New York Folklore Quarterly: Volume XVIII, No. 1—Folklore Marginalia in Old Textbooks

VOICES
The Journal of New York Folklore

The membership magazine of the
New York Folklore Society

Look inside issues of this publication and join the New York Folklore Society now to receive more issues.

The Journal of New York Folklore was published 1975-1999. Back issues are still available.

The New York Folklore Quarterly was published 1946-1974. Back issues are still available.

New York Folklore Society
P.O. Box 764
Schenectady, NY 12301
518/346-7008
Fax 518/346-6617
nyfs@nyfolklore.org

NEW YORK FOLKLORE QUARTERLY
Vol. XVIII, No. 1, Spring 1962

FOLKLORE MARGINALIA IN OLD TEXTBOOKS
Robert H. Woodward

THE STUDENT-COLLECTOR of folklore is usually directed by his instructor to his own recollections, to the members of his family, to his peers, and to his adult acquaintances. While these sources of information are, of course, fundamental ones, the student should be cautioned not to overlook written records that might be available to him. Even the box of old textbooks in the attic could prove a fruitful source for the lore of his forebears, particularly if they utilized the margins and blank pages for their non-academic notations.

Textbooks, apparently, have always borne the brunt of their owners’ ennui, misdirected attention, and artistic aspirations. Margins were designed to be doodled in and written in. They provide ample room for notes to and from one’s school chums, diary entries, snatches of songs, favorite lines of popular poetry, Bible texts, autograph verses, and parodies. A case in point is a textbook—The Leading Facts of American History—used by Christa Valentine in the small town of Pendleton, in central Indiana, in the early years of the 1890s. The notes to and from her schoolmates, as well as the diary entries, which are sprinkled unmethodically through the volume, touch upon matters forever dear to a young girl’s heart—young men, school affairs, disappointment, anticipations—and record life rather than lore. The songs and poems reveal the persistence of the Civil War tunes into the nineties and the popularity of Victorian poetry in the guise of folk wisdom....

PURCHASE THIS ARTICLE

To order this article, click on an order button below to purchase through Paypal or with your credit card. We will send you a PDF of the article via e-mail upon receipt of your order.

ITEM #601 Marginalia (NYFQ XVIII-1, pp. 24-27) $3.00
Member Price (NYFQ XVIII-1, pp. 24-27) $2.00

BACK TO

NEW YORK FOLKLORE QUARTERLY, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 Table of Contents.

NOTE: The New York Folklore Society Newsletter and New York Folklore Journal were replaced by Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore which debuted in December, 2000.

Membership in NYFS includes a subscription to Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore.