What does it mean to say that postmodern interest in first level folklore is no longer based on the grand themes of humanism, that the motivations expressed so admirably by folklorists such as Wilson (1988) are irrelevant, or to say along with Lyotard that second level criteria of competence “no longer make the grade” (1984:51)? Aside from telling us that the process of postmodernization is a story about posthumanism, it draws our attention to three related aspects of folklore of postmodern folklore. First it means that first level folklore is recast from an object of knowledge into an object of consumption; postmodern folklore is folklore commodified. Second, it means that in contrast to the modern disposition to invest oneself in folklore in order to mark a social difference, in postmodern culture one consumes folklore in order to achieve self-fulfillment.

~ Gerald E. Warshaver, “On Postmodern Folklore”

Dogtown is located between Gloucester and Rockport on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. In the late 17th and early 18th century it was a village of about one hundred families, who had settled on the plateau as a refuge from pirates and the British navy. After the war of 1812 the coastal areas became safer, and most villagers moved to Rockport and Gloucester.

Only a handful of widows, independent-minded women and vagabonds remained, and they soon acquired a reputation as witches. The feral dogs they kept for protection gave the village its name. In 1830 Dogtown’s last inhabitant, freed slave Cornelius Finson, was moved to the Gloucester poorhouse. Dogtown became a ghost town.

@ New England Folklore

The holiday season has come and gone, but we still have two months of winter to get through. What better symbol of the coming cold months than the cannibal giants of Algonquin mythology?

Many people have heard of the wendigo, the cannibal monster found in American Indian folklore across much of the northern US and Canada. Wendigos have been featured in movies, comic books and TV shows. In northern New England, the five Wabanaki tribes talk about a similar creature, known either as the chenoo, the giwakwa, or the kiwakwa. You should avoid it no matter what it’s called!

@ New England Folklore

Domain of Mount Greylock – Video Portal is a community web portal for everyone in the area of Mount Greylock. Some communities and neighborhoods are already on the map, but more will be added as needed. You can participate by submitting short videos for the site. “Domain of Mount Greylock – Video Portal” is another virtual bringing together of the Adamses. Adams and North Adams sit at the base of Mount Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts—it is our unifying landmark, and according to local Indian legend a spiritual beacon. This project brings together all the communities, not just Adams and North Adams, that surround the mountain. Please join the project by submitting any kind of short video. Videos can be video art, documentary, animations, personal stories related to place, family histories, short film, experimental, or whatever else. A united portrait of the towns, their people, and the history is created by many voices contributing to the domain.

Well, Paul Bunyan had been busy out in the woods for a while when the Internet came up, so he came to the party kind of late. But it wasn’t too late — what really piqued his interest was when he heard about editorials, or ‘blogs’ as they used to call’em back then.

Paul had always been the world’s biggest logger, so naturally he took a real cotton to the word “blogger”, once he’d heard it. He had to ask what exactly it meant, though — fortunately, Babe the Blue Ox had considerable Google-fu, and was able to point him in the right direction almost immediately. And while they were all sitting around the camp jawboning about this new development out in the city world, his old friend and camp cook Sourdough Sam made him a bet that, even though he was the world’s most famous logger, he probably couldn’t be the world’s biggest blogger.

(via Jerz)

The sea continues to inspire skilled traditional artists who make both functional and commemorative objects. Here you will meet a handful of artists who still make their livelihood building wooden boats and marine hardware. Others create objects evoking the golden era of tall ships, or the whaling and fishing industries. Some artists revitalize maritime crafts once practiced by sailors, while other artists create highly personal work, memorializing those who lost their lives at sea.

@ Mass Folk Arts

Moosilauke is a mountain of many stories. Like the people who told them, most have been long forgotten. These tell of life in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a part of rural New England enlivened by seasonal forays of summer visitors…

The purpose of this site is to provide a glimpse of the wealth of unique literary, geographical and historical information we have collected about Mt. Moosilauke over the past 25+ years. While a web site can only provide short historical pieces, these will hopefully whet your interest to read further.

(via Plep – NY)

Orkneyjar — a website dedicated to the preserving, exploring and documenting the ancient history, folklore and traditions of Orkney – a group of islands lying off the northern tip of Scotland, where the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean meet.

Including the Nuggle, a much less adorable version of the water horse.

Oral Tradition Journal is now providing the complete contents of all back issues online with open access. Which is very cool, and very appropriate for a journal concerned with orally — ie, openly — transmitted culture. Except now I’ll probably lose the few productive work hours fatherhood leaves me with each day to poring through their archives.

Most of authors seek fame, but I seek for justice, — a holier impulse than ever entered into the ambitious struggles of the votaries of that fickle, flirting goddess.

A publication has been made to the world, which has done me much injustice; and the catchpenny errors which it contains, have been already too long sanctioned by my silence. I don’t know the author of the book — and indeed I don’t want to know him; for after he has taken such a liberty with my name, and made such an effort to hold me-up to public ridicule, he cannot calculate on any thing but my displeasure. If he had been content to have written his opinions about me, however contemptuous they might have been, I should have had less reason to complain. But when he professes to give my narrative (as he often does) in my own language, and then puts into my mouth such language as would disgrace even an outlandish African, he must himself be sensible of the injustice he has done me, and the trick he has played off on the publick.

~ A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett (1834)