Coffee in the Gourd

TEXAS FOLKLORE SOCIETY: AUSTIN REBAPTIZED IN INK I never have liked the title Publications; it connotes nothing but dry-as-dustness. Yet an organization that issues volumes at more or less regular intervals needs some such general title. As editor, I decided years ago to retain Publications as a sub-title and to give each year-book issued by the Texas Folk-Lore Society an individual name. Now that the first volume under my editorship--a very modest volume that will never set the world on fire--is being reprinted, I seize the chance to give it a Christian name, at the same time allowing it to retain its honorable, but entirely undistinctive, family name. There were only five hundred copies in the original edition; I expect the twelve hundred copies in this edition to be unexhausted when, as must be, I shall some day cease to be editor. Those who have danced the old square dances will remember the call, Ducks in the river, going to the ford, Coffee in a little rag, sugar in a gourd. I would give a good deal if John Craddock could know that he is responsible for the name. As long as he was able to write he kept on contributing to the Texas Folk-Lore Society. Although he never mastered the technique of writing, for he was stricken too young, he had the most original imagination I have ever met. Will Thomas, another contributor in this volume, is gone, too; genial, natural, a representative Texan, and a "man-thinking" he was