Folk Tales, Tall Tales, Trickster Tales, and Legends of the Supernatural from the Pinelands of New Jersey: Recorded Between 1936 and 1951 and Annotated by Herbert Halpert

This book presents a unique corpus of over 400 traditional tales, collected by North America's most distinguished scholar of Folk Studies. It includes anecdotes, historical and aetiological tales, legends (including the tales of the Jersey Devil), and tall tales. This book presents a unique corpus of over 400 traditional tales, collected in the Pinelands of New Jersey between 1936 and 1951. The fieldwork revealed a wealth of short tales and legends, demonstrating a long-established storytelling tradition. It contradicts the notion that few such tales were transported to the New World by the early settlers. The narratives fall into two groups. First we have humorous and remarkable stories about tricksters, fools, and human behavior, plus tall tales and riddle tales. Secondly, there are legends about magical happenings and the supernatural. The texts are eminently accessible, preserving the vigour and characteristics of vernacular speech. The introduction outlines the background to the investigation, describes life in the Pines, and discusses the tales and the storytelling tradition. The academic audience will appreciate the groundbreaking comprehensiveness of the annotation, which sets the tales in their national and international context, making them a major contribution to scholarship in this field. They are supported by a substantial bibliography, and set a new standard in their breadth and scope. While this approach has become the norm in annotating collections of Marchen, this is apparently the first time that such detailed notes have been deployed to trace the origins and parallels of shorter traditional tales found in a specific region of North America.