Test Your American Folklore Knowledge Online

By: Charles Bowen Part of the group consciousness of America is its pantheon of folk heroes and villains. Being culturally literate in our part of the world means having at least a nodding acquaintance with Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, John Henry, Johnny Appleseed, and Jesse James. We grew up as a nation of storytellers. Myths and legends, tall tales, weather folklore, ghost stories -- they're as American as Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Mississippi mosquitoes.

Now free-lance writer Sandra E. Schlosser has created a home on the Web to collect and preserve America's best-loved yarns. With an ambitious structure, the site is organized into sections covering a variety of themes, such as famous characters, historical folklore, and regional folktales. Along with these areas, there also is a complete alphabetical list of all the different tales on the site.

One of its best parts is a section devoted to tall tales. Here you'll find different stories about ghosts, holidays, and various places that have arisen out of the American folk tradition. I can see the site being useful to a feature writer looking for a new way into a story, but it also is great for sharing with your readers in your Internet-related columns.

The operator wants you to have fun with this. In fact, the message on the front says the site "is best viewed while eating marshmallows with friends around a campfire under a starry sky."

To look in on what Sandra has set up, visit the site at http://www.americanfolklore.net, where a compact introductory screen has clickable icons linking to:

* Famous Characters. Here are stories about everyone from Abe Lincoln and Ethan Allen to God, The Devil, Casey Jones and Febold Feboldson, the man who busted the drought in Nebraska.

* State Folklore. Select this to find a list of all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Schlosser promises at least one yarn from each.

* Historical Folklore. Here's the site's collection of stories from the American Revolution, the Civil War, Colonial times, the frontier, the West, the railroads, and more.

* Regional Folktales. Instead of a specific state, browse for stories from the Northeast, Northwest, Midwest, South, or Southwest.

* Ethnic Folklore. This section indexes the stories in terms of their ethnicity, including African-American, Dutch, Native American, Scandinavian, and so on.

* Tall Tales. Here the yarns are grouped according to their topic and style, such as ghost stores, holiday folklore, American legend, place lore, urban legends, and (my favorite) "How DID that Happen?"

Besides these six icons, there's a "Weatherlore" link listed at the bottom of the main screen. Click on it to reach stories ranging from frozen dawn to that old tornado rider, Pecos Bill. There's also an interesting collection of weather proverbs.

And, of course, if you're not interested in using the site's own categories for browsing, you can simply click on the "Story Index" link at the bottom of the main screen to reach an alphabetized list of the yarns, from "Arizona Weather" and "Arkansas Traveler" to "Yellowhammers" and why Alabamians are associated with that word.

Other ways to research folklore and tall tales through the Web:

1. The Urban Legends Reference Pages (http://www.snopes.com) is provided by California's San Fernando Valley Folklore Society to take on misinformation, old wives' tales, strange news stories, and celebrity gossip. For the working press, it can be a valuable ally in the constant struggle to get at the truth. Not only does it offer you a quotable authority for any story you might want to do to debunk a rumor making the rounds locally, but it also might be a good subject for your own Internet column.

2. If you're looking for a Halloween angle, don't miss Ghost Hunters (http://www.ghostweb.com), devoted to investigating supernatural events. It features a gallery of nearly 1,000 ghostly photos as well as audio and video. It also hosts online workshops on ghost events, shares ghost stories, and puts you in contact with local ghost hunter clubs in your area.

3. Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts (http://www.pit.edu/~dash/folktexts.html) is edited and translated by retired Professor D.L. Ashliman of the University of Pittsburgh, who now conducts his folklore research from southern Utah. His online resources cover everything from Aesop's Fables to multiple births in legends and folklore. The site is not exactly a multimedia wonderland, but it is a treasurehouse of text.

---

To see Bowen's last 20 columns, click here. Previous columns may be purchased in our paid archives. Search for "Bowen" in the "Author" field.