Tales of the Big Bend by Elton Miles (review)

152 Western American Literature type and motif numbers for them; the same materials can be found in the Southwest. “Newfie” (Newfoundland) jokes are heard in other geographical areas as Polish jokes or Aggie jokes. Pat and Mike jokes seem to be everywhere. Many of the fiddle tunes played in Goulais Bay were played in the Texas Hill Country early in this century. The Canadian cattle roundup in 1906 could have occurred in Texas or Wyoming in 1880. And I was not surprised to find cowboy terms derived from Spanish to be even farther away from the original: “mecate” (hair rope) became “McCarty” and then “macartie.” Folklore of Canada is a good book, one which should please anyone interested in folklore. The presentation is scholarly; aids to the reader include sections on sources, notes and references for the materials, as well as indexes of tale types, motifs, contributors, and informants. There is much fresh material here; it is especially valuable for comparison with folklore of the United States. ORLAN SAWEY Texas A&I University in Kingsville Tales of the Big Bend. By Elton Miles. (College Station and London: Texas A&M University Press, 1976. 189 pages, $10.00.) South of the Davis Mountains between El Paso and Del Rio lies the Big Bend, so called because it is bordered on three sides by a pronounced southward swing of the Rio Grande. Scant of rainfall, the Big Bend is nonetheless remarkable for its Chisos mountains that rise as high as 7,835 feet in Mount Emory and for its Santa Elena, Mariscal, and Boquillas canyons that plunge to depths of 2,000 feet. It is also noted for the anti­ quity of its still sparse civilization of Indian, Mexican, and Anglo. Here, for more than a quarter of a century, Elton Miles has taught English and administered the Language Arts Division at Sul Ross State University in Alpine. A former president of the Texas Folklore Society, he has also either written or edited such books and monographs as Lucky 7, A Cowman’s [Will Tom Carpenter’s] Autobiography (1957); The Way I [Walter Fulcher] Heard It (1958); and Southwest Humorists (1969). In sum, when it comes to traversing the challenging country of Southwestern folklore, Miles is a man who will do to ride the river with. In Tales of the Big Bend, published commendably by the rapidly emerging Texas A&M University Press, all the color and mystery of the place and the indigenous sensibilities of the writer converge. The result is a revealing compendium of regional folklore. Miles begins with a preface that sets forth his main objective of telling “some of the best tales of the Big Bend.” From that point, he proceeds to lay out eleven chapters of Reviews 153 stories and analysis, the first four of which make use of materials from Miles’ earlier articles in the publications of the Texas Folklore Society. He provides variants of each basic story. In time, the work cuts back 250 years to the early 1700’s and the first accounts of the Devil in the Big Bend. It then moves steadily forward to the recent twentieth century in which the eccentric Bobcat Carter divided his time between living as a hermit and frolicking with townsfolk and tourists. The supernatural abounds — from the Devil to Christ to Chisos Moun­ tain ghosts to the Marfa Lights (the West Texas counterpart of the East Texas Saratoga lights described by Francis Abernethy). Closely related are the water witching of the Boy with the X-Ray Eyes and the search, in the manner of Dobie’s Coronado’s Children, for the lost Haystack gold mine. But the best stories concern flesh and blood folks — Ben Leaton, the scalp hunter and trader, who established himself as the “Law in the Big Bend” ; John Burgess, equally ornery, who is said to have murdered Leaton; Indian Emily, who died for love, and Mexican Dolores, who lived for it; and, especially, John Joel Glanton, another scalp hunter who rivals the grossest villains of all time. Clanton’s lethal activities dwarf the round-up killing perpetuated in folklore by the witnesses who branded “murder” on the side of the maverick steer that provoked the shooting. In the...