[UA] American Folklore Question

[Eric Brennan]

----- Original Message -----
From: "K.A.G." <rbrbskt5 at japanimation.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2000 11:23 PM
Subject: [UA] American Folklore Question


> Sorry to bug you guys with this, but I'm getting ready to try and design a
whole American King Under the Mountain Myth campagin for UA and I can't find
a thing of any substance online or in any of the bookstores near me on
American Folklore. I can find Native American Folklore, South American
Folklore, I can even find Russian Folklore but nothing on Pecos Bill or John
Henry, or most importantly Paul Bunyon so if you guys no any sites or books
the subject please tell me.
uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua

Eric Replies:

For Paul Bunyan and those folks, check out a friend's copy (or better yet,
buy your own) Suppressed Transmission 2, by the list's own Ken Hite. It has
a great article on Paul Bunyan.  If you have a Pyramid subscription, check
it out on the archives there.  Definitely a rich source for UA stuff.
    For the King Under the Mountain, check out a lot of beliefs about the
"Lost Cause," or Confederacy.  There're links between the "South Shall Rise
Again" and Arthur, though if you dig too deep they stop being fun and start
being depressing...the Klan as a group trying to invoke the Round Table is
kind of a nasty idea, no?  But no less nasty than the Nazi attempts to do
so...
    (Asa Forrest, the Klan leader, speechwriter for George Wallace, and man
responsible for castrations as a "warning" to blacks and his alter-ego
Forrest Carter, make for an interesting topic and starting point into this
topic.  Asa was a vile monster, while Forrest wrote "The Education of Little
Wing," a fraudulent book about growing up American Indian which was a cause
celebrity for a time, and "Gone to Texas," which became arguably one of the
best westerns ever in the form of "The Outlaw Josey Wales."  They were the
same guy...)

    Additionally, Texas and the Alamo strike me as being a neat place to
look for a King Under the Mountain.  Isn't there something about one of
those guys (Crockett, etc...) waiting to rise again when Texas needs them?
And as for the faery element of conventional Arthurian tales, New York state
has a rich supply of them, with the half century long sleep of Rip Van
Winkle bringing to mind similar resonance...

--Eric
_______________________________
"Of course Stone Cold Steve Austin hit you.
You were quoting Hamlet, and he finds the
bourgeois themes disturbing.  If you'd been quoting
Henry V, he would've been right there beside you."
--Mick Foley, on the 9-28 Smackdown


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