G. Legman has a couple of articles in the Journal of the American Folklore Society Vol 103, that you might find interesting if the Journal is in your local library.

masato sakurai noted above that in Vol 103, No. 410, October-December 1990 page 417, his Erotic Folksongs and Ballads: An International Bibliography is a very long listing of hundreds of obscure and unobtainable (possibly non-existent?) citations.

Mr. Legman was involved for many years in a running dispute with "the academics" who had disparaged his (and Vance Randolph's) work as "unscholarly," due to his failure to "cite fully from published sources." One might debate whether this was his "I can too," or "You b...ds wouldn't wouldn't know the difference if I just made up a bunch of s...t," but it was impressive.

The following is the "header" from a separate article, "Unprintable" Folklore: the Vance Randolph Collection, by Mr. Legman, from the same Journal. My records are incomplete. I believe this article begins on page 259 of the same "volume" of the JAFS, although it doesn't appear on the banner page list of articles for that issue.


During most of his working life, Vance Randolph, the great Ozark folklorist and writer, failed to receive the recognition he deserved from the folklore establishment, and he was forced by publishing convention to suppress the substantial and important erotic stories and songs in his collection. The forthcoming publication by University of Arkansas Press of Randolph's heretofore "unprintable" songs and other lore provides an occasion for examining the character, causes, and costs of suppressing such materials.

The article - some 20 pages worth - expounds in some detail on the "politics" of publishing unexpurgated folklore, and has some interesting opinions on a number of frequently cited (and frequently quoted) published works. Mr. Gershon relates some of Vance Randolph's difficulties with "folklorist" academicians, without too much complaint about his own similar difficulties.

While researching something else, I came across a report of Mr. Legman's attendance at a conference of the AFS - on their web site. When I learned, a couple of weeks later, of Mr Legman's death, I went back to the web site to see if I should learn a little more about him - and found found that he has been "expunged" from the site. The page that I had printed on my first visit now made no mention of him - but was still displayed as an "archived" page with no indication of "correction." So much for historical accuracy by academicians(?).

The Vance Randolph item cited above gives a pretty good idea of why(?) this may have happened.

John