. 290.

24 Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs, pp. 233–234; Scarborough, Dorothy, On the Trail of Negro Folk-Song (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 227–228Google Scholar; Brown, Sterling A., Davis, Arthur P., Ulysses Lee, The Negro Caravan (N. Y., 1941), p. 422Google Scholar.

25 Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs, pp. 114–115.

26 Lomax, Our Singing Country, pp. 280–281.

27 Ibid., pp. 287–288.