This two-volume collection of folktales represents some of the finest examples of American oral tradition. Drawn from the largest archive of American folk culture, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, this set comprises magic tales, legends, jokes, tall tales and personal narratives, many of which have never been transcribed before, much less published, in a sweeping survey. Eminent folklorist and award-winning author Carl Lindahl selected and transcribed over 200 recording sessions - many from the 1920s and 1930s - that span the 20th century, including recent material drawn from the September 11 Project. Included in this varied collection are over 200 tales organized in chapters by storyteller, tale type or region, and representing diverse American cultures, from Appalachia and the Midwest to Native American and Latino traditions. Each chapter begins by discussing the storytellers and their oral traditions before presenting and introducing each tale, making this collection accessible to high school students, general readers or scholars.

The "Jack" known to all of us from "Jack and the Beanstalk" is the hero of a cycle of tales brought to this country from the British Isles. Jack in Two Worlds is a unique collection that brings together eight of these stories as transcribed from ac

This teeming compendium of tales assembles and classifies the abundant lore and storytelling prevalent in the French culture of southern Louisiana. This is the largest, most diverse, and best annotated collection of French-language tales ever published in the United States. Side by side are dual-language retellings—the Cajun French and its English translation—along with insightful commentaries. This volume reveals the long and lively heritage of the Louisiana folktale among French Creoles and Cajuns and shows how tale-telling in Louisiana through the years has remained vigorous and constantly changing. Some of the best storytellers of the present day are highlighted in biographical sketches and are identified by some of their best tales. Their repertory includes animal stories, magic stories, jokes, tall tales, Pascal (improvised) stories, and legendary tales—all of them colorful examples of Louisiana narrative at its best. Though greatly transformed since the French arrived on southern soil, the French oral tradition is alive and flourishing today. It is even more complex and varied than has been shown in previous studies, for revealed here are African influences as well as others that have been filtered from America's multicultural mainstream.

Exploring themes of work and labor in everyday life, Richard J. Callahan, Jr., offers a history of how coal miners and their families lived their religion in eastern Kentucky's coal fields during the early 20th century. Callahan follows coal miners and their families from subsistence farming to industrial coal mining as they draw upon religious idioms to negotiate changing patterns of life and work. He traces innovation and continuity in religious expression that emerged from the specific experiences of coal mining, including the spaces and social structures of coal towns, the working bodies of miners, the anxieties of their families, and the struggle toward organized labor. Building on oral histories, folklore, folksongs, and vernacular forms of spirituality, this rich and engaging narrative recovers a social history of ordinary working people through religion.

Presents 260 of the rural South's best stories collected over a twenty year period, with their roots in Anglo-Saxon, African-American, and Native American traditions

Here are more than two hundred oral tales from some of Louisiana's finest storytellers. In this comprehensive volume of great range are transcriptions of narratives in many genres, from diverse voices, and from all regions of the state. Told in settings ranging from the front porch to the festival stage, these tales proclaim the great vitality and variety of Louisiana's oral narrative traditions. Given special focus are Harold Talbert, Lonnie Gray, Bel Abbey, Ben Guiné, and Enola Matthews—whose wealth of imagination, memory, and artistry demonstrates the depth as well as the breadth of the storyteller's craft. For tales told in Cajun and Creole French, Koasati, and Spanish, the editors have supplied both the original language and English translation. To the volume Maida Owens has contributed an overview of Louisiana's folk culture and a survey of folklife studies of various regions of the state. Car Lindahl's introduction and notes discuss the various genres and styles of storytelling common in Louisiana and link them with the worldwide are of the folktale.