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thatcrazycajunSome of you may remember my posting a link here some while back to an online copy of Eudora Welty's short story, "The Sculptor's Funeral." (For those who missed out the first time, a Google search will point you to several online copies.) I was recalling another old high-school-English-class favorite today and thought I'd pass along the link:
The Devil & Daniel Webster
It's by Stephen Vincent Benét,author of The Red Badge of Courage among other works, (CORRECTION: That was Stephen Crane, as my friend faxpaladin points out below; my bad) and is one of the finest examples of patriotic folklore (or just plain tall-tale-telling) I've ever come across. Then again, it may also have something to do with my religious southwest-Louisiana upbringing that this one has stuck with me for so long. (You can take the boy out of the Catholic Church, but you can never completely take the Catholic Church out of the boy..."Give me your sons when they are six, and they are mine for life!")
Another good example is the late Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stories, collected in a compilation called John the Balladeer (available from Amazon.com here) as well as in other volumes. Filker/folkie Joe Bethancourt has even set the songs from the stories to music on a CD you can buy from him directly here. In some of the stories, ole John manages to do at least as well as Mr. Webster in besting Old Scratch...and some of his disciples.
And speaking of the devil (or at least one of his key underlings), there's also the excellent collection of fictional letters from an older, experienced denizen of the Lower Depths to a new young trainee on corrupting a mortal man's soul and winning it for His Most Low, C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. It's a wonderful example of what I call "reverse-engineered" satire (i.e., showing how to be a good Christian by describing the process of making a bad one). John Cleese has a set of recordings in which he reads the Letters aloud that I simply must have.
The Devil & Daniel Webster
It's by Stephen Vincent Benét,
faxpaladin points out below; my bad) and is one of the finest examples of patriotic folklore (or just plain tall-tale-telling) I've ever come across. Then again, it may also have something to do with my religious southwest-Louisiana upbringing that this one has stuck with me for so long. (You can take the boy out of the Catholic Church, but you can never completely take the Catholic Church out of the boy..."Give me your sons when they are six, and they are mine for life!") Another good example is the late Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stories, collected in a compilation called John the Balladeer (available from Amazon.com here) as well as in other volumes. Filker/folkie Joe Bethancourt has even set the songs from the stories to music on a CD you can buy from him directly here. In some of the stories, ole John manages to do at least as well as Mr. Webster in besting Old Scratch...and some of his disciples.
And speaking of the devil (or at least one of his key underlings), there's also the excellent collection of fictional letters from an older, experienced denizen of the Lower Depths to a new young trainee on corrupting a mortal man's soul and winning it for His Most Low, C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. It's a wonderful example of what I call "reverse-engineered" satire (i.e., showing how to be a good Christian by describing the process of making a bad one). John Cleese has a set of recordings in which he reads the Letters aloud that I simply must have.
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