A Publication of the Texas Folklore Society, consisting of fourteen essays on Texas folklore and folk life. Beliefs and customs, riddles and proverbs, songs and stories: the breadth of Texas folklore is well illustrated by the best of Texas s folklorists.
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This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society is a traditional Texas literary sonovagun. Cowboy ballads, bateaus, gaucho songs, mineral wells, corridos, Aggie war stories, songs of Bob Wills, Baptist kids, coyotes, and old-time cowboys are all simmered together and spiced with discussions of folklore, heaven, neighborhood gatherings, cotton growing, and family characters.

This is an exploration of Texas women and the conflicting images and myths that have grown up about them. The Texas Folklore Society offers these accounts, written by a variety of authors, about the women who have shaped Texas history with their accomplishments and character. Included are Emily Morgan, Belle Starr, Elizabet Ney, and Miriam Ferguson, among others.

Some people are still working stock, building chimneys, making syrup, curing warts, and witching water the same way their fathers and grandfathers did a hundred years ago. This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society is a collection of essays on some of the olds waysthe customsstill practiced in Texas. It is not an exercise in nostalgia, but a look at practical ways of dealing with problems of survival and coping with nature and people.
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The Big Thicket of East Texas is one of the few areas left in the United States where people can still establish a close and friendly intimacy with untamed nature. The secretive beauty and mystery of this pocket of wilderness lying between the sandy East Texas forests and the prairies of the Gulf Coastal region would inevitably inspire tales-and the pioneers who came to terms with this land were an individualistic and legend-creating lot. In Tales from the Big Thicket, Francis E. Abernethy presents a collection of stories about the Big Thicket and its people. He begins with a background...

You won t find molded plastic, mass-produced items in this Texas Folklore Society Publication. These are folk toys, made from natural or available materials, whatever is handy or can be scrounged. The folks who make them are amateurs of varying degrees, from the ten-year-old hammering together a skate scooter or box kite to the doting grandparent sewing doll clothes or whittling paired giraffes for a Noah s Ark. "Texas Toys and Games" combines both how-to descriptions and reminiscences.
Folk games encompass guessing, gambling, and counting games; physically competitive games of chase,...

Texas has about three thousand known, explored caves, ranging in size from small crawlways to huge caverns. Most of these caves, however, are generally restricted to exploration by trained, experienced cavers, geologists, and biologists.
"Texas""""Caves" introduces this seldomseen world, providing basic cave geology and biology, a description of the seven show caves that have been opened and developed for public visiting, and information on state speleological parks.
The engaging text as well as a hundred full-color and black-and-white photographs reveals the glories of Texas caves,...

This Publication of the Texas Folklore Society contains a valuable chronological and bibliographical listing of Texas Folklore Society publications. It also includes twenty-five folk tales, including the lore of the armadillo, Texas country schoolteachers; legal lore from the courthouse; persimmon beer; classic honky tonks; Mexican lore on how to have, hold, or free oneself of a lover; Pecos Bill; the vampire; peyote ceremonialism; animal metaphors; Texas prison folklore; oil field jokes; and quilting, among others.
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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 aboutall 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 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.
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This volume collects the best known or most representative or the most classically Texas traditional songs set in a social and historical framework.