Mr. Hyman Defends Folklore Dictionary

Mr.
Hyman and the Dictionary

Author(s): Erminie W. Voegelin, Melville J. Herskovits, Stanley Edgar Hyman and Alton C.
Morris
Source: The Kenyon Review, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring, 1951), pp. 315-322
Published by: Kenyon College
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4333244
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COMMUNICATIONS
Mr. Hyman and the Dictionary
SIRS:
In a review of Volume I of The Funk and Wagnalls StandardDictionary
of Folklore, Mythology and Legend (1949, Maria Leach, Ed.) which
was published in your Autumn 1950 number, a number of aggressive
statements were made, as well as several misstatementsof fact. May I
draw your attention to a few of these, and request that this material be
brought to the attention of your readers?
Page 726, KENYON REVIEW: "The besettingfoolishnessof the
book, as of so much American folk scholarship,is the idea that mythic
figureswere or may have been historical:such as ... Hiawatha and so on
interminably."
To a student of the American Indian the dictum that Hiawatha
could not possibly have been an actual person would be of some interest
if true. But I am afraid that no American Indian specialist in his
right mind is going to take your reviewer'sword for this, since special-
ists customarilydeal with evidence. The evidence in this case (as stated
in the Dictionaryentry on Hiawatha) is (a) that the League of the
Iroquoiswas probablyorganizedlate, hence traditional material about it
is likely to be fairly reliable; (b) that one of the Iroquois chieftainships
carries the name Hiawatha. This latter fact, that the title Hiawatha
appearsamong the 50 founders of the League, has most recently been
discussedby W. N. Fenton in his monographon the Condolence Cane
published last year (Smithsonian MiscellaneousCollections 3: 15).
Can it be that here your reviewer wishes to join the company of
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, by con-
fusing Nanabozho, the Ojibwa culture hero, with the IroquoisHiawatha?
Page 725. . . . the author of the entry on Intapbernes'Wife doesn't
even suspect matrilinealrelationsbehind the rationalizationfor her choice
of her brother'slife rather than husband'sor son's."
The Dictionaryentry on Intaphernes'Wife summarizesHerodotus'
tale about a wife who chose that her brother'srather than her husband's
or her son's life be spared,when Darius the king offered to exempt one
male relative from the punishment he had decreed for all members of
316 DICTIONARY OF FOLKLORE
Intaphernes'family. Your reviewer sees that this representsa survival
of a former matrilineal stage of society. A Freudian might as legit-
imately attribute incest as the motivation behind the choice made.
However, is a short dictionary article the place in which to air any such
interpretationsas assertionsof fact?
Page 728. "Where the American material is not a fraud, the au-
thorshave no feel for it: the entry on 'The Gray Goose'sees no connection
between it and such ancient totemic songs as 'The Cutty Wren' and
'The Darby Ram' .
If a connection between these three songs has been demonstrated,
a citation to such in the review would have been welcome. Your
reviewer, if you recall, speaks of "the absurdly deficient scholarshipof
the Dictionary" in omitting notations in the Baubo entry (p. 724). If
however, as one suspects, no connection has been attested, here your
reviewer skips lightly from one continent to another in his discovery
of similar cultural items, for which he then gives a pseudo-historical
accounting. The bald assertionthat "The Cutty Wren" and "The Darby
Ram" are ancient totemic songs is, like the dictum on Hiawatha, arresting
-if true. It so happens that a deal of nonsense about totemism as a
culture complex was explored and exploded decades ago by Alexander
Goldenweiser (Journal of American Folklore 23: 179-293, 1910), yet
for your reviewer it would seem that Sir James Frazer has said the last
word on the subject: all traditionalreferencesto faunal phenomenamust
be totemistic.
Page 729. "There will be little serious work done until the study
of folk material in this country writes its declarationof independence
... from the omnipresentanthropologistswho write most of this book,-
The 30 contributors to the StandardDictionary are listed on pages
vii-x of the Dictionary. Of these 30, 11 are identifiedas anthropologists.
Unsigned articlesin the Dictionary were written by membersof the Funk
and Wagnalls Dictionary staff (listed on page x) ; none of the staff are
anthropologists. Volume I of the Dictionary was 12 years in preparation;
the 11 anthropologistswho wrote for the Dictionary were asked to do
this work about a year and a half before the Dictionary went to press.
Furthermore,taking the first 50 pages of Volume I as a sample, eight
and one-half pages were written by anthropologists;and only eight and
one-half pages. Any consecutive 50-page sample of the Dictionary
would probably yield about the same percentage (17%/o).
"constitute most of the American Folklore Society,-
COMMUNICATIONS 317
Here again your reviewerdisplayshis aptitude in creative arithmetic.
The membershipof the American Folklore Society as of 1948 when the
last membershiplist was published (Journal of American Folklore 61:
418-34, 1948) consisted of 557 individuals and 430 library subscribers.
Of the 557 individual members 103, or less than 20%o, are anthro-
pologists. There has been no attempt to so increase the anthropological
membership of the AFS between 1948 and the time your reviewer
writes, as to make his statement valid today.
'tand, at best, patronize the field-
Who are the anthropologistswho are patronizing folklore today,
and where are they doing so? I know of several leading anthropologists
who are being anything but patronizing: anthropologists who have
recently published, and are on the verge of publishing further studies
in folklore are Kroeber, Radin, Herskovits, Gayton, Reichard, Morris,
Opler, Hallowell, Fenton, Shimkin, Titiev, to mention only a few. I
have not heardany anthropologists,either at the annual programmeetings
of the American AnthropologicalAssociation, or at the meetings of the
AmericanFolklore Society, patronizefolklore. At the 1949 AFS meeting
several of the anthropologistspresent made explicit their interest in the
subject.
"randregard it as one of the less reliable techniques anthro-
pology has at its disposal."
Although the last part of his sentence is obscure, I assume your
reviewer is trying to say that American anthropologistsare not, today,
followers of the Euhemerist school? If so, he is quite right; but if
folklore material, subjected to the same methods of study that are used
in analysing or comparing other cultural materials, yields definitive
results, I know of no anthropologist who would decry the use of it,
or refuse to use it.
Pages 729-730. "MacEdwardLeacb tosses out the English anthro-
pological school on one page and writes the Blood article fram Frazer,
Hartland ond Crawley on another. All the marvellouswork of English
scholarshipgoes ignored or denigrated: Marian Cox gets five grudging
lines, Hartland is throw-n the sop of "able,'Frazer is credited uith a
'remarkable'collection of data and 'somewhat dubious' conclusions,
Jane Harrison, Raglan, and the others go unnoticed. The patient, in
short, sends the doctor packing. Let the patient beware."
These concluding sentences of the review spell out what is plainly
indicated in the criticism of the Gray Goose and Intaphernes' Wife
entries, namely, that your reviewer is a zealous champion of the now-
obsolete English anthropologicalschool of folklore. So zealous, that he
does not hesitate to distort the Dictionary's treatment of this school and
its members. For the sake of the record: Leach treats the English
anthropologicalschool as an historical phenomenon- which it most
certainly is. He gives as references,at the end of his article on blood,
Strach, a German; Trumbull, an American; the three English anthro-
pological folklorists mentioned. The Dictionary calls Cox's Cinderella
study "massive"; "important" and "great" as well as "able" are used in
reference to Hartland and his work; "fame" is used in connection with
Frazer, and "remarkable" atppliedto the Golden Bough. A short biograph-
ical entry on Jane Harrison probably should have been included in
Volume 1, but how could an entry on FitzRoy Richard Somerset Raglan,
baron, have been spirited into an alphabetized work that runs only from
A through I?
Since an obsolete school is so strongly recommended as the future
great hope for folklore, it might be well to pause for a moment of
reflection. The English anthropological school of folklore to which
Frazer, Hartland, Crawley, Lang and many others belonged, accepted
and used the theories and assumptions of the classic evolutionistic school
of anthropology of 1860-1890. English folklorists of the anthropological
school assumed, as did their anthropological colleagues of that period,
that all cultures passed through similar stages in their development, that
non-integrated customs and beliefs were survivals of previous stages in
the development of the culture, that cultural evolution was as valid a
concept as biological evolution, that ultimate causes could be determined
and primal origins discovered by speculative reasoning. As physicians,
the proponents of the English anthropological school will probably always
receive the credit due them for their excellent manners with the patient.
A. L. Kroeber has most recently acknowledged their abilities, in his 1948
Anthropology (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company), pp. 6-7:
The roster of this evolutionistic-speculative school was graced by some

illustrious names. Needless to say, these men tempered the basic crudity of their
opinions by wide knowledge, acuity or clharm of presentation, and frequent
insight and sound sense in concrete particulars. In their day, two generations
or three ago, under the spell of the concept of evolution in its first flush, and
of the postulate of progress at its strongest, such methods of reasoning were
almost inevitable. Today they are long since threadbare ...
ERMINIE W. VOEGELIN
(Indiana University)
COMMUNICATIONS 319
SIRS:
When I read some of the strictures in Stanley Hyman's discussion of
myth and ritual in your Summer1949 issue, I rememberhaving wondered
at his apparentirritation with anthropologistswho are concerned with
the study of mythology and folklore. This was the more puzzling since
the particular object of his displeasure, Richard Chase, is not an anthro-
pologist at all.
Now comes his review in your Autumn 1950 number, of the
Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, in which he seems to
have focused this irritation into a declaration of war, with the object
of ejecting anthropologistsfrom a territory he delimits as "the study of
folklore." Most of his thrusts, as concerns what he conceives to be
errorsof interpretation,are actually directed against non-anthropological
contributors. As in the case of his criticism of Chase, his displeasure
seems to be aroused by the anthropology of non-anthropologists, but
directed against anthropologistswhose articles, with one minor exception,
go unchallenged.
Just what, one asks, have anthropologistsdone to irritate him so?
One cannot but wonder if Mr. Hyman, who has obviously read widely
concerning what others have said about myth and ritual, has ever taken
the time to read in the great store of texts and accompanying cultural
materialsthat anthropologicalfolklorists have so patiently recordedfrom
peoples all over the world. I have searchedhis review, his-article and
his study of literary criticism, The Armed Vision, for a reference that
would indicate that he had any contact with these collections. Nowhere
is there any suggestion that he has any knowledge of the texts of the
South Seas epics, of the novelistic tales of the American Indian, the
cycles of African stories, or any appreciationof the many poetic forms
these peoples have variously created in their songs, their proverbs, their
riddles.
I thought that we might have a clue to Mr. Hyman's irritation in
the sentence that reads, "Although a good number of these contributors
were trained in anthropologicalrelativism, the special position of the
Anglo-Saxon heritage and the Christian religion seem hardly questioned."
Yet the examples he cites in documenting this point make it difficult
to discern whether he approvesor disapprovesof what he calls "anthro-
pological relativism." I have therefore come to the conclusion that the
reason for his irritation is to be found in the refusal of anthropologists
to commit themselves to any absolute theory of origin, which includes
the theory dear to Mr. Hyman, that myth "arisesout of ritual and not
vice versa."
Practically all the authorities he cites on this point are concerned
with Greek and Roman mythology. When his favorite authority, Sir
James Frazer, steps outside this historic frame, he, like those who have
followed him, employs an outworn and methodologically inadmissable ap-
proach called technically the comparative method, which compares fact
without context, and disregards elementary canons of time and distance.
Granting that Mr. Hyman at least knows about the "anthropological
relativism" he mentions, is it too much to expect him also to know
that the Graeco-Roman cultural stream is but one of many to be found
in the world, and that a generalization based on this single stream, however
valid for this particular context, might not be universally applicable?
Mr. Hyman's irritation, I am afraid, is symptomatic of something
that is a much greater cause for disturbance than his personal attitude
toward anthropological folklorists. Students of the humanities are today
torn between their earlier preoccupation with textual criticism and the
analysis of form, and the feeling that they must take into full account
the world in which are set the manifestations of the creative drives and
values of living they study. The problem, stated otherwise, is that of
establishing a working relationship between the humanities and the social
sciences.
In all humility, I submit that anthropology, the only discipline with
firm footing in both these divisions of scholarship, can here make an
effective contribution if it is permitted to do so. One must regret that
a critic of Mr. Hyyman's ability, who either does not or will not see this,
elects to be so negativistic about the matter, and to refuse so belligerently
to explore possibilities for mutual understanding that to some of us, at
least, seem to call for a more positive attitude.
MELVILLE J. HERSKOVITS
(Northwestern University)
SIRS:
I am not primarily concerned with the anthropology of Frazer,

Tylor, and the rest, but with the ritual studies of folk literature that
arose out of their work, from the early explorations of Murray, Harrison,
and Cornford in Greek materials down to Theodor Gaster's Thespis, pub-
lished in 1950, and John Speirs's current series of articles on English
medieval poetry in Scrutiny. This body of scholarship, which I listed in
part in my piece, "Myth, Ritual and Nonsense," the Summer 1949 issue
COMMUNICATIONS 321
(a list I (hopeto supplement soon), has with increasing vitality spread
to almost every field of folk study, seems to me the best and most excit-
ing work being done in the field, and was shamefully slighted in the
Dictionary.
Dr. Vogelin seemsupset at my charge that antrhopologistsdominate
the American Folklore Society and its Journal as they do this book. Yet
that dominance is real, perhaps for reasons not unflattering to the
anthropologists, and the non-anthropologicalfolklorists grumble regu-
larly about it without daring to do much else. Her membershipfigures,
like her page counts, evade the real issue of dominance: let her read the
list of the Society's executive council or attend a meeting; let her note
the anthropologists who have edited the Journal, including Boas and
Benedict, and the anthropologistswho have headed the society, including
A. H. Gayton at present and herself two years ago. The statement that
folklore is one of the less reliable techniques anthropology has at its
disposalwas made to me in conversationby a well-known anthropologist,
whose name I will be glad to send Dr. Vogelin on a penny postcard. If
she herself does not patronize folklore, bully for her, but she can hardly
speak for any great number of her colleagues.
As for her other arguments, they are either the raising of large
moot matters like euhemerism and the historicity of mythic figures,
matrilinealstages, and totemism, on which I have written elsewhereand
which can hardly be debated in this space, or else such willful misread-
ings as taking my analogous"connection" to mean historical derivation,
or my requestfor some seriousconsiderationof Raglan'sideas as a plea for
a biographicalentry. (FitzRoy Richard Somerset, Lord Raglan, is, by
the way, still very much alive, which is perhaps why he didn't make
Volume II, J-Z, either.) Since Dr. Vogelin is one of the authors of the
Dictionaryunder discussion-which, as my review pointed out with a
good deal of evidence she has not chosen to mention, and as my forth-
coming review in The Journalof AmericanFolklorewill show in more
detail, is a fairly shabby production-she might better spend her time
seeing that some of the worst absurditiesand deficienciesof the book are
corrected for a second edition than soaring to its defense against the
stricturesof the only reviewerwho seems to have read it. Finally, on her
attempt to kill off 19th Century English anthropology with words like
"now-obsolete" and Dr. Kroeber's "threadbare,"I am naturally not
competent to judge the claims of rival anthropologicalschools, but just
as a sporting man I would wager that The Golden Bough will be read
and taken seriouslywhen the writings of Voegelin and Kroeberare for-
gotten.
Dr. Herskovits has done me the courtesy of reading some of my
work. His statement that I deal more with theoriesof myth and ritual
than with myths and rituals themselves is true; I wish it weren't, and I
hope in the future to write about specific texts to his or anyone'scontent.
I apologize for giving him the impressionthat I want to drive anthro-
pologists out of folklore study, when I want only, and am not alone in
wanting it, to see them pulled off its back, and function on a basis of
equality with other cooperatinggroupsof specialistswho enrich the field.
Since I gather from his pacific conclusion that this is what Dr. Herko-
vits wants too, I hope that he will consequentlyjoin me in agitating for
it.
STANLEY EDGAR HYMAN
(Saugatuck, Conn.)
SIRS:
May I take this opportunity to enter an objection to Mr. Hyman's review
of Funk and Wagnall's StandardDictionary of Folklore, Mythology and
Legend,which was publishedin the autumn 1950 numberof the Kenyon
Review. This review article is not only an abusive piece of writing but
it is full of misstatements and distortionsof fact. I am the first to admit
that there are many poorly written folklore articles that have been pub-
lished in journalsand quarterliesfrom time to time. There are, however,
many seriousstudents of folklore doing creditablescholarship,of which
Mr. Hyman is manifestly oblivious. Mrs. Maria Leach's Dictionary has
its weaknesses,but I do not know of an intitial attempt at dictionary
making that was not full of inaccuraciesor other faults that had to be
correctedin subsequenteditions. Dr. SamuelJohnson'swork is a classic
example. When Mr. Hyman, therefore, speaksof the "besetting foolish-
ness of the book" he is being simply irascible without justification, for
this dictionary in spite of its shortcomingsis too valuable a beginning
to be treated with such captiousness.
ALTON C. MORRIS
(Southern FolkloreQutarterly,
University of Florida)

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The roster of this evolutionistic-speculative school was graced by some

I am not primarily concerned with the anthropology of Frazer,

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