Remembering Folk Studies at Peabody College

By Robert Cogswell

As a Vanderbilt undergraduate in the early 1970s, I was on the lookout for folklore classes.  I took the two offered at Vandy as soon as I could—Herschel Gower’s course on British and American Ballads and one in the anthropology department on Folk Culture.  For more, I looked across the street at Peabody College, where two classes proved especially valuable.  One was Robert Whitmam’s introductory class in American Folklore.  Bob provided my introduction to his mentor, Archie Green, and both of them advised me as I pursued graduate training in the field. The other course, Gregory Woolfe’s class in Folk Music, was quite out-of-the-ordinary. The class focused on shaped-note singing, and students selected their favorite song in the repertory, then polished their ability to lead that tune in an actual singing.  Woolfe posted notice of an annual October sing at Peabody in the published schedule of the Alabama Sacred Harp Convention, and the class hosted a large contingent of real-deal shape-noters from the Sand Mountain, Alabama, area, exposing the Peabody campus to folk music in the flesh.  Peabody’s course offerings in the field helped prepare me for graduate school at Indiana University’s Folklore Institute.  

Later, after I returned to Nashville to direct the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Folklife Program, I became increasingly aware of how much Peabody had contributed to the advancement of folk studies regionally.  Looking into the history of the Tennessee Folklore Society revealed that Peabody faculty members had been active over the years in TFS leadership.  Charles S. Pendleton served as the first president of the society (1935-36).  He was followed in that position by other Peabody professors: Susan B. Riley (1943-44), Charles F. Bryan (1949-50), Freida Johnson (1951-52), and Robert S. Whitman (1972-73).  As it has been TFS practice for the president to host an office for society business at their home institution, during these years Peabody afforded operational support and clerical assistance for such essential society business as production and mailing of the TFS Bulletin, membership management, and oversight of annual meetings.

Peabody was also well-regarded for the academic productivity of its students.  Established as Peabody College for Teachers, the school was committed to training teachers and advancing their careers.  Folk studies there came to benefit from an initiative to help educators earn advanced degrees.  By the 1920s, active teachers from surrounding states attended summer school semesters for several years-- which included courses related to folklore—before researching and writing an original study to earn MA or PhD degrees.  Many of these theses and dissertations documented folklore and traditional culture of the community in which the students taught.  A few others dealt with topics such as folklore in literature or the use of folklore in classroom settings.  Together, the studies based on local fieldwork represent a first systemic effort to document folklore across Tennessee and some other southeastern locales.

The future value of these studies was made clear to me in my own research much later on craft traditions of Cannon County, Tennessee.  As I interviewed basketmakers who were still active in the 1980s and 1990s, I became aware of two extensive reports related to Cannon County crafts produced by Robert L. Mason, who had begun his documentary efforts as a local teacher drawn to the Peabody program. "Folk-songs and Folk-tales of Cannon County, Tennessee” was Mason’s 1939 MA thesis, and despite its title, the study contained valuable information and photographs about craft families of that time period.  Even more thorough for my interests was “The Life of the People of Cannon County, Tennessee,” Mason’s 1946 Peabody PhD dissertation.  Together, these studies were godsends to my research, identifying ancestral craft forebearers of the contemporary craftspeople I was documenting and providing historic insights into the craft culture of this remarkable community.  It was also fortunate for me that Mason himself was still living and happily fielded my questions about both Cannon County subject matter and the Peabody program.  Mason’s contributions were invaluable in the completion of my two Cannon County articles: “Cannon County Basketry: The Sweezy Project,” Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin, vol. 66, nos. 1-2 (2010), pp. 3-61, and ”Cannon County Basketry: Broader Documentation,” Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin, vol. 68, nos. 1-2 (2012), pp. 3-74.

Image from Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin, vol. 66, nos. 1-2 (2010), pp. 5

Beyond completion of two excellent studies and two degrees, Robert Mason’s involvement with the Peabody program also accomplished another of its objectives:  encouragement of educators’ understanding of and advocacy for the traditional culture of their local community.  The degrees took Mason to a career as an English professor at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.  But upon retirement in 1969, he returned to Cannon County and began writing again about communities where he grew up, including a complete county history in 1982.  He remained an on-the-ground folklore advocate at heart.

The following list includes all the known folklore studies produced by Peabody students, in chronological order.  As some theses are inaccurately listed as dissertations in the library catalog, neither distinction is given here:

• Saucier, Corinne Lelia, “Louisiana folk-tales and songs in French dialects with linguistic notes” (1923).
• Kroll, Harry Harrison, “A comparative study of upper and lower Southern folk speech” (1925).
• Hill, Laura May, “Authentic folk costumes for folk dances (national, country, character)” (1925).
• Owens, Bess Alice, “Some unpublished folk-songs of the Cumberlands” (1930).
• Hirose, Hamako, “An analytical collection of Japanese folk-tales” (1930).
• Miller, Hugh Liynn, “Folk music in opera: the extent and effect of its use” (1930).
• Williams, Carol,” Legends and Stories of White County, Tennessee” (1930).
• Tackett, Santa, “Some Mississippi Negro oddities” (1930).
• Salo, Alice Hayden, “An appreciation of the folk dance” (1931).
• Maxwell, Ida Elizabeth, “A study of the legends and Stories of Arkansas Indians” (1933).
• McPherson, Ruth Hale, “Analysis of folk-lore material found in elementary readers” (1934).
• Gannaway, Mary Ann, “The singing games of the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee” (1935).
• Crabtree, Lillian Gladys, “Songs and ballads sung in Overton County, Tennessee: a collection” (1936).
• Warren, Mary Katherine, “Music in the rural Tennessee W.P.A. Recreation Program” (1937).
• Wilson, Gypsy Vera, “Folklore in Southeastern Kentucky” (1937).
• Campbell, Marie, “The folk life of a Kentucky mountain community” (1937).
• Warren, Mary Katherine, “Music in the rural Tennessee W.P.A. Recreation Program (1937).
• Milton, Ursula, “Spanish folktales of the southwest with vocabulary gradation” (1938).
• Perry, Henrey Wacaster, “A sampling of the folklore of Carter County, Tennessee” (1938).
• Johnson, Mary Elizabeth, “Stories and Legends of Donelson, Tennessee” (1938).
• Miller, Edna Lucille, “A study of folklore in Watauga County, North Carolina” (1938).
• Mason, Robert L., “Folk-songs and folk-tales of Cannon County, Tennessee” (1939).
• Bandy, Lewis David, “Folklore of Macon County, Tennessee” (1940).
• Green, Maude “Folklore of Shelby County, Tennessee” (1941).
• Mason, Robert L., “The Life of the people of Cannon County, Tennessee” (1946).
• Boswell, George W., “Reciprocal influences of text and tune in the Southern traditional ballad” (1951).
• Penrod, James Herschel, “Character types and humorous devices in the old Southwestern yarns” (1952).
• Pickard, Robert Raymond, “John Henry: fact and fiction” (1955).
• Short, Pearl S., “Folklore in Marion County, Georgia” (1956).
• Hopkins, Bessie Cooper, “Life and lore of the old Natchez region” (1957).
• Carter, John Ray, “The Lore and Life of Reelfoot Lake” (1958).
• Putnam, John Fay, “Folklore in elementary education” (1960).
• Decker, Herbert Max, “Folklore of the Ozarks” (1965).
• Jones, Bessie W., “A descriptive and analytical study of the American Negro folktale (1967).
• Gordon, Larry Dean, “A study of religious beliefs on dance” (1968).
• Gentry, Garnet Kane, “Using folklore with children (1968).
• Doran, Edwina Bean, “Folklore in White County, Tennessee” (1969).
• Turner, Robert Randolph, “Tennessee Legends: analysis in terms of motifs, structure, and style” (1970).
• Nichols, Jeanette S., “Thomas Hardy’s use of folklore in four major novels” (1970).
• Okimoto, Ray Ichiro, “Folk Music of the dominant immigrant cultures of Hawaii as resource for junior high school general music (1973).

Since their institutional merger in 1979, Peabody is now designated as George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, and Peabody library resources are administered under the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries. Interested readers can gain access to any of the Peabody folk studies onsite at the Peabody campus library by emailing peabodyreference@vanderbilt.edu to request that their item of interest be called down from storage at another facility and to schedule their visit.  For Vanderbilt/Peabody graduates, however, it is possible to obtain a borrowing card, instructions for which are at https://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/alumni/.