Artifacts and Fancies

THE WAY OUR PEOPLE LIVED: An Intimate American History -- W. E. Woodward--Dutfon ($3.95).

A TREASURY OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE--Edited by B. A. Botkin--Crown ($3).

These two books are encyclopedias of U.S. folklore. Author Woodward is chiefly concerned with the historical artifacts, Editor Botkin with the artifancies, of U.S. life.

William E. Woodward is the man who coined the word "debunk." In 1923, when he was a Hearst promotion manager, he used the word in a best-selling first novel called Bunk. He followed it up with two debunking biographies: George Washing ton and Meet General Grant, and his New American History, which debunked traditional U.S. history.

No debunking job, The Way Our People Lived includes eleven sober chapters crawl ing with facts (most of them curious) about the day-to-day living habits, laws and institutions of nine American genera tions. Typical chapters: A Day in a Vir ginia Planter's Life; A Puritan Village in 1680; New York in 1008. Some odd ments :

P: No respectable Puritan ate shad; he considered it vulgar.

P: No coal was burned in the U.S. until nearly 1800.

P: James Madison was the first President to wear trousers habitually (instead of knee breeches).

P: Seventeenth-Century housewives, ignorant of a new beverage called "tea," served the leaves with sugar or syrup, threw away the liquid.

P: Early Americans shunned wallpaper.

They believed it exuded deadly chemicals.

P: In 1750 New Yorkers flocked to see an unusual exhibit, "a creature called a Japanese, about two feet high, his body resembling a human body in all parts except the feet and the tail."

P: Early Americans drank beer and cider copiously, avoided water like the plague, which they believed it carried.

...

Killers, Saints, Miracle Men. In 1938, Ben Botkin joined the Federal Writers' Project of the late WPA to direct the collecting of U.S. folklore, saw the Project disbanded before he could publish much of his material. For five years Botkin continued to collect and edit the folklore included in this whopping, hodgepodge anthology, to which folk-loving Carl Sand burg (Abraham Lincoln: The War Years) has written the folksy foreword.

The Treasury's 918 pages bristle with songs and stories about Paul Bunyan, Old Stormalong, John Henry, Johnny Apple, seed, The Arkansas Traveler, backwoods boasters, killers, patron saints, miracle men -- with many an anecdote, joke, tall tale, proverb, animal and ghost story, jingle, ballad, and hunks of widely known, rarely published Americana. If they tell little about U.S. history, they tell much about U.S. character. Editor Botkin wisely keeps his comment to a minimum, lets his collection tell its own story in its own lingo.

Copper-Bellied Corpse. The American folk who emerge from this lore are robust, daredevil, imaginative, fond of broad humor, tender love, great deeds, crude, rude, sometimes full of noble sentiment, sometimes intolerant. They glorify outlaws (Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickok, Billy the Kid), poke fun at woodsmen (Mike Fink, Davy Crockett), sanctify Johnny Appleseed. The U.S. gift for tall talk is flaunted in Sven, the Hundred Proof Irish man, and speeches by General Buncombe ("Sir, we want elbow room -- the continent, the whole continent -- and nothing but the continent"). The U.S. talent for epithet is flaunted in: "The man who would change the name of Arkansas is the original, iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of the Ozarks." The U.S. love of violence runs riot in stories about hard-knuckled, sure-shooting, two-gunned desperadoes, tough pioneers, chain-gang Negroes.

U.S. moppets also contribute hundreds of little rhymes that fit Editor Botkin's definition of folklore: "The stuff that travels and the stuff that sticks." Samples : Eight and eight are sixteen, Stick your nose in kerosene, Wipe it off with ice cream.

Mary's mad, And I am glad, And I know what will please her; A bottle of ink To make her stink, And a little nigger to squeeze her.

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