Folklore of Texan Cultures by Francis Edward Abernethy, ed

The Folklore of Texan Cultures is the Texas Folklore Society's contribution to the American Revolution Bicentennial celebration, whose main theme is the recognition of the colorful conglomeration of the many cultures that make up American society.

A lot of different kinds of people have come to Texas since the Spanish first met the Indians within its borders. And that is what this book is about—all the Cajuns and Mexicans and Czechs, all the colors and breeds and bones that have come to Texas and mixed their blood and their ways of life with the land they settled and the people they neighbored with.

The book opens with a brief history of the ethnic groups that settled Texas. The main body of the book consists of writings about the customs and cures and the songs and stories and tales that twenty-four different ethnic groups brought with them when they came to stay in Texas. The Spanish and the Indians shared the legends of the Lady in Blue, who came across the ocean to lead the natives to Mother Church. Don José of Duval County in the Brasada still tells the stories of the wonderful cures of Don Pedrito Jaramillo, the Healer of Los Olmos. Modern, middle, and old-time Blacks consider the ramifications of Juneteenth; and a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant recalls the first Black he ever saw near his Lucky Ridge home in Wise County. The Easter Fires at Fredericksburg, Dick Dowling at Sabine Pass, a recipe for gumbo, and the story of the ghostly Black Dog of Panna Maria are all parts of the modern Texas folklore presented in this thirty-eighth numbered publication of the Texas Folklore Society.

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Folklore of Texan Cultures
+ ISBN 1-57441-101-2. paper $24.95s

398 pp. Index.

Publication Date: 2000.

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This title may be obtained through your local bookseller, who will place special orders for them through Ingram Book Company's on-demand division.