Now that this brochure is being reprinted by the Texas Folk-Lore Society,
I take the opportunity to say a word concerning its author and its
history.
Although not a numbered publication, =Some Current Folk-Songs of the Negro=
(1912) was the first item produced by the Texas Folk-Lore Society. At the
time dues to the Society were two-bits a year--not enough to allow a very
extensive publication. Number I (now reprinted under the title of =Round
the Levee=) was not issued until 1916; then it was seven more years before
another volume was issued, since which time, 1923, the Society has sent
out a book annually to its members. The credit for initiating the
Society's policy of recording the lore of Texas and the Southwest belongs
to Will H. Thomas.
At the time his pamphlet was issued, he was president of the organization,
to which office he was elected again in 1923. His idea was that people who
work with folk-lore should not only collect it but interpret it and also
enjoy it. This view is expressed in his delightful essay on "The Decline
and Decadence of Folk Metaphor," in =Publications= Number II (=Coffee in
the Gourd=) of the Society.
The view is thoroughly representative of the man, for Will Thomas was a
vigorous, sane man with a vigorous, sane mind. He had a sense of humor
and, therefore, a sense of the fitness of things. For nearly thirty years
he taught English in the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, and
I have often wished that more professors of English in the colleges and
universities over the country saw into the shams and futilities and sheer
nonsense that passes for "scholarship" as thoroughly as he saw into them.
Yet he was tolerant. He was a salt-of-the-earth kind of man.
He was born of the best of old-time Texas stock on a farm in Fayette
County, January 11, 1880; he got his collegiate training at Austin
College, Sherman, and the University of Texas and then took his Master's
degree at Columbia University. He was co-editor, with Stewart Morgan, of
two volumes of essays designed for collegians. He died March 1, 1935.
Gates Thomas, Professor of English in Southwestern State Teachers College
at San Marcos, who has done notable work in Negro folk songs and who is
one of the nestors and pillars of the Texas Folk-Lore Society, is his
brother.
J. FRANK DOBIE
Austin, Texas
April, 1936