Dutchess County Historical Society Yearbook Vol 028 1943

THE FOLKLORIST LOOKS AT THE HISTORIANS* Ladies and gentlemen: in reading county and local histories and in 'talking to historians I frequently run across the expression, applied to some good yarn, "But that is merely folklore." I come to you today as one of those who makes it his business to gather up the crumbs of folklore that you historians let drop from your table, and I frequently find among those crumbs jewels of great price. It is not to be thought that we folklorists and you historians work necessarily at cross purposes. We have in common our concern for the past. If we would be successful, <each of us must collect our materials with scholarly thoroughness. But -on the other hand you historians are primarily interested in what happened in the past, while we folklorists are primarily concerned with what .the people said happened. The historian deals in documents. The --folklorist deals in oral reports. It must be admitted that we folklor:ists sometimes really care very little about what actually happened: We - want to know the story the people told and the song they sang about the 'happening. We are fascinated by the great power of the people to :recreate into oral literature the experiences through which they have ;passed. We go beyond this and concern ourselves with folk customs, with the wisdom of the people as expressed in their proverbs, with the . ancient tales in modern dress, with the songs learned from tradition, and .with' our national genius for laughter.

- Let me illustrate what I mean by the difference between document- arf history and the kind of report that warms the heart of the folklorist.

N.We are much more concerned with a song like "Back Side of Albany", , composed by a Negro minstrel in the Capitol City a few weeks after the -.Battle of Lake Champlain than we are with the official military history ,-cif the battle. Or again, when we read that after his duel with Hamilton, Aaron Burr went up to Lindenwald to the home of his second, - Van Ness, the folklorist wants us to know that the people around Kin, derhook still see, on moonlight autumn nights the brocaded figure of _ Aaron Burr pacing up and down the orchard.

It should not be thought, of course, that the version of events which the folk tell is always inaccurate. Many a song-story tells with great *An abstract of the address given before the Dutchess County Historical Society, October 15, 1943, by Louis C. Jones, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English, New York State College for Teachers, Albany, New York.

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