Author and amateur folklorist. Known primarily for such poetic efforts as Snow-Bound
(1866), a recollection of winter evenings in his family home, Whittier is often
unrecognized for his pioneering work in folklore. Yet, as one of the first American
folklore collectors to gather oral traditions intentionally and as one of the first collectors
to regard the data he obtained as source material for creative literature, he is a significant
figure in the history of American folklore scholarship.
Whittier’s work in folklore was an attempt to perform important salvage work by
rescuing examples of New England’s “traditionary lore” from oblivion. Much of the
folklore Whittier presented came from printed sources, but the two books produced near
the outset of his career, Legends of New England in Prose and Verse (1831) and The
Supernaturalism of New England (1847), also contain items clearly taken from oral
tradition. Whittier is vague in identifying informants, perhaps from a desire to protect his
sources from ridicule because they believed in the supernatural. He has also been
criticized, somewhat unfairly, for “improving” texts; but he was dealing with folklore as
a creative writer rather than as a folklorist. His concept of folklore as consisting solely of daring, romantic, ancient, rustic stories is narrow, but, when judged against the standards
of the 1830s and 1840s, Whittier’s two volumes are well-done collections of local
legendry. In their focus on traditions of White residents, they are virtually unique for their
time.
W.K.McNeil
References
Whittier, John Greenleaf. 1831. Legends of New England. Hartford: Hammer and Phelps.
——. 1833. New England Superstitions. New England Magazine (July). Reprinted in The
Supernaturalism of New England, by John Greenleaf Whittier. Norman:
UniversityofOklahomaPress, 1969, pp. 119–129.
——. 1847. The Supernaturalism of New England. London: Wiley and Putnam.