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Review of Wildcat Whistle: Folklore, Fishing and Hunting Stories from the Mississippi River Valley. By Phil Hoebing. Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1997. 69 illustrations. ISBN 0-8199-0989-0. Pp. xxii + 121. $ 19.95.
by Jim Vandergriff I ordered a copy of Wildcat Whistle as soon as I heard about it at the MFS meeting in Hannibal in ‘98, not realizing that it hadn’t been reviewed in MFSJ. So, in part, this review is spurred by my desire to correct that oversight. After all, Father Phil has been an active and loyal member of MFS for many years. We should support "our own." On the other hand, there are other reasons to review it: Wildcat Whistle is a book that should be of interest to all MFS members. Point one: while Phil writes about Illinois, the area about which he writes is just a good rock’s throw from Missouri, so the lore is also Missouri lore. Human nature is no respecter of human maps. For instance, Chapter IV is about snakes and snakelore. Nearly every item of lore Phil mentions is one that I grew up with: a snake will swallow her young when danger is near (p. 49); putting a rope around your bedroll when camping will keep snakes away, since they won’t cross a rope (p. 48). Point two: with every book such as this that I read I wonder why we don’t have a big book titled Missouri Folklore -- something on the order of Bill Koch’s Kansas Folklore or James Leary’s Wisconsin Folklore (also reviewed in this issue), or even Bill McNeil’s Ozark Country but with a specific Missouri frame. (I’ve also been wondering in the last few months, as I’ve been teaching folklore in Illinois and learning just what variety there is here, why there isn’t a book entitled Illinois Folklore.) Phil’s book, in part, is a look in that direction, though it leaves a couple of hundred miles of the Mississippi unstudied, to say nothing of the inland parts of the state. So, the book helps, in my opinion, to fill a need. Point three: this book is just plain old interesting to read. It has chapters on rivermen, on commercial and subsistence fishing, on fox and coon hunting, and so on. The variety in the chapter subjects is not eclectic, as it may look, but rather does a pretty good job of covering the aspects of life that revolve around the river for the area -- primarily Adams and Pike counties in Illinois. This is not "just" a folklore book. Rather it is more of a folk history, though each chapter does focus, at least in part, on the beliefs and customs of the area. However, what comes across most clearly to me is how important a factor the Mississippi is and has been (primarily, but not exclusively, during this century) in the lives of the people who live near it. Wildcat Whistle is a good book and at $19.95 a real bargain. (The picture of Phil holding a snapping turtle following page 55 is worth a lot of that price!) I strongly recommend it both to scholars and to general readers. |
