Ohio History Journal

BOOK REVIEWS

Jonathan Draws the Long Bow. By Richard M. Dorson.

(Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1946. 274p.

$4.50.)

This reviewer used to enjoy the old story told in Licking

County, of how a remarkable providence once saved a sleepy pio-

neer resident of Granville from drowning in the rampaging waters

of Raccoon Creek. The villager drove into town late one pitch-

dark, stormy night, and did not learn until the next day that the

planking of the bridge he crossed had been washed away by the

high waters. While his horse had swum the flood, his carriage

had been kept from being swept down stream merely because its

wheels had happened to ride safely across on the stringers.

Now comes Professor Richard Dorson's fine study of New

England popular tales and legends to suggest that perhaps the

Licking countian's narrow escape was not so unusual after all,

for was not Granville one of New England's provincial capitals

in the West, and did not remarkable providences follow God-

fearing Yankees wherever they went? Anyhow, the bridge-

stringer salvation has been set down as local history in many a

New England neighborhood. Dr. Dorson has found it in Mont-

pelier, Vermont, in Newburyport and Great Barrington, Massa-

chusetts, in Henniker, New Hampshire, and in Parsonfield, Maine.

Doubtless it graces the traditional biography of many another

early citizen in the oral traditions of other communities.

Then--to go back to Licking County--there was the oft-told

anecdote of two well-known Alexandria residents who, having

been too long and too freely in their cups, were walking home the

six-mile stretch from Granville late on another dark night. Sud-

denly, as they approached the swampy flats just east of their

village, they heard deep, sepulchral warning voices: "Better go

'round! Better go 'round!" The treacherous mudholes of the

flats were well known. To befuddled foot travelers on a dark

night, the warning was terrifying. There was nothing else to do

451

452 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

but return the four or five miles to the intersection with the

Worthington road and make an additional eight-mile detour home.

They staggered in the next morning weary, if not a bit wiser,

from having been victims of the bullfrogs along the Alexandria

flats.

Although the Alexandria frogs easily find companion prank-

sters in folk tales of all ages, it is a joy now to learn from Pro-

fessor Dorson of what is probably their direct New England

provenience in the frogs of Windham, Connecticut, or of North-

ampton and Hadley, Massachusetts, or of numerous other Yankee

communities where sleepy or rum-dulled citizens in various times

and ways suffered, if not from actual frogs, at least from a folk

tale that was too good ever to lie quiescent very long.

Since in Ohio New England made its largest plantations in

the West, and since Ohio in turn derived a major substratum of

its original culture from the Yankees, Mr. Dorson's survey of the

popular tale in Down East folk thought becomes at once a basic

work for any study of the same element in Middle Western com-

munity legendry. The book is by no means exhaustive, but it is

the best systematic sampling and analysis of this fertile folk side

of New England imagination that has so far reached print.

After a pleasant general chapter on the nature and function

of Yankee story-telling, Dr. Dorson examines with rich detail (1)

supernatural stories about marvels and prodigies, witches and

wizards, the Devil, specters, and apparitions; (2) Yankee yarns

about greenhorns, tricksters, and "originals"; (3) tall tales of

local Munchausens, hunting and fishing, strong men, and sea ser-

pents; (4) local legends of Indian tragedies, haunts, buried treas-

ure, and place names; and (5) literary folk tales such as those

set down by John G. C. Brainerd, J. G. Whittier, Daniel P.

Thompson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Rowland E. Robinson, Hol-

man F. Day, George S. Wasson, Robert P. Tristram Coffin, and

Walter Hard. There is a good note on the author's sources,

which were found largely in old newspapers, magazines, almanacs,

joke-books, booklets, town histories, and the other local miscella-

nies. Very wisely Dr. Dorson went to printed rather than merely

oral sources, for though narrow purists have sometimes insisted

BOOK REVIEWS 453

upon present-day recording from oral transmission as a guarantee

of folk authenticity, in literate New England the printed page was

a culture continuum even on the level of the popular mind from

the very earliest years of the colonies. In Ohio excellent examples

of the same mingling of printed record and popular traditions can

be found in Howe's Historical Collections and in the county

histories that have multiplied since 1850.

It is a virtue of such studies that they stir the careful reader

to recall much else that might have been included. Literary

students, for instance, will wish for some accounting of the Wan-

dering Jew motif that showed up in William Austin's famous

"Peter Rugg" tale. Austin's story, whether original with him or

not, broke away from his authorship and circulated as a popular

wonder tale. It was certainly so read in Ohio, for this reviewer

has seen it as a cheap thriller pamphlet printed in Cincinnati with

Austin's story in augmented form retold anonymously as fact.

There is the Great Carbuncle theme too. Hawthorne did not

invent it. Dorson tells the story of Carbuncle Pond and Hill in

Coventry, Rhode Island. But there are other reflections of the

marvelous stone in Yankee chronicles, such as that in David

Wilder's History of Leominster (1853).

Dorson's book will be an efficient starting tool for students

of Middle Western culture who wish to tackle the almost un-

touched riches of the popular tale as a shaping influence both in

the creation of local traditions (often recorded as local history)

and in regional literature of such various writers as Howells or

Mark Twain, Eggleston, Riley or Catherwood, Jake Falstaff or

Louis Bromfield.

ROBERT PRICE

Professor of English

Otterbein College

Sassafras Hill: A Novel. By Charles Allen Smart. (New

York, Random House, 1947. ²⁴⁶p. $2.50.)

Just released from service in the navy, Easterner David Mc-

Dermott, an ex-advertising man and ex-husband but a potential

454 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

artist, is fascinated by the rolling landscape as his train crosses

southern Ohio. He likes the "wall-edge of a woodland, cresting

a green hill, . . . the cornfields, the muddy streams with their

cottonwoods and sycamores, the scattered wooden buildings, old

and new, the blatant sign-boards, and the lights that began to

appear boldly in the farm-houses. . . ." It looked "free, peaceful,

and hit-and-miss. It looked like home."

He detrains, consequently, at Massietown, a paper-mill city

and agricultural center of about 20,000, and in a few weeks is

launched upon an experiment in turning the former sailor and

maladjusted family man into an artist and happy human being.

The attempt involves much more than painting and drawing.

David soon finds himself hired out as general manservant to Mrs.

Ariane Brown, personable and intelligent widow of an LST com-

mander killed by a buzzbomb in the Thames. Ariane is also try-

ing to pull life together again and to rear her three children by

managing the old family farm at Sassafras Hill.

David's and Ariane's combined problems in adjustment and

the solution they find furnish Charles Allen Smart with the plot

for his latest novel, a charmingly jolting book that is his best

work since R. F. D. (1938).

David McDermott finds in this Ohio farm neighborhood not

only his true vocation and a congenial social environment but all

the particular emotional adjustments that leave him and the reader

convinced on page 246 that civilian living is going to be pretty

much worth while for all the major characters in the story.

In spite of this romantic framework, however, Mr. Smart

has told his tale chiefly in the manner of a critical realist. He has

apparently enjoyed reading Henry James some time or other, and

James would enjoy some things in Sassafras Hill. Even though

the author shows his preoccupation with the Ohio scene, he man-

ages to tell his story chiefly about people--very alert, modern

people who have been around. He shows how they can feel and

think, not just in a provincial Buckeye environment but in a

shaken, uncertain, cynic-creating modern world. Regional color,

consequently, is not over-sentimentalized or grotesqued, but

merely serves as a foil for people and their relationships.

BOOK REVIEWS 455

Some readers may feel that there are some conventional

touches. The leading personalities appear to be the rather hard,

brittle post-war types that we came to recognize as standard stock

after World War I. But the similarity is only on the surface--

these folks are still salvageable. Furthermore the surface shines

with pleasant polish. Like all well-made characters of the war-

touched generation, their passing conversations jump quickly and

lightly, for example, to beds and cocktails, though nothing happens

that even a pre-1914 Victorian can blink at, and does so in such a

way that the reader knows he has never got very far away from

Dante, Thomas Nashe's Jack Wilton, the Satyricon of Petronius

Arbiter, or William Bolitho.

In the background are the Ohio hills and corn bottoms, typ-

ical farm routines, party lines, country gossip, and county fairs.

But these never take over the story. Smart evidently tried to set

a realistic, sophisticatedly mundane story down in a typical Ohio

farm neighborhood. Except for some sentimental touches over

old landed families and the wholesome redeeming influences of

the country, he managed to stick consistently to his job.

No other Middle Western novel to date has quite the same

stirring of current sophistication into authentic regional color.

Most readers should find the resulting flavor pleasant, even though

the more sentimental may feel that they taste something a bit

stronger than sassafras tea at Sassafras Hill.

ROBERT PRICE

Professor of English

Otterbein College

Paul Dunbar and His Song. By Virginia Cunningham.

(New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1947. ix + 283p., biblio.

$2.75.)

This life of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the Negro poet from

Dayton, Ohio, who rose from poverty to fame through the beauty

and appeal of his writings, has been written by another native of

Dayton, who is, herself, a writer of children's books. Although

Dunbar lived briefly in Chicago, Denver, and Washington, D. C.,

456 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

it was to Dayton he always returned, and it was here he died in

1906, of tuberculosis, at the age of 35.

Earning a livelihood through poetry is in itself a difficult

task, made infinitely harder if one is a Negro. However, Dunbar

received sympathy and financial aid from a number of white

admirers of his work, including Mrs. Frank Conover of Dayton,

Dr. James N. Matthews, a writer from Mason, Illinois, Charles

Thatcher, a lawyer of Toledo, Ohio, and Dr. Henry A. Tobey,

head of the Toledo State Hospital. He was encouraged and

praised, too, by such writers as James Whitcomb Riley and Wil-

liam Dean Howells. In fact, during the time in which he wrote,

his books, Oak and Ivy, Majors and Minors, and Lyrics of Lowly

Life, brought him nation-wide popularity equal to that of Eugene

Field and James Whitcomb Riley.

Although Dunbar proved himself a master of Negro dialect

and humor in verse, his position does not depend entirely on this

type of writing. In the words of William Dean Howells, "he is

a real poet whether he speaks a dialect or writes a language." In

addition to poetry, Dunbar wrote short stories, novels, and lyrics

for several Broadway musicals, and though they brought further

popularity, his best work is his poetry. He came to national

attention first through the pages of such periodicals as the Century

and Harper's Weekly. His ability to recite his own work added

to his reputation, and the money obtained from the lecture plat-

form was sorely needed to keep him out of debt.

Miss Cunningham has done an excellent piece of work in

this biography; her sympathetic account moves swiftly and shows

painstaking research. She interviewed many of Dunbar's family

and friends, including the famous Ohio inventor Orville Wright,

who was a classmate of Dunbar's in the old Central High School

in Dayton. Although this book was written primarily for young

people, and footnotes were omitted for this reason, still it seems

regrettable that the conversations are not documented. There is

only the statement in the preface that "the conversations and in-

cidents in this story are very largely based on scrapbooks and on

documents and letters written by Paul and his mother, or to

them, which are in the Dunbar collection of the Ohio State