In "Big Thicket Legacy," Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller present the stories of people living in the Big Thicket of southeast Texas. Many of the storytellers were close to one hundred years old when interviewed, with some being the great-grandchildren of the first settlers. Here are tales about robbing a bee tree, hunting wild boar, plowing all day and dancing all night, wading five miles to church through a cypress brake, and making soap using hickory ashes.

The title and the idea for this book began in 1958, when Mody Boatright first published his essay, "The Family Saga as a Form of Folklore." What Mody identified was a long established form of folklore that was firmly entrenched among people everywhere.

The family saga--as Mody and this collection defines it--is made up of an accumulation of separate family legends. These are the stories of the old folks and the old times that are told among the family when they gather for funerals or Thanksgiving dinner. These are the "remember-when" stories the family tells about the time when the...

Texas has a large population who has lived on both sides of the border and created a folkloric mix that makes Texas unique. "Both Sides of the Border" gets its name from its emphasis on recently researched Tex-Mex folklore. But we recognize that Texas has other borders besides the Rio Grande. We use that title with the folklorist s knowledge that all of this state s songs, tales, and traditions have lived and prospered on the other sides of Texas borders at one time or another before they crossed the rivers and became ours.
Chapters are organized thematically, and include favorite...

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,...

If there was any pleasure at all in hoeing, it was in the short row soon hoed rather than the one that in the day s high heat seemed to stretch to shimmering eternity. And that s what this collection of Texas folklore is, a series of short rows, easily and pleasantly hoed, promising a great crop as a reward for the reader s labors.
Here are high toned women and hayburners, loud pipes and calaveras, brown derbies and battles royal. And, oh yes, Welsh mains. And if these seem like unfamiliar rows, they are nonetheless pleasantly hoed, and in the process much will be learned about railway...