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"I run to de rock for to hide my face, De rock cried out, No hiding place No hiding place here!" (page 326)
The books give us insight into the author's attitudes beyond those relating to folklore. Being a Texas woman, she seems implicitly to understand the difference between the Southern and the Western female. In The Wind, she rejects the values of the South in favor of those of the West. There are two women in the book: Letty, the Virginia damsel, and Cora, the wife of Letty's cousin and a child of the prairie, Cora has the strength and hardiness needed to persist, indeed enjoy life, in the face of adversity, Letty is killed by it. Honey, of Redbird, is a fusion of these two elements, having the grace of a Southern woman and the endurance of a Western, and it is she who is responsible for her husband's getting ahead. Perla, in The Stretch-berry Smile also has this fusion of character and consequently is able to face life more securely.
Miss Scarborough must have been a fine combination of these strengths herself. We know she must have been active, enduring, and stalwart from her leadership in the movement for equal rights for women and her position as County Committeewoman of the Republican Party, All of her books show a firm and gentle relationship with life and nature. Her most autobiographical work, From A Southern Porch (1919), shows her to be genial> warmhearted and gracious, as well as perceptive. This book most forcefully shows her commitment to presenting life as lore. Sitting on the porch of her Virginia summer home she sees life passing by, and it seems that whenever that life is human it is not only interesting but it is tradition oriented. Consequently this book abounds with folklore in a most congenial setting.
In some ways, From a Southern Porch seems like a trial run for On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, There are many texts of songs presented in their social context here, ones which later appear in her folksong study. Interestingly enough, several important texts contained in the former work are not reprinted. Two, concerning the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic, are noteworthy. The first of these appears on pages 305-307:
It was in the year nineteen hundred an* twelve,
On A pril the fourteenth day, When de great Titanic struck a iceberg,
An' de people hab to run an" pray. |
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