American folklore, across the continent

The classic Jersey Devil drawing, from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, January 1909.

Browsing through the WPA Guides to the states, I noticed that a number of the books have chapters on folklore, and so I figured comparing these might be a good way to look at the differing characters and values of the states. Much of the Midwestern states' folk tales are similar, exaggerated Bunyanesque stories about impossibly immense fields, crops, and animals, and the superhuman local heroes that tended them.

The most interesting of these characters for me was Nebraska's Febold Feboldson, who, among other feats, “spent fifteen years breeding eagles with bees until he had bees as big as eagles”. (106) Another good one is Hels Helsen, “The Big Swede”, who fights Paul Bunyan in an epic battle that shatters an inverted mountain, the debris of which formed the Black Hills. (South Dakota Guide, 80-82) Cowboys are also a common theme, their exploits wildly exaggerated, with many real figures like “Wild Bill” Hickock appearing in numerous guidebooks. The Iowa guidebook notes that many of the folktales are essentially embellishments of local historical events. Many of the more fanciful stories in Iowan folklore were apparently lurid and macabre tales about Indians, and “Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.” (82)

Kentucky has some particularly interesting folklore, typified by “a sense of something evil”, often involving gambling with the Devil, possession and witchcraft. (90) I couldn't find much further in the South or on the West Coast, mostly due to a dearth of guidebooks available online. The California guide, though it lacks a folklore section, does mention San Francisco's Joshua Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, a real person who needs no folkloric embellishment. (284) New England, however, is well-represented, with Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island guides all bearing tales, many about Indians, particularly in the context of white settlement, pirates, and especially witches and ghosts. Many of the stories are moralistic, though their tones range from spooky to quite funny.

My favorite, though, is from my own home state of New Jersey: the infamous Jersey Devil, also known as the Leeds Devil. This creature was born to a Mrs. Leeds, who, unhappy about having a child, “in a petulant moment, cried out that she hoped the stork would bring a devil.” (126) What she ended up getting was a strange beast whose characteristics vary widely depending on the storyteller, but which the guide describes as “Cloven-hoofed, long-tailed, and white; with the head of a collie dog, the face of a horse, the body of a kangaroo, the wings of a bat, and the disposition of a lamb”. (126) And indeed, despite his maybe-frightening appearance, the Jersey Devil is by many accounts shy, curious, and even an intellectual: one report states that he was writing a thesis, A Plutonian Critique of Some Awful Aspects of the Terrestrial Life. Other accounts I have read depict him as only having a few friends, all of them ghosts, who he occasionally takes tea with. What this says about New Jersey, I have no idea.