QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
The editor has received the following letter, which will explain itself. The work on which Mr. Lomax is engaged is commended to the readers of The Quarterly, who are urged to give him any help they can in completing the collection he has undertaken.
George P. Garrison.
Dear Professor Garrison: I am endeavoring to make a complete collection of the native songs and ballads of the West. Many of these ballads have never been in print, but, like the Masonic Ritual, are handed down from one generation to another by “word of mouth.” They deal mainly with frontier experiences: the deeds of desperadoes like Jesse James and Sam Bass; the life of the ranger in camp and on the scout; the story of the cowboy on the range, the round-up and going up the trail; the trials of the Forty-niners, buffalo hunters, miners, stage drivers, Indian fighters, and freighters—in short, they are attempts, often crude and sometimes vulgar, to epitomize and particularize the life of the pioneers who peopled the vast region west of the Mississippi river.
I believe a notice from you in the columns of The Quarterly will result in valuable material for my purpose—which is to preserve from extinction this expression of American letters. May I add that ballads, and the like, which because of crudity, incompleteness, coarseness, or for any other reason are unavailable for publication, will be as interesting and as useful as others of more merit. It is my desire to collect the songs and ballads now or lately in actual existence and in the precise form which they have popularly assumed.
Yours sincerely, John A. Lomax, College Station, Texas.
How to cite:
"QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.", Volume 010, Number 4, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page not available. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v010/n4/back_8.html
[Accessed Tue Dec 2 17:54:36 CST 2008]
