XXXV: 2000 bookcover image

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Northeast Folklore: Essays in Honor of Edward D. Ives
Pauleena MacDougall and David Taylor, eds.
XXXV: 2000
ISBN:0-943197-27-9 438 pp. 32 photographs. $19.95

This volume recognizes the extraordinary contributions of Dr. Edward D."Sandy" Ives to folklore scholarship, field research methodology, and the preservation and presentation of the cultural traditions of Northern New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. These essays address topics and visit places that have figured prominently in his career, such as folksongs, storytelling, poetry, occupational culture, humor, local history, and creativity. The essays also carry the reader to many wonderful places including Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Scotland, New Brunswick and Maine.

Northeast Folklore introduces you to the songs, stories, poetry, boat-building, wood carving, rumrunning, and other folk traditions found in Maine and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. The essays herein pay tribute to Edward D. "Sandy" Ives, who taught folklore at the University of Maine for four decades and inspired countless students with his stories and songs. In this volume, folklorists gather their own expertise in order to expand and pay homage to his scholarly legacy as a leading authority on the folklore and folksongs of the Northeastern lumberwoods. Topics and contributors include song and music, labor lore, and speech and narrative within communities.
The authors approach song and music in a variety of ways. George Carey writes about an early collector of sea shanties, Margaret Steiner and Ronald Labelle ponder the issue of French versus English song traditions at the Miramichi Folksong Festival, I. Sheldon Posen contributes his thoughts on the practice of coaxing within traditional singing contexts, Michael Taft attempts to recapture a local sheet music tradition, Burt Feintuch brings his readers on a one-week tour of Cape Breton Island's Ceilidh Trail, Thomas McKean examines the relationship between satire and song on the Isle of Sky, and Neil Rosenberg examines modern folksong transmission through the study of songs of the disasters at the Springhill Coal Mines in the 1950s.

Other authors address the folklore of the traditional occupations of the area. Archie Green explores sailor's stories and superstitions surrounding the stormy petrel, David Taylor examines vernacular boatbuilding in Newfoundland, and Margaret Yocom discusses the wood-carving and story-telling of a Franco-American family in Maine.

In various ways, folklore aids in community preservation, and contributors also demonstrate this. Pauleena MacDougall discusses rumrunning between Maine and the Maritimes in the 1930s, Richard MacKinnon describes nicknaming practices in a Cape Breton Island community, and Joan Newlon Radner examines the community newspaper tradition in Maine after the Civil War. Ronald Caplan demonstrates how obituary verse held communities together on Cape Breton Island, and Jeff Todd Titon explores the locally oriented work of a Deer Isle poet.