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Lecture
Benjamin Botkin Lecture Series: Texts from the Event Flyers
Tales of the Jersey Devil
by Stephen Winick, American Folklife Center
Tuesday, August 23, 2005 at Noon
West Dining Room
6th Floor, James Madison Building
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC
Thea Austen contact (202-707-1743)
Closest metro station is Capitol South on the Orange/Blue lines.
In October, 1790, a woodsman named Vance Larner saw a horrible apparition
in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Describing it in his diary, he wrote:
It was neither beast nor man nor spirit, but a hellish brew of all
three. It was beside a pond when I came upon it. I stopped and did
not move.
Nay, I could not move. It was dashing its tail to and fro in the pond
and rubbing
its horns against a tree trunk. It was as large as a moose with leather
wings. It had cloven hooves as big around as an oak’s trunk.
After it was through with the tree, it yielded an awful scream as if
it were
a pained man, and then flew across the pond until I could see it no
more.
Two hundred and fifteen years later, this is recognized as the first sighting
of what has come to be known as The Jersey Devil. It is far from the last.
In November 2004, a young man in the region reported:
We saw this huge shadow go over us and then we saw it land in
front of our path. Now it was only a few feet away from us. The creature
looked
like it was going to start walking towards us when out of the corner
of my eye I saw something else move. I turned in fear thinking it
was another one but it was deer running past. The creature also turned
to
look at them. I then felt my brother tug on my arm and yelled run.
We ran. The creature was about six feet tall, with a wingspan of
about 8 feet.
It was a grayish brownish color with hooved feet and had horns like
a ram. The head looked horse or dog like and it had arms like a gorilla.
Stories about the Jersey Devil, also known as the Leeds Devil, are a typical
feature of south Jersey folklore. The meaning of these stories differs
according to different hearers. To some, the Jersey Devil is an unknown
beast, a cryptozoological specimen living in a remote area. To others,
he is a supernatural monster, the product of a curse by a mother on an
unwanted baby, or of a priest on a wicked family. Some think he is a pure
hoax, and others think he is the product of overwrought imaginations. To
still others, he is a campfire tale, a spooky feature of camping trips
to the New Jersey Pines.
Tales of the Jersey Devil was a traveling exhibit
curated and toured by Stephen D. Winick as the regional folklorist for
the Delaware Valley area
of southern New Jersey. Winick will present a lecture and slide show
covering many facets of this remarkable regional legend. We’ll discuss
the unexplained sightings that have occurred for more than two hundred
years,
as well as the well-known hoaxes. We’ll examine the “Phenomenal
Week” of January 1909, when hundreds of people claimed to have
seen the beast, and the 1929 coda—when a huckster claimed it was
all a hoax. We’ll look at the story of the Jersey Devil’s
birth, and find its roots in medieval European morality tales. We’ll
see how stories originally independent of the monster have come to be
associated
with this famous legend.
We’ll also take a look at the Jersey Devil
in South Jersey’s
popular culture. Jersey Devil imagery is everywhere in the region,
from a fighter group in the US Air Force to a bar and grill in Smithville,
and from a tattoo parlor in Blackwood to the State’s NHL hockey
team. T-shirts, paperweights, Boy Scout patches, posters, prints, comics,
postcards,
books, and even Hollywood movies have been made to celebrate this regional
tale.
A significant feature of this talk will be brand-new oral versions
of Jersey Devil stories, many never before published. As the former
curator
of the
Camden Folklore Archives in New Jersey, and as a current employee of
the Library of Congress, Winick has had access to unpublished oral
accounts of the Jersey Devil taken down by both student researchers
and professional
folklorists.
Stephen D. Winick received his PhD. in Folklore in 1998
from the University of Pennsylvania. He founded and for five years
directed the Delaware
Valley Folklife Center in Camden, NJ. Currently he works as the writer
and editor
in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
The American Folklife Center was created by Congress in 1976 and placed
at the Library of Congress to “preserve and present American Folklife” through
programs of research, documentation, archival presentation, reference service,
live performance, exhibition, public programs, and training.The Folklife
Center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established in 1928
and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from
the United States and around the world. Check out our web site: www.loc.gov/folklife/
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