Obituaries: Duncan Emrich (1908-1977)

Author(s): Horace Beck

Source: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 91, No. 360 (Apr. - Jun., 1978), pp. 701-703
Published by: American Folklore Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/538923
Accessed: 06-07-2020 17:35 UTC

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 OBITUARIES 701

in the New Cath

des Africanistes,
Africaine, Etude
America Indigen
raux, Robert H
After teaching
Addis Ababa, sh
her son's home
husband in Zair
ing: in 1962, M
Economic Comm
l'Industrie et a
Economic Comm
aujourd'hui (Pub
Recherche Scien
produced that i
(Verviers, Belg
provided by he
Her last works
French Canadian
and two volum
15), Tu manges av
des garconnets d
translations, an
enough, on agi
1975-1976).
When Mme. Comhaire-Sylvain died of a heart attack caused by an auto accident in
Nsukka, Nigeria, on June 20, 1975, African diasporic studies lost one of their earliest as
well as most accomplished Caribbean exponents. Future practitioners, whether an-
thropologists, folklorists, or students of blacks or of women, are hereby advised to read her
works to appreciate the high standards set for us nearly half a century ago.

University of California, Davis DANIEL J. CROWLEY

Duncan Emrich (1908-1977)

On August 23, 1977, Duncan B. M. Emrich died at the age of 69. Ironically, at the time
of his death he was working on a book concerning the folklore of death.
Born in Turkey to missionary parents in 1908, he returned to the United States during
World War I with his family, settling in the New England area. Duncan won a scholarship
to Phillips Exeter Academy and went on to receive his B. A. at Brown University. In 1933
he was awarded an M. A. at Columbia; the following year he received a Doctor of Letters
from the University of Madrid, and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1937 where he had the good
fortune to learn from the legendary Kittredge.
Emrich's teaching career began at Columbia in 1937 and continued at the University of
Denver in 1940. Then in 1943 he enrolled in the Army, became a lieutenant in Intelli-
gence, and won the Croix de Guerre for his action in France. He was attached to
Eisenhower's staff and was ordered to prepare a contemporary account of the war in Europe.
After the war he went to Washington and became the head of the American Folk Song
and Folklore Archives. In 1955 he gave up his post to become cultural affairs officer at

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 702 OBITUARIES

Embassies in Gr
Washington as an
professor of Ame
established the Am
While he was do
folklore from wh
cart carvings from
a Guggenheim and
can Folklore Soci
achievements loo
media, he wrote e
death he had four
In many respects
cated. As far as I w
selfless. Certainly
folklore than in D
diverse roots. He w
he viewed folklore
it represented the
I suppose Duncan
folklore was to be
general public. He
derables to be sol
particular about
di
"folk" is derived).
material appealed
Hence he wrote a
like "Little Matty
effect was to catc
found in The Whim
oral tradition (oft
mer's wonder/Win
There is no one w
profitably employ
would have prefer
race horses, but th
Unfortunately, s
innuendo, and po
problems in his la
what he could for
will remain a sour
the contrary it see
and satisfaction will continue.
One of the things one notices about folklorists is that they have singular peculiarities.
Duncan had two. First, he loved Washington, D.C., and the excitement that the political
scene engendered. His second singularity was the telephone, accompanied by a total
disregard of the clock. If the phone rang between 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., one knew
that either a close relative had encountered a catastrophic situation or it would be Duncan
on the other end checking to find out how you were. Irritating as these calls could be
sometimes, I was startled to learn that some of us now and then miss not hearing the phone
ring in the small hours.

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 OBITUARIES 703

Shortly before
whose contents
one read, "He: 'I
dark and you c
would be able to rest forever.'

Middlebury College HORACE BECK

Middlebury, Vermont

Maria Leach (1892-1977)

Maria Leach, editor and moving force behind The Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of
Folklore, Mythology, and Legend (1949-1950), died in her sleep at the age of 85 on May 22,
1977, in a hospital near her home in Barrington, Nova Scotia. The two-volume dictionary
in which she combined contributions from eminent scholars with the results of her many
years of research is a major reference work on general folklore. A revised edition appeared in
1972.
With the publication of The Rainbow Book of American Folk Tales and Legends in 1958-
listed by The New York Times as one of the ten best children's books of the year-Mrs. Leach
became interested in compilations of folklore for younger readers and produced some ten
juveniles which are widely used in schools, many of them in translation in other languages.
The final one, on folklore of the cat, was published last year.
Earlier in her career Maria Leach had specialized in slang and dialect, and during the
1940's she supervised the American-English terminology for the Funk & Wagnalls stan-
dard dictionaries. In 1961 she published the authoritative compendium of canine folklore,
God Had a Dog: Folklore of the Dog (Rutgers University Press).
Mrs. Leach was born in New York City, where she spent most of her working career. She
was the daughter of Benjamin H. Doane, honored upon his retirement as Confidential
Clerk of the Appellate Division for fifty years of service with the Supreme Court of New
York, and the granddaughter of Captain Benjamin Doane, a Nova Scotia Master Mariner
who sailed the Eastern seaboard and had been a whaler in the South Pacific in the time of
Melville. In 1957 she returned to her ancestral home in Nova Scotia, where she was buried
on Thursday, May 26, 1977. She is survived by a son, Macdonald H. Leach, Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.; a brother, Benjamin Doane, of Wilton, Connecticut; and
one nephew, Dr. Benjamin Knowles Doane, of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

J.H.B.

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