B. A. Botkin was a college professor, folklorist, and researcher who was at various times national folklore editor for the Federal Writers' Project, Library of Congress Fellow in Folklore, and chief of the Archive of American Folk Song. He compiled and edited more than a dozen volumes of American folklore, among them "A Treasury of American Folklore," "Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery," and compilations of regional folklore from various areas, including New England, the South, and the West. Stephen Cushman is a professor of English at the University of Virginia and the author