Carl Lindahl

Scottish Traveller Tales: Lives Shaped through Stories (review)

Naomi’s transformation all the more convoluted is Long-Wilgus’s discovery that one Braxton Craven, in the Greensboro Patriot of April 29, 1874, refashioned the earlier story into a much-reprinted ballad. It is Craven’s retelling, she stipulates, that inspired the 134 recoveries of “Omie Wise” in oral tradition and revival recordings alike. So much for a “pure” oral tradition. But then, it has been clear—at least since Norm Cohen’s 1969 New York Folklore Quarterly article on “The Persian’s Crew”—that the unlettered folk were lettered enough to incorporate the printed into their oral tradition: “The relationship between print and orality,” Long-Wilgus concludes, “is sometimes a complex one” (p. 37). I give her that truism—as well as her postulate that there exists a tension between oral tradition and “professional romancers” (p. 39). In the case of this very popular ballad, there are three layers of independent composition that transform “Naomi” into “Omie.” Eventually the result is a ballad with one foot grounded in truth, the other in myth or legend, and the whole of it shaped by two broadside ballads so as to conform to the image of the idealized. Ultimately, it might be argued, there is not one ballad of “Omie Wise,” but three or four recountings of the murder of “poor, sweet Naomi.” This reviewer, a passing acquaintance of the author, can hardly peruse Long-Wilgus’s essay without noting that it is, in effect, an offering to the memory of Wayland D. Hand, former president of this society and our scholarly mentor, and to her late husband, Donald K. Wilgus, of whom she spoke longingly and wistfully in private conversation. In remembering the past, Long-Wilgus does honor to her teachers just as did the singers who earlier remade a tale of banal murder into a vibrant traditional ballad.

Introduction: Ways inside the Circles of Mardi Gras

MARDI GRAS, AS “TRADITIONAL” AND “AUTHENTIC” a festive event as can be found in this country, is at one and the same time the active site of all the contemporary forces—computer technology, mass marketing, film and video production, organized tourism, the self-conscious staging of social memory—that have made tradition and authenticity such quaintly troublesome terms. On the same Mardi Gras day, in the same town, there are those who intimately relive the times when everyone spoke French and when all participants, masked and unmasked, knew each other so well that they might as well have been relatives (and most often were); and there are also those who scan the celebration most immediately through the lens of a video camera, seeing and feeling in its theatrics more or less the same things that would be seen and felt by a million mutual strangers during a nationally televised broadcast. The fact that Mardi Gras can be a distanced spectacle, even to the citizens of its own community, does nothing to lessen its extraordinary hold on the hearts of its core participants. Neither traditional nor authentic comes very close to describing the intensity of involvement in Mardi Gras apparent in Tee Mamou in 1998, when Capitaine Gerald Frugé died. Most of the outsiders—and there were many—who had seen him lead the annual Mardi Gras runs would have guessed him at least ten years younger than his 52 years, and yet, at his death, having captained 27 Mardi Gras, he was as permanent a fixture of the festival as any such protean celebration can possess. Tee Mamou mounts two annual Mardi Gras runs. The first, involving as few as 20 or as many as 50 women, is often witnessed by more than 100 outsider onlookers and unfolds on the Saturday preceding Mardi Gras. The second, involving an all-male group, performs the following Tuesday, on Mardi Gras day. After half a century of robust health, Gerald suddenly contracted cancer in the summer of 1997. He declined quickly, made several visits to hospitals, and by January 1998 was clearly gravely ill. As Mardi Gras approached, Gerald was in a hospital in Houston. He made it absolutely clear that he wanted Mardi Gras to be celebrated “the way we always do,” no matter where, or if, he might be on that day. On Saturday, or Samedi Gras, the masked women begged and clowned with characteristic gusto—to all appearances as they always had. The only outward sign that things were other than they should be was taped to the back windshield of the cab of the

The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance

1. The Word and World of Man 2. The Context of Romance 3. Our Lady of Pain: Heroes and Heroines of Romance 4. The Bottomless Dream: Themes of Descent 5. Quis Hic Locus? Themes of Ascent 6. The Recovery of Myth Notes Index