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Review of Wisconsin Folklore. By James P. Leary. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. 97 illustrations. List of Further Readings, List of Further Listening and viewing, Index. Pp. xviii + 542. $ 27.95.
by Jim Vandergriff Okay, Missouri folklorists, this book is one we need to take to heart -- and use as a model for a comprehensive book on Missouri folklore. Leary’s work is a wide-ranging compendium of materials, published and otherwise, on Wisconsin folklore. Like Bill Koch’s book on Kansas folklore, much of the material was collected by folklore students; some is material written by folklorists; some is material written by interested non-folklorists. Though I lack the credentials to critique the quality of the analyses and the comprehensiveness of the material, it certainly seems thoroughly done. Leary divides his material into five parts: Speech and Talk; Storytelling; Music, Song, and Dance; Beliefs and Customs, and Material Traditions and Folklife. Speech and Talk includes articles, for instance, on "Names in the Welsh Settlement," "Milwaukee Talk," "Apple-picking terms from Wisconsin," and "Farm Talk from Marathon County," among others. The Story-telling chapters range from Finnish folktales to Ojibwa stories to Paul Bunyan tales, and so on. The other sections are equally diverse and, I think, thorough. Having recently driven through western Wisconsin on our way to Minnesota, Donna and I chanced to drive through Dickeyville, where we visited the astonishing wayside shrine, so I was especially intrigued by Dennis Kolinski’s article, "Shrines and Crosses in Rural Central Wisconsin." However, I also note that apparently no one has written on the giant concrete art that seems also to pervade that part of the country (including Iowa and Minnesota) -- there is the gigantic, concrete wild turkey in Boscobel, a gigantic, concrete mouse nibbling a gigantic piece of concrete cheese in another town, a gigantic, concrete bull in front of a steak house, and so on. I think there is sufficient concrete art to warrant an article, though the book doesn’t suffer a lot from its absence! Each of the sections is comprised of articles written by diverse hands, and each is introduced by Leary in a couple of incisive, scholarly paragraphs which further discuss the topic itself, or provide some information about the article, or about the author of the article, or some combination thereof. These pieces provide much useful information, as does Leary’s extensive Introduction to the collection. The book is well-documented and thoroughly referenced, seems to cover the extent of Wisconsin lore, includes the requisite scholarly apparatus, and is a delightful book to read. I read it a bit at a time as bedtime reading. Not only did it often interfere with my desire to sleep, but I was sorry when I finished it. It’s an excellent book and I recommend it to anyone interested in American folklore, scholars and laypersons alike. I just wish someone would do a book like this for Missouri! |
