116 Mormon Letters Annual 1984 The Association for Mormon Letters Salt Lake City, Utah 1985Copyright Reserved by the Authors or Assignee Association for Mormon Letters Steven P.Sondrup, Executive Secretary 1345 South 1800 East Salt Lake City, UT 84108Contents Foreword History into Fiction Margaret R. Munk Who Shapes Oral Narrative: A Punctionalist and Psychosocial Examination of the Lore of Two Mormon Female Tale-Tellers Gloria L. Cronin crying "Change" in a Permanent World: A Look at Contemporary Writings of Mormon Women on Motherhood Linda P. Wilcox Scottish Mormon Immigrants and the Muse: Verses from the Dust Frederick S. Buchan Fued and Fun: Humor in the Poetry of John Lyon Ted Lyon Book of Mormon Imagery Richard Dilworth Rust Levi Peterson's "Road to Damascus" and the Language of Grace Steven P. Sondrup The Willing Captive: A Study of Freedom in Recent Mormon Fiction Vernon Jensen The Literary Image of the Mormon Colonies in Mexico Edward A. Geary Measuring the Achievement of the New LDS Hymnal Karen Lynn Some Popular Non-Mormon Books Read by Mormons before 1900 Edward L. and Eleanor C. Hart Looking through the Glass Darkly: Early British Perceptions of Mormonism Thomas R. Burton Making the "Good" Good for Something: Mormon Literature lavina Fielding Anderson A Direction for 12 ue 36 59 17 87 102 1. 124 129 14. 150Foreword This volume, the fifth published by the Association for Mormon Letters, joins its predecessors in offering a selection of essays of broad appeal and scholarly merit dealing with extremely varied aspects of Mormon literature. Although all of the essays in this volume were originally presented at various symposia sponsored by the Association, the volume is not in a strict sense te be regarded as proceedings of those gatherings but rather, as its title suggests, an annual volume containing noteworthy studies of the Mormon literary tradition. The Association welcomes the submission of articles for consideration for inclusion whether or not they have been presented at one of the symposia. The studies appearing in this volume are indicative of not only the diverse interests of members of the Association but also the geographic range of the Association's activities. The papers by Meg Munk, Gloria Cronin, Linda Wilcox, Frederick Buchanan, and Ted Lyon, were delivered at the symposium held in January 1984 in Salt Lake City. The spring 1984 symposium was convened in Atlanta and was the setting for the papers by Richard Rust and Steven P. Sondrup. Vernon Jensen's paper was first presented in San Francisco, and those by Ed Geary and Karen Lynn at the conjoint meeting of the Association and the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association in El Paso, Texas, in October 1984. The contributions of Edward and Eleanor Hart and of Thomas Burton were read at the Provo symposium in January 1985. Lavina Fielding Anderson's paper was the presidential address at the January 1982 meeting but was held out of the 1983 Annual which contained her addresses before the RMMLA-AML session and the first East Coast symposium. Appreciation is expressed to all of the authors whose work appears in this volume. The College of Humanities and Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature at Brigham Young University and Lavina Fielding Anderson assisted in various ways with the preparation of this volume. We are most apprecia- tive of their efforts.History into Fiction Margaret R. Munk History is written in many ways, and often inadvertently. As present day advocates of personal history writing are anxious to remind us, those who record their experiences for their own posterity sometimes unknowingly furnish the working material of future historians. While some journal keepers seem to have been aware that they were making history and have written with consciousness of a future audience, many others have supposed that their daily experiences were of interest to no one but themselves and their immediate families. They would have been surprised to know that what they considered merely personal and perhaps mundane recordings would someday be valued as pieces in a mosaic of the time and circumstances of a people. Even less have most personal record keepers foreseen that their efforts would provide a foundation for creative litera~ ture. Yet every author, and especially those writing what is often called historical fiction, must acquire an accurate knowledge of the events, the culture, and the people which provide the setting and the development of a created story.. This is the case with a writer interested in the story of the immi- grants to this country, as in any other historical movement. If one is to create a story from the immigration experience and to make it live for readers of a later time, one must learn, through the records of those who lived it, what the real exper- ience was like. Many years ago, I read and became intrigued with a novel by the British author Rumer Godden. Entitled China Court, the novel portrayed the story, in a style that wandered freely in time, of several generations of a family in a large English country house. At about the same time, I became keenly interested in the lives of several women in my mother's ancestry. It struck me that the style used in China Court would lend itself well to a fictionalized history of my maternal grandmother, her forebears, and her descendants. I had the all-too-common experience of finding this interest developing a little too late for me to glean directly from those who remembered them all that I wanted to know of these ances- tors. Still, I had enough sources of information to whet my appetite and kindle the writing fever, including a number of letters, articles, and personal accounts written or dictated by the objects of my interest themselves. For the past ten years, this project has remained a favorite of mine--often neglected, often set aside in the interest of shorter-term writing projects and the constant demands of family life--but always waiting to be taken up again with renewed interest in the vague hope that it may someday be finished. I 1have not created a Mormon China Court, but I have become increas- ingly excited about the possibilities of weaving a literary tapestry with general appeal from what can be known of the actual experiences of particular people. One of the five women whom I have been interested in "re-creating" was Madeleine Cardon, sister to my maternal grandfather's father, born into a large family of Protestant refugees in the Italian Piedmont in 1836. Her father, Philippe, was a stone mason who had built many of the small, slate-roofed farmhouses in the mountain villages of northern Italy. The Cardons, together with several other Piedmontese families, were converted to Mormonism by Lorenzo Snow and his companions when they were sent into Italy in the 1850s and found more willing listeners among the lowland Catholics who had driven them there. These Vaudois families turned Mormon, led and aided by the Swiss convert Serge Baliff, left their villages and migrated by land to Liverpool, by ship to New Orleans, up the Mississippi by steam boat to St. Louis, and thence by wagon train to Utah. Madeleine was nineteen years old at the time of the immigration. When she was in her eighties, she dictated for posterity a detailed account of her family's conversion and immigration, an account which has become one of my most valued possessions. It is excerpts from her story, and from my story of her, that I would like to share with you in this session of the AML symposium. Madeleine was born in the tiny northern Italy mountain village of Prarustin, the fifth child and third daughter in a family of seven siblings who survived childhood. She was an intense child who thought a great deal and read voraciously, turning to the village minister as a source of reading material in the absence of opportunity for continuous school attendance. An unusual incident occurred when Madeleine was six years old. Madeleine herself, many years later, recalled it this way: I was then but a young child, between six and seven years of age. One morning, while in bed, I had a wonderful dream or vision. . . . It seemed to me that I was grown up into young womanhood, instead of being a small child. I thought I was out by my father's vineyard on a small piece of meadow taking care of some of my father's milk cows so that they would not go into the vineyard. I thought I was sitting down on the grass reading a book, and as I raised my eyes I saw three men standing before me and looking at me. I dropped my eyes instantly, as they were strangers to me. I felt somewhat alarmed, and as I raised my eyes again and looked them in the face, one of the strangers said to me, “Fear not, for we are the servants of God __ and have come from afar to bring to you and all who desire to be saved into the Kingdom of Heaven the Gospel."When Madeleine was eighteen, her father walked the mountain trails to the Italian town of Torre Pellice to hear three Mormon missionaries preach. He invited them to return with him to his home, and events unfolded much as Madeleine had seen them in her childhood dream. The missionaries met strong resistance from a community of peoplé who had already paid a heavy price for holding to their ancestral faith; but within a year, all members of the Cardon family were baptized except for the eldest daught~ er, the only one already married. Their home became a gathering place for converts from the Piedmontese villages, and Madeleine often served as an interpreter for the missionaries, who had limited knowledge of French and Italian, and were not at all conversant in the peculiar linguistic blend spoken by these people long isolated in the mountains between two countries. Within two years, the converted families had made plans to migrate to America and join the body of the saints in Utah. Property was sold, the leadership of Serge Baliff was obtained, and undoubtedly difficult farewells were said to the only place and the only companions these people had ever known. Their port of immigration was Liverpool, and the time was early March, 1856. In order to attempt a description of a busy nineteenth-century English seaport, I have relied on writers of the time, including Charles Dickens, who recorded his impressions of another Mormon emigrant group about to embark. For Madeleine, the dominant impression of her first encounter with an English city seems to have been the linguistic barrier. She writes, When we reached England we began to feel rather lost. We could neither speak nor understand one word and here we had the family that my father had taken charge of which were five in number and eight of our own family, and truly it was not very pleasant. My father and my mother seemed to feel worse than any of us children did, but we met some of the elders who could speak French and they assisted us considerably, and I then began to think that it was my duty to try with all my might to learn the English language. . . - It is not hard to imagine the feelings in such a situation of an intelligent, aggressive young woman who, though her formal schooling had been limited, had achieved considerable self-educ- ation and was conversant in three languages. For the first time, she found herself in total ignorance of what was being said around her. I have tried to capture her humiliation, frustration, and determination in the following purely imaginary scene between Madeleine and her youngest brother, Thomas Barto~ lemy, my great-grandfather:In all her imaginings, Madeleine had never supposed that one place could contain so many people or so much noise. With T.B. close by her side, she stood staring out across the great docks, which stretched as far as she could see, while the wheels of carts clattered on the stones and wooden boardwalks behind her. ‘The sights were overwhelming, and so were the smells. The salt breeze blowing from the ocean met and mingled with an aroma compounded of fish lying sequined in nets, baskets and carts; of wet hemp and wet wool and wet garbage; of smoked meat and whiskey and leather, the sweat of horses and humans, and charcoal smoldering in the small braziers at which hawkers and dock hands paused to warm their hands. The wet piers were piled high with crates, barrels and trunks, among which human beings roughly bundled against the early March air plunged and scurried like hulking ants. Others stood looking on--men in heavy overcoats and high black hats, women and little girls with full skirts, woolen cloaks and bonnets, boys with red cheeks and noses below their soft caps and breeches ending just below their knees. ?.B. and Madeleine looked with them, hardly able to comprehend the bustling scene just before them; much less the vessels, most of them draped with sails, a few looking smugly squat under black smokestacks, hovering on the gray water, ready to absorb human and inanimate cargo alike into their unseen depths; and least of all the nature of the vast, gray expanse whose white fringes lapped at the piers and hinted of a monstrous power unknown to inhabitants of solid earth. But the sounds dominated all other assaults upon the senses. Madeleine listened to the calls and shouts of the men pulling the carts and loading the ships, and suddenly she knew why all the human communication going on around her seemed to be only noise, and not speech: She could not understand a word. But they are speaking to each other, she thought, dismayed; and where the ship is going, they speak the same way. "Move it, will you, Miss? Comin' throug Madeleine jumped at the sound of the man's voice and snatched at T.B> as she stepped quickly out of the path of a cart loaded with barrels. The owner of the voice was Yed-cheeked, sandy-haired, and blue-eyed. He had a rough appearance, but his face was not unpleasant. He paused for & moment, looking from Madeleine to her eleven-year-old brother and back again. Going’ on board, are ye? The John M. Wood new ship, that 'n." ~~ Madeleine only stared at the speaker. "ship, your ship?" he inquired loudly, gesturing toward a white-sailed vessel moored at the nearest dock. Madeleine blushed brightly, and she felt her shame A nice 4would choke her. She could not have made a sound if she had known what sound to make. ‘The man shrugged, turned, and slapped his horse's flank. "Well, good luck, Miss. You'll be needin' it. The retreating cart and the docks beyond blurred, and Madeleine gulped down the lump in her throat. "Ship," she whispered savagely. I'll learn, I have to learn, T won't be thought stupid. "Don't cry, Madie." 1.B. laid his hand awkwardly on her shoulder, an easy reach for him now. She put both arms around him fiercely, and looked back toward the white sails. "Ship, T.B.!" she declared triumphantly. “The ship. Your shipt Madeleine's account of the immigration experience itself somewhat resembles the Perils of Pauline, and one wonders whether Madeleine did not possess considerable creative imagination of her own. On board the John M. Wood, the party experienced a severe storm and near shipwreck. Madeleine and her sister Catherine barely escaped abduction by two seamen who planned to take them back to England. A second narrow escape from abduction took place near Kansas City just before the party's departure with the wagon train for Utah. One episode which Madeleine records in detail is well documented by other sources. The immigrants had docked at New Orleans following their ocean voyage. Some of them, disregarding orders, had gone ashore to tour their first American city and had encountered a cholera epidemic. By the time the river boat to which they had transferred neared St. Louis, members of the immigrant company were falling ill, and all passengers were quarantined on an island in the Mississippi. I have turned to medical histories for information on the symptoms and treatment of cholera; but my best source concerning the scene of this forced encampment, the progress of the disease, the efforts made in that time and place to treat it, and of course the emotions of the people involved, has been Madeleine herself. We were quarantined on an island until such time as the disease would stop or be overcome. We were panic-stricken for the people were groaning and dying all around us. The first one called on the other side of the Veil was a dear friend of ours, one of those whom my father had brought with us, a beautiful lady, Miss Bertoch, of the age of twenty years. I and my sister Catherine did all that humans could do to save her, but we had to give her up at last and by the time we had her buried, eleven others were almost dead. We both did all’ that could be done and few others helped all they could, but the dread disease was raging and they died faster than we could bury them. 5The men dug a large grave and the eleven corpses were jaid, side by side, without a coffin on the island. My sister and I did not go to bed for three days and nights. We were kept busy all the time trying to save lives and we did save a great many. . . . We found out that by putting the patients in pretty hot water and rubbing them as quickly as possible and giving them hot drinks, and when they got better, wrapping them up in blankets and still continuing to give them hot drinks and rubbing them at intervals, they would improve. We saved a great many in this way... - se The following excerpt from my own efforts at reconstruction begins with Madeleine at the bedside of Danile Bertoch, a close friend whose family were traveling under the protection of Philippe Cardon. eset Suddenly the hand that had become so nearly lifeless clutched Madeleine's in a grip so violent that she jumped to her feet and would have pulled away if she could. instead, she lurched forward and bent over the bed. What she saw there she had seen many times that night, but she was not prepared to watch the horror work its contortions on Danile's slender body. There was little indication that this had ever been a tender, beautiful girl. The brown eyes bulged crazily and stared, expressionless, at some invisible terror. The lips were curled back, the white teeth locked together, the muscles of the face twisted into a grotesque mask of pain. Large drops of cold sweat had broken out on the temples and forehead. The elbows were bent and the small hands and fingers clenched, claw-like, near the face, like a bird which had been mangled and killed by a cat. Under the thin blanket, the muscles of the legs and torso knotted and twitched. The stench which pervaded the tent suddenly intensified as if to provide olfactory emphasis for the Picture before Madeleine's horrified eyes. Catherine appeared behind her and burst into tears. Madeleine whirled. “Catherine, quick! Are any of the baths available? We've got to get Danile into one, right now! The big tent had been partitioned off, with blankets hung from the ceiling, into two sections, one for men and one for women. On each side, near the center, stood several large tin tubs which the young attendants were keeping filled with hot water from the fire outside. A woman was pouring freshly heated water into one of these. Madeleine moved in the direction of the tub. Please!" she called, in English, and gestured toward Danile. “Please--for her." The woman looked at Danile, nodded, and came toward cs so oe : 6them quickly. Catherine was already struggling to remove the muslin nightgown from the limbs which had locked themselves into twisted attitudes resembling a piece of driftwood. The girls had not intended to remove the chemise Danile wore under the gown, but finding it drenched, like the gown au. -ue thin sheet beneath, with liquid filth, they pulled and tore it from the rigid body, gasping for a breath of clean air which was not to be found, while the Englishwoman strained to straighten Danile's limbs enough to allow removal of the clothing. When it was at last cast aside, the Englishwoman gathered up the defiled clothing and the bed linen and headed for the area behind the tent where several large kettles were kept boiling over fires and women were rotating shifts around the clock to keep an immense laundry operation going. Madeleine grasped Danile from behind, under the armpits, while Catherine wrapped one arm around her knees and the other around her waist. Staggering under their inert burden, they made their way toward the steaming bath. Sever other women moved to help, and Danile was lowered into the water, supported by the stout arms of Sister Schulmann, the German woman whose own husband and son were among the dozens she had been nursing. As soon as they were relieved of the responsibility of carrying Danile, Madeleine and Catherine began to massage the Cramped limbs, kneading and stretching the rock-hard muscles under the hot water until they began to soften and relax. As Madeleine felt Danile's arm begin to yield to her persistent rubbing, she turned her head to one of the other women standing near. "Thé--tea, please," she urged. The woman left quickly, and soon returned with a steaming cup. Overcoming her desire to bury her nose in the sweet, warm smell, Madeleine raised the cup to her friend's lips and urged her to drink. The sick girl's lips parted, but the cup clinked against clenched teeth. “Here.” A tired but kind face appeared next to Madeleine's and a heavily veined hand took the cup from her. "You tip her head back a little." ‘The woman showed Madeleine how to hold the head, and then begin with one hand to massage Danile's throat. As the tightly clenched jaw xelaxed slightly, another woman took it in her hand and slowly forced it open, allowing the first woman to pour a little of the tea into Danile's mouth. “Dip her head back a little more, but not too sudden- ly." The woman guided Madeleine's hands, and Danile choked weakly, then swallowed. "Good. Again, Sister Goddard. Again my dear." The three women patiently repeated the process, while Catherine and the others continued their massage. Half an hour passed before the cup of tea was empty, but by then Danile lay limp and quietly crying in the stout German arms 7which had held her the entire time. "Praise the dear Lord!" gasped the elderly English- woman. “Bring us a blanket." Following the death of Danile Bertoch, Madeleine's father Was stricken very suddenly by the disease. Madeleine recounts a heroic, if somewhat irrational, attempt on the part of the family to remove him from the patrolled island in an effort to save his jife. Bribing a fisherman with a small boat to provide transpor- gation to the St. Louis shore, Madeleine and her older brothers Gecided that she, as the only one of them who had acquired an adequate command of English, should be the one to accompany their father and seek help. Madeleine reports that the boat, with its hidden passengers, arrived safely and that she, leaving the desperately ill Philippe in the care of the fisherman, ventured into St. Louis to obtain life-sustaining wine for her father. We are left to imagine the emotions and experience of a nineteen year-old foreign girl, entering a nineteenth-century frontier city alone and in the middle of the night, intent on such a mission. Straining to see something from beneath the edge of the blanket, Madeleine lay for what seemed an eternity on the hard boards, one arm clasped around her father's shoulders, her mind a battleground for faith and fear. At jast she sensed a change in the sound and motion of the water beneath, then felt a jolt as the boat struck dry ground. Madeleine checked her impulse to leap up, but peered surreptitiously out from underneath the blanket. She heard a stealthy sound of boots on wood, and soon the face of the boatman appeared near hers, relieved now of much of its former strain. “Come on now, Miss," he said softly. “we've made it all right. 1 think it's safe enough here. Let me help you with the old man." Struggling together, they pulled and carried Philippe from the boat and laid him on a blanket in the grass. He no longer seemed to know or care where he was, and Madeleine spoke to him in a continuous, urgent whisper, her fear mounting as she felt the dampness of the grass and of the blankets. Suddenly, Philippe coughed, retched, and vomited on the grass, his body doubling up in pain. "No, Papa!" Madeleine was sobbing aloud, forgetting her care to keep her voice low. “Papa, please, not here! Not now!" She held his head in her lap and struggled desperately to restrain and relax the contorted muscles of his arms. "Here, Miss, you can't manage him by yourself." The boatman grasped Philippe around the chest and lowered him back onto the grass, pushing Madeleine firmly away with one arm. "Now listen to me," he demanded, holding his younger 8 eeepassenger tightly by the shoulders as she struggled to reach the man writhing on the grass. "You listen and you under- stand me. Your pa is too strong for you. Too strong, you understand? I'll stay here with him. 1I--will--stay--here. You go get him something to drink. To drink, you see?" __ Gesturing and speaking more and more loudly, he conveyed his meaning, and Madeleine stood still, her eyes wide. "To drink? What to drink?" "A drink, a shot of whiskey, that's what he needs, and quick. Wish I had some on me, but I don't. Look, you take your money back. You're going to have to go into town and get him a bottle of liquor." He reached into his pocket and pressed the coins for which he had risked this venture into her hand. "Go up to St. Louis," he repeated, point- ing. "Buy drink." “But sir," Madeleine protested, "My father never drinks--liqueur. Only wine. His wine. We make it.” The beatnan stared at her in amazement tinged with disgust. "Somehow I don't think he'd be too particular just now! Get him some wine, then! Get wine! Go now! Hurry!" Philippe retched again and lay gasping for breath through his clenched teeth. The boatman fell down beside the sick man and began furiously rubbing his arms and legs. Madeleine stared horrified for seconds, then turned and ran blindly in the direction the boatman had pointed. The damp grass brushed against her ankles and weighted the hem of her skirt. She stumbled, fell, got up and ran on again toward the few lights she could see shining in the distance. Panic threatened her. Where will I go, she thought, what will I say? People are asleep. Who will help me? Papa. The moonlight now began to reveal, farther up the river bank, the outlines of a large harbor. Madeleine could make out the silhouettes of masts and smokestacks over the water and rooftops along the shore. Occasionally a light flicker- ed somewhere. Moving both upstream in the direction of these signs of civilization and up the slope away from the xiver bank, Madeleine's feet at last touched cleared ground, ! a dirt road leading toward the city. She followed it, running faster now, and began to pass small buildings, most of them dark and barred for the night. One glowed with a dull light from windows on the side and front. It did not seem to be a house, but there was no sign hung out to indicate the function of the place. Madeleine's heart began to thump harder. There were no other lights nearby. Papa. Voices began to float from the open windows as she drew nearer, usually pitched low in conversation, but occasional- ly punctuated with a shout or with laughter. They were men's voices. Filled with a fear that she thought would crush her, Madeleine crept to the window and peered through, careful to conceal herself. She saw one room which seemed to fill the entire ground floor of the small building. Men sat at small tables 9 ey errrScattered around the room, bent over mugs and glasses. At the back of the room, other men leaned against a high counter, behind which a man with a thin string of a necktie and a dirty white apron was dispensing the contents of some of the bottles which lined the shelves behind him. Some of the men were dressed in the rough breeches, jackets and cloth caps of the seamen Madeleine had encountered. Some were hatless. A few wore tall boots with high heels, cloth kerchiefs knotted around their necks, and large-brimmed, soft-crowned hats. At some of the tables the men were absorbed in the cards which they held in their hands or slapped down in front of them, and grunts and shouts were accompanied by the occasional clink of money. Madeleine noted with horror that some of them carried pistols in plain sight, hanging in leather pouches from their belts. Beseechingly, Madeleine scanned the dark street, Searching for some other sign of life, but there was none. Forcing her eyes away from the clientele of the place and focusing them intently upon the rows of bottles on the rear wall, she stepped soundlessly onto the threshold of the half open door. No one noticed her entry until she moved quickly in the direction of the bar and the man with the white apron--a strange custodian, she thought, for the key to another man's life. The bartender and several others looked up in surprise. Madeleine looked at no one, but almost ran to the counter, the fist clutching the coins outstretched. The men at the bar drew back. The face behind it smiled knowingly. “Well now, what's this, dearie? Where did you turn up from this time of night?" "Please, sir," gasped Madeleine, opening her fist. "Give me wine." The bartender raised his eyebrows. “Wine, you say? Looks to me like you're in pretty bad shape. Shall we make it something stronger? Where'd you come from anyway? Ain't seen you around the waterfront before." He reached for a bottle which stood open on the bar. "You're paying, are you?" He leaned across the counter and smiled with a hint Of mockery. "Maybe one of these gentlemen would be glad to treat you, if you're nice to him." "Give her to me, Nick," drawled a blurry voice. “I like ‘em young and impressionable. Madeleine understood none of the repartee that rico- cheted around her, but cringed at the drunken laughter it produced as a group gathered closer around the bar and its unexpected patron. Her fear compounded by the familiar shame at her limited knowledge of the new language, she tried several times to speak before words came. “Wine, please. My father is sick. Wine--for him." "Here, honey. Be my guest." A heavy arm rested on her shoulders and the stench of whiskey assailed her from the speaker's breath and from the glass he held near her lips. 10With a terrified cry, Madeleine struck at her benefactor with one arm as the other sent the glass crashing to the floor. No, please, leave me alone," she sobbed in her own dialect. "Help me, oh dear God, please help me." “Leave off, Ike." The bartender stepped out from behind the counter and laid a restraining hand on the other man's shoulder. "I don't think she's that kind. She's a foreigner, and she's scared. You say your pa's sick, honey?" Repeating his question, he tapped Madeleine's shoulder, and her head darted around at the recognition of a word. Sick, yes, please, very sick. My father. Please give me wine. I have money," Madeleine pleaded. “Why, sure, honey." Nick walked behind the bar and _ reached for a thin green bottle, looking curiously over his shoulder at his night visitor. "But where did you come from? You wouldn't come way down here from town in the middle of the night. There's something funny about this." Madeleine strained to understand, and failed. Feeling her reserves of strength draining fast, she reached for the bottle and held out the coins again. "Please. Nick approached carrying the bottle, and leaned forward confidentially. "Honey," he mumbled, "if you're in trouble, or a long way from home, maybe I can help you out in the morning. If you'd like to get some rest, the girls upstairs can give you a bed, and no one'll bother you. What do you say?” Madeleine looked at him in bewildered exhaustion and wrapped her fingers around the neck of the bottle in his hand. "Please," she whispered. Nick shrugged and looked a little hurt. "Suit your- self." He released the bottle, took the coins, fingered them for a moment, then glanced at her and returned all but one. "Thank you." Without another word, Madeleine turned, bolted for the open door, and disappeared into the darkness. "Poor little gal." A seaman sitting near the door and sipping sentimentality from a clay mug sighed and shook his head. "Some of ‘em get hooked so young. The Cardon family eventually reached its goal intact, and Madeleine's account of the journey across the plains by wagon is less complete. In Utah, she married Charles Guild, a rancher of Scottish descent, and lived out her life rearing a large family in a small Wyoming community aptly named Piedmont. I am grateful to her for leaving behind something of herself and her life so that, among other things, a great grand-niece might have the pleasure of recreating for others the woman she was and the history that she lived. I hope she is not displeased with the effort. hhWho Shapes Oral Narrative A Functionalist and Psychosocial Examination of the Lore of Two Mormon Female Tale-teiiczs Gloria L. Cronin oe During the nineteenth century, scholars and antiquarians from all over the world amassed huge quantities of ethnographic information about “primitive" cultures stretching from Europe to India. They then began to organize it into types and categories from which they made inferences and sweeping generalizations about the universality and uniformity of cultures and people. The very similarity of many of the themes, characters, and motifs in this diversity of material caused ethnographers to accept a priori the universality of story telling and the universality of meaning in the oral materials themselves. Later came the development of complex and often abstruse theories through which folklorists attempted to explain the particulars of origin, transmission, function, and meaning of the tales. However, much of this kind of scholarship paid scant attention to the uniqueness of the particular culture under the microscope and its inner value structure. RUN With the turn of the century, this trend continued. Freud- ians, Jungians, and structuralists like Claude Levi-Strauss sought to reconstruct from collections of oral narrative the residual elements of both the human psyche and intelligence they believed to be in the process of disintegration as the onrush of industrialization and social fragmentation destroyed traditional and primitive cultures. In addition to these kinds of investiga- tion, there was the ongoing attempt to discover human migratory history through the charting of the geographic distribution of one particular tale type. This was also the period of exhaustive international indexing of tale types and motifs. However, with the later development of functionalist methodology in the field of anthropology, folklorists began also to examine the social function of the story-telling event and materials and to do so within the ethos of a given society. With this approach have come many others that have contributed greatly to our understanding of the religious, social, artistic, and psychological uses of oral narrative. Unlike the nineteenth-century universalist, the modern folklorist examines both the idiosyncratic and universal meanings of the lore he or she studies. In particular, modern anthropologists and folklor- ists have studied the processes of oral transmission, the phenomenon of "communal recreation," the aesthetics of the story- telling event, audience-performer dynamics, and more recently 12 eethe feminist implications of lore. European and American folklorists have gone one step further in non-universalist interpretations of oral narrative by examining with particular interest the psychosocial dynamics of the individual tale-teller as a further clue in the search for what shapes and directs the nature and performance of oral narrative. How might the Mormon folklorist most profitably approach the very large body of oral narrative which forms one of the important communicative events within our culture? Studying form, type, and motif will show us structural and content similarities between our own oral narrative and that of other cultures, but it may not reveal our unique ethos and cultural dynamics too effectively. Old evolutionist and devolutionist debates, or academic quarrels about single or multiple origin of stories and their geographical migration will tell us some things about our history, but not about our inner socio-religious dynamics as a group. Freudian, Jungian, and structuralist approaches are of interest but because of their reductionist premises about evolution, the nature of society, and the struc~ ture of the human psyche, they must be applied judiciously. Classifying types and motifs will yield us useful historical information about our predominantly European and British histori- cal origins, and also about how significantly the form of much Mormon oral narrative was influenced by types and themes that arose on the frontier and moved west with it, but again it will tell us little about our value system and our peculiarities as a people. An eclectic functionalist approach with particular emphasis on the dynamics of the tale-teller and audience will help us see ourselves with greater clarity. A functionalist approach will tell us about the broad pattern of socio-religious imperatives and taboos that govern us. A psychosocial approach which focuses on the inner dynamics of the “culture bearer" or tale-teller will reveal, in a far more detailed way, the shapes and colors of our hopes and fears, our cultural and religious premises, and our singularity as a people. It will tell us who shapes oral narrative, audience or tale-teller, how that lore is constantly transmuted through the process of “communal recrea- tion," and how we adapt culturally as a people bound by the exigencies of time and place. It will also reveal how by unofficial folk religious means we perpetuate our official belief system. And just as important ly, it will reveal how human beings, as tellers of tales and as listeners use oral narrative to negotiate paradox, fear, loneli- ness, social tensions, spiritual doubts, faith, and gaps in our scientific and religious knowledge. And then there are the factors of climate, history, and geography, primary relation- ships, institutional tensions and the injunction to fulfill our unique spiritual role in history which also shape our lore. 13 nn eeeeeee—CCSCts,Through close examination of material derived from the repertoires of two very practiced women tale-tellers, it should be possible to discover the extent to which the psychodynamics of individual tale-tellers shape our distinctly Mormon canon of oral narrative. The two women will not be named and the reader or listener should exercise care in comparing them with male narrators and other female tale-tellers within our culture. Their personalities and personal histories are unique. Of necessity they occupy not a normative role in our society but a Yather highly differentiated one due to their specialized talents and personal imperatives. Common to the personalities of both women are the following characteristics: a unique history of personal suffering, mild to severe neuroses, the need to exercise social power, high artistic sensibility, the need to negotiate loneliness, and a Keen sense of the supranatural. Also evident were their respec- tive drives toward community and church responsibility, family involvement, and the recurring need to counter socially prohibit- ed female gender roles in a predominantly patriarchal society. in addition, both were possessed of a keen dramatic sense and a delight in performing for an audience while one of them also functioned as pseudo-shaman. I have chosen five categories of lore representative of the major emphases in the respective collections in order to illus- trate how both a functionalist and a nmarrator-centered approach to our lore might illuminate its deeper structure and reveal us more truthfully to ourselves. To this end I will examine the following categories: (1) magical practices, (2) macabre tales, (3) tales of spiritual instruction, (4) death and healing lore, and (5) female assertion lore. Magical Practices One particular repertoire contained a variety of stories having to do with magical practices which though universal in type have a unique meaning in our culture. They focused prinar- ily on dowsing for water, precious minerals, lost objects, and _ oil with a variety of techniques ranging from the use of a forked apple bough to a complex ritual known as “map dowsing." Through examining the function of the lore we can see it as having been ¢limatically, geographically, and historically shaped. our large expanses of dry Utah desert have made each generation of Mormon settlers anxious about survival. Also, Utah Mormons have long had a tradition of belief in dream mines. Besides that, there is scriptural precedent in the example of Moses striking the rock of water. Several anthropologists have noted that magical practices such as these arise usually where science is unsure and imprecise. Many city water departments in Utah employ 14the services of water witches such as this woman because geolo~ gical surveys are not more than about 70 percent precise. But apart from these factors are the unique psycho-social needs of the teller. This woman possesses a powerful pride in her specialized powers of suprarational discernment. The telling of the tales to neighbors and family members assures this woman an authoritative social role in the community. Through performing and narrating such lore she negotiates her very real fear of survival. But she also uses it to express how successful her practices are compared to those of the educated in the community. Since this woman has studied geology exten- gively at her local community college and lived in the area all her life as a farmer and a fine horticulturalist, we can assume that the tales have more to do with self-assertion than with magic. Possession of the power and consequent social recognition for it seemed to be the major motivation. I also heard these stories told with great artistry. Voice intonation and dramatic hand movements added to the audience's enjoyment of them at a telling where I watched a number of grandchildren and neighbor- hood teenagers gathered in a half-darkened room delight in the sheer mystery of it all. Further magical practices involving prophesying about the outcome of a presidential election, warnings about illness, magical discernment of the identity of a thief, voices of warning about a friend's drug addiction, a tale about a mali-~ cious neighbor, and another about an impending earthquake provided an opportunity both for good entertainment and self- dramatization. They reinforced the tale-teller's sense of control over her social and natural world--something she exper~ ienced constant anxiety about even as a child, Even the account of automatic writing served to provide a warning about yet another recurrent social fear--displeasing a very dominating older brother. This lore, while not appearing to be dramatically different from its universal type, nevertheless cannot be interpreted in a Mormon context without an understanding of Mormon history and religion, Utah geography and climate, and this tale-teller's psychosocial needs and fears. Macabre Tales The extent to which both audience and teller originate and shape lore is most evident in thrilling macabre tales. Mormons have a lively sense of the reality of evil powers and evil magical practices. This can result in spiritual thrill-seeking via story telling. The most dramatic tale-telling event I witnessed was performed with great artistry. Of paramount importance to both teller and audience were the aesthetics of delivery and content--in short, entertainment for entertainment's sake. It was a typically British or New England type of witch 15 Sg”story involving the capture, death, and burial of a witch who lived in Utah. But barely concealed within the main events of the tale were three other unique additions--a series of typically Mormon cautions about the reality of the powers of Satan, the teller's great pride in the strength, resourcefulness, and courage of the four women protagonists (one of them her grandmother), and the climax--Brigham Young's forbidding the dead witch's burial in a consecrated burial ground. Such motifs, however slight, provide details about our Mormon value system as well as those of teller and listener. This tale-teller had particular reason to identify her courageous and resourceful maternal ancestor. Her own husbandless circumstances paralleled closely the apparently priesthoodless circumstances of the four female protagonists. At east three mentions were made of the great physical, emotional, and psychological strength of her ancestor who therefore became the heroine of the tale. our scriptures and culture lack available accounts of female role models. How then should this tale be interpreted? It is part of a distinctly British body of witch tales. It has persisted because of the audience's perennial delight in its thrilling content and aesthetic qualities. But it has also been shaped by the teller who obviously took strength from telling with pride of a spirited, strong, independent maternal ancestor with whom she could identify. Its coda about Brigham Young's injunction not to bury her in consecrated ground also reveals something about early Mormon attitudes, official and unofficial, to the phenomenon of possession by evil spirits and the practice of witchcraft. Tales of Spiritual Instruction and Caution By far the largest body of oral narrative in our culture Serves as an unofficial “bible of the folk," a body of lore which reinforces the chief doctrinal points of emphasis of the official church. It is shaped less by individual narrators than by the official church and the folk. Both of my informants were forceful preachers and teachers in secular and church life. They were also major culture bearers in both the folk community and their respective families. This group of tales included mainly legends and memorats. These were the most frequently told of the repertoire and were usually reserved for the purposes of testimony bearing to private family audiences. Here both women can be seen functioning very powerfully as part of the Mormon acculturation process. In some tales, a dead ancestor appears, providing a diligent genealogist with the name he or she has long been seeking. Some testify of dramatic answers to prayer. Others, such as three Nephite 16stories, testify to the accuracy of scripture and other beliefs. The importance of missionary work is testified to in the account of miraculous language acquisition on the part of an heroic male missionary ancestor. That the Lord provides for the obedient is testified to in the account of a desperately hungry missionary being miraculously provided with food. ‘The primacy of temple work is testified to by the appearance in the temple of anxious dead who desire their work done. The protective powers of the temple garment are testified to in a story about a large mine disaster. In this story, those who were wearing their garments when the mine collapsed were not dismembered, as were many of those who were not wearing the special garment. Obedience to church leaders is reinforced by another story which tells of the parallel histories of two branches of a family. The faithful branch who uproot and leave their fertile, prosperous farm at Brigham Young's injunction succeed materially and spiritually down through the generations. The branch which refuses to give up its comforts fails in both senses down through five genera- tions. Dream vision tales about the nature of the life beyond death serve to fill in gaps in our scriptural knowledge and testify to the continuity of the family through the central motif of the newly deceased being met by a person immediately recogniz- ed as an ancestor. They also testify to the power of Christ and the reality of the bodily resurrection. But how do these stories function for the teller? What, apart from the need to entertain and acculturate family members motivates the teller and thereby shapes and perpetuates the oral narratives? Through the tales, both tellers, by their own admission, negotiate fear of death anxiety and fear of loneli- ness, to be about their Father's business. In the telling of them, both experience joy in discharging social and religious obligations to their young. In addition, they reinforce for themselves the major religious imperatives and taboos that govern them. Also evident is one particular tale-tellers' deliberate shaping of legendary and heroic ancestors, mostly male priesthood holders, who then serve as patriarchal role models for the family. Death and Healing Lore This body of material is less representative of Mormon oral narrative than other groups. It seemed expressive more of one tale-teller's anxieties about death and health than it did of any particularly strong group concern. The death lore was standard British and European death lore primarily about death omens; but the prevalence of this type of tale in the one collection was idiosyncratic of the teller, who readily admitted her preoccupation with death and who had fought serious illness since early childhood. The healing lore probably functioned to counterbalance her death fears. Healing by faith and the 7 rrplacement, of the healer's hands on the ill person's body parts features in the lore of most any Christian culture. Distinctive to this repertoire, however, was the frequency of the practice and her rationale of it. The LDS Church does not officially encourage or acknowledge healing power in women, though the practice appears to have had some historical precedents. As a very lonely and highly intelligent woman living in isolated rural circumstances, one of my informants admitted that her widely known practice of faith-healing helped her form bonds of sisterhood in the community that official Church auxiliaries failed to provide. She also admitted that it developed in part because of her skepticism of men generally and local priesthood bearers in particular. She described her own husband as a model case of lack of leadership and initiative on numerous occasions during our interviews. She described her childhood experience with her spoiled and favored brothers as a "nightmare." Coupled to this concern was her acute awareness of the inadequacies of medical science and "educated" health professionals. Also evident throughout was her sense of denial in not having the official priesthood herself when she, by her own assertion, is so much more endowed with healing gifts than most of the priest- hood bearers and doctors in the areas. Failure to understand the personal psychodynamics and history of this tale-teller would be particularly misleading in a general interpretation of this portion of the repertoire. To generalize about the Mormon society and Mormon women from it would be to almost totally misinterpret its nature and function. While it tells us some general things about how human beings deal with death and ill health, and how certain types of Mormon women react to the refusal of the official church to legitimize their spiritual powers and equalize male and female gender roles, it tells us more abovt the psychodynamics of one woman who is attempting to renegotiate the roles and equalize the balance of spiritual and social power through a form of social and religious subversion. We can also see how she then legitimizes this to herself by the narration of many success stories. However, in her healing stories she always includes a motif providing supposed scriptural precedent for her practices and hastens to assure the listener of her obedience to and belief in the principle of priesthood power. I do not believe this lore is typical of Mormon folklore or that it reveals as much about our culture as it does about one individual woman's response to patriarchy. The tale-teller's traumatic experiences with her father and brothers as a child, her divorce, and subsequent remarriage have all been factors which have caused her difficulty in trusting men and the priest- hood. But as idiosyncratic as it is, her lore may be representa- tive of a sector of our community and its attitude. 18Female Assertion Lore For want of a better title, I have called my final grouping of tales and motifs "female assertion lore." I have no way as yet of knowing whether this is a growing body of lore or whether it has always existed. Certainly many humorous oral narratives about polygamous marriage where the wife outwits the polygamous husband in his next courtship or triumphs over the system, so to speak, could be included in this category. Certainly a recent cycle of humorous stories told by women in disparagement of patriarchy and priesthood are contributing to the genre. I wish to cite one elaborate memorat of this type to illustrate the psychosocial dynamics of the tale-teller in this particular body of stories. To understand this story one must understand not only the tensions which exist for some women within our patriarchal system but the personal dynamics of the tale-teller. The teller of this memorat felt herself brighter than her spoiled, mean brothers and unsympathetic mother. Yet she also expressed her belief in patriarchy and her desire for her husband to lead out and use his priesthood. On numerous occasions in our interviews, she expressed her frustration in being a bright woman in a male-dominated society. No doubt this widely circulated family memorat functions to express not only those tensions but also to provide for the teller herself a suitable means of reconciling them with officially designated sex roles which often function to discourage female domination of any situation. But of even more significance than this is the tale-teller's need to preserve a primary relationship--a temple marriage. The story goes: Aid in Figuring the Roofing Timber When we built this house and then the roofing out there. Now telling you how smart my companion is. Anything T need to know it tells me. But on that roofing they put on there, there has to be a two or three inch overlap on the outer sides. There's an overlap on the bottom and then there's an overlap on the front. And then in the center there's an overlap. And I just told myself I was not going to worry myself trying to figure it. And I refused to. I put it down in my mind. I thought, my husband can go out there and he and that manager, who was a college graduate, can figure that out. Well anyway, when we went out to get it, my husband and that manager--they worked and they figured and they worked and they figured and they come up with different answers and it went on and on and on. And finally I just walked around--men make me impatient. They do. You betcha! And finally my companion told me exactly what it 19 i rrrrrrr—“‘—COsOCsSsSsSs—Swas and how to figure it. I just saw it all in one flash like that. Now I'm not that smart--really. It's my companion toli me and showed me in one flash so I went over and said, "It's so many pieces we need." And they both stopped and locked at me. Both of them looked at me, and the manager--he had his paper there and his pencil and he looked at me for a long while. Well, it was probably half a minute. Finally he said, “Are you sure?" And I said, "Yes." So I explained it to him, but I still felt he didn't understand it when I explained it. Well, my husband just didn't say anything He just stood and looked and when we came home he was just a little vexed that after all their figuring, then I'd cone with it just like that, you know. He is just a little jealous of my companion, I do believe. But I am, too. Anyway, he set about figuring out exactly. Anyway, he figured and figured and figured and finally he came in and said, "This is how much we need.” And I had written down how much on my receipt book, how much we paid for how many pieces, see. So I showed him. I said, "See. That's exactly how much I had, too." But this was my companion. It wasn't me. But anything I need to know it tells me. But I think a lot of the great brains--that this is how they got theirs, really. But this is real hard. My dear little husband--he gets so resentful at times. Now sometimes his eyes will look so angry at me until I explain some benefit from all of this, and I can talk him out of it always--after awhile when he feels better about. In this story, the “companion” aids the teller in figuring out the difficult arithmetical calculations involved in buying the right amount of roofing for the house she has designed. Neither her husband nor the "college educated" clerk seem equal to the task. By going outside the store for a few minutes and listening attentively to her "hocuser," or "companion," the narrator is able to come back inside and, much to the surprise of the two men, tell them how much lumber is needed. The ending of this story with its description of her husband's resentment, is usually only told to a female audience, according to the narrator. Clearly, the narrator is negotiating the delicate reversal of designated social roles for men and women in our culture and finding through folk belief and oral narrative a way of Cee ing a superior and creative kind of intelligence not perceive as appropriate for a woman. The tale is also a clear ea against such a confining social role. Only an examination ©! the psychosocial dynamics of the tale-teller will yield the full meaning of this narrative which may or may not represent the concerns of Mormon women generally. 20Conclusion In this paper, I have attempted to outline some fruitful methods for more accurately interpreting Mormon folklore--the functionalist and the narrato) centered approaches. To this end, 1 have illustrated my point by using two repertoires of Jore collected from two recognized tale-tellers in Utah- T’have not attempted to make major generalizations about Mormon folklore or about other Mormon tale-tellers, male or female- Rather I have tried to show how, through an understanding of the psychodynamics of an individual tale-teller and an inside Bigeure of the unique Mormon religious and social value system, @ folklorist might more wisely discern sometimes hidden clues Sbout our culture-~its tensions and values. I have also tried te suggest how the tale-teller significantly shapes that lore by her personal history, private fears, and recurring preoccupa- tions. 1 have also suggested some of the functions oral narrative performs for both tale-teller and audience. To ignore the history, hopes, fears, values, personality characteristics, beliefs, artistry, frustrations, and talents of the teller is to nise much of the meaning of her tales. To ignore the history, institutional tensions, doctrine, geography, social mores and taboos of the Utah Mormon experience in Mormon folklore analysis is equally foolish. Neither can we ignore the dynamic shaping interactions of audience and tale-teller. Contemporary oral narrative in our culture has taken the place of folk games, balladry, folk drama, folk poetry and lately, even folk song. It is a significant communicative strategy within our culture for reinforcing official doctrine, transmitting gender and other social role information, for negotiating anxieties, rites of passage, faith and lack of faith. While it has been shaped predominantly by British and European lore, the American frontier experience, the Bible, and the LDS Church, it is also largely shaped by unique narrators who mold that lore according to many psychosocial dynamics, including their need both to create and perform. 21Crying "Change" in a Permanent World: Contemporary Mormon Women on Motherhood Linda P. Wilcox Though leadership of a living prophet offers possibilities for both ongoing and dramatic change, Mormon society values permanence, order, and stability in this life and the next. “we do not need innovation," a member of the First Presidency said at a recent general conference (Salt Lake Tribune, 3 April 1983). Women in the Mormon Church are encouraged toward traditional roles and attitudes that discourage personal, familial, and societal change. The ideal female role is that of a non-wage- earning wife and mother in a nuclear family where the husband is fhe, provider and the woman's energies are directed toward her family, the Church, and perhaps community service. Exchanging or sharing sex roles--or any other blurring of traditional distinctions between the sexes--is frowned upon. A fear is often expressed that declassification would produce chaos and confusion, upsetting the orderly pattern and structure of the family and society. Mormonism divided duties between "priesthood" for men and "motherhood" for women. Although men of all races were granted the priesthood in 1978 and there are voices saying, "First blacks, next women," Church leaders have not allowed that possibility in public statements. Priesthood authority not only governs all administrative and decision-making affairs in the Mormon Church but officiates at all crucial life-cycle exper- iences such as birth (blessing and naming of babies), baptism, ordination to priesthood offices, callings to other positions, marriage, and death. Some Mormon women are feeling anger at not being able to function actively in such experiences, as expressed in the poem by Lisa Bolin Hawkins: Let My Sisters Do For Me If we must preserve our differences, Then let my sisters do for me. Let my sister tear my last resistance From my mother's womb, let her Cradle me and give me my name, Let her baptize me and call me forth To receive the Spirit, let her Teach me of the world, let her Ordain me to womanhood, let her (She does wash, anoint and clothe) Be my god beyond the veil, let her Heal my sickness, hold my baby, be my friend. Let her dig my grave, let her robe me, 22Let her bless my empty bones. If you will not have me for your sister, Then let my sisters do for me. And let me greet my Mother on the far shore. (In Sillitoe 1980, 57) But while radical changes in the position of women in the Mormon Church are not likely, change in general is inevitable-- changes in family structure and dynamics; and changes within individual women. This paper will examine change and confronta~ tion as expressed by women in recent Mormon literature. It will focus on motherhood as a crucial life-cycle experience, consider- ed the equivalent of the priesthood which men hold, and elevated in Mormonism as woman's highest role. It also appears to be the only life-cycle event that, while theoretically optional, is not theologically optional for faithful Mormon women. Birth and death, puberty and aging (if one lives long enough) are the only universals. Marriage, divorce, and widowhood are not experienced by all women. But motherhood in some form is unavoidable. A painting displayed in the Jordan River Temple in Salt Lake Valley shows "An Eternal Mother"--a serene, white-haired woman in a long white dress sitting motionless. From a surround- ing mist emerge children, both living and unborn. Mormon theology posits a Heavenly Mother as well as a Father. All human beings are her spirit daughters and sons, having been born and having lived with her and the Father in a pre-mortal exis- tence. Her children will not only return to the presence of their heavenly parents after death but may also become godlike and produce billions of spirit children with which to people their own created worlds. Family ties on this earth will continue in the hereafter so that one is always a mother to one's children and a daughter to one's earthly mother. Mothers will have the opportunity in the next life to raise children who die at an early age on earth. Women who never produce children on earth will be able to "adopt" children to raise in heaven and, if worthy, to bear spirit children of their own. Implicit in the theology is the idea that women contract in the pre-exis- tence to provide bodies for the waiting spirits--which partially explains the Mormon Church's opposition to birth control and abortion. Motherhood is thus not an elective choice but a duty and a mission--the main reason for a woman's existence. Those who are unable to bear children on earth, either for physiological reasons or because they are unable to marry, will have the opportunity (duty) in the hereafter. Motherhood is continuous and never-ending. No one in Mormon literature as yet discusses childlessness as a legitimate permanent choice. It is always viewed as a misfortune, deprivation, or even tragedy. An experience as central to a Mormon woman's identity as 23motherhood gets much attention in the fiction, poetry, and personal essays they write. Most of the literature emphasizes the positive aspects of the role, the joy of nurturing and physical closeness, and pleasure of watching growth and learning. one of the more straightforward and refreshing essays, written by Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards several years ago, expresses a thorough delight in the joys of motherhood: "The glories of a new baby are beyond description. Hardly mortal! 1 revel in this tactile, subtle, exquisite and complex experience. One unexpected bonus of motherhood is the visual beauty. I am enchanted by the sights of my children, the tones of skin, the clear eyes, the grace, the curve of hand and cheek--to see them racing across the back lawn in a certain slant of light" (1971, 11). “Though undoubtedly sincere, most such descriptions of the mothering experience tend toward overgeneralization, sentimenta-~ lity, and romantic idealization. But there is another side to the experience of being a mother. One woman wrote with surprise that “nothing had prepared me for the darker side of motherhood, the one that saps the mental, emotional and physical energy of a woman" (Pederson 1982, 193). The “darker side" of motherhood was not much in evidence in Mormon literature fourteen years ago. But many Mormon women are now experiencing some of the feminist "clicks" of the early '70s--a time lag of a decade or more. One fear is that becoming a mother can mean a loss of control over one's life. Myrna Marler writes that when she married and became pregnant, “glimmerings of apprehension warned me then that my life had swung out of control, that the course I had set for myself was irreversible. I wanted the baby--of course I did--but now the choice was gone" (Marler 1982, 70). When her baby was six months old and her husband suggested they have another one, she agreed--not knowing how difficult her older child would become as a toddler nor what a demanding temperament her second child would have. "Besides," she says, "I wanted to show the Lord that I was willing to give and to give unstintingly. That sacrifice, I reasoned, would be in liew Of other adversities I hoped not to experience, a sacrifice certain to purify me for the Celestial Kingdom. In a way I suppose I was bargaining with God: ‘I'll have many children, just as I'm supposed to, if You'll keep death and disaster away'" (Marler 1982, 73). Being a mother also can create double binds and feelings of being cheated and trapped. "I realized," Jerrie Hurd writes, “that I had half believed my success (in the professional world) could only be bought by failure in the home, and since I was unwilling to fail at home, I hadn't expected to succeed. And at the same time, I felt cheated, trapped and unfulfilled by ny nurtuing role because I knew I was capable of more" (Hurd 1982, 141). Sonia Johnson has pointed out that the Mormon Church both 24promotes and rewards infantilism in women. Having a baby and being a mother is often an easy excuse not to complete one's education or develop talents and abilities in a sphere beyond the home. ‘The theory many women believed was, If they never proved to themselves that they were capable, talented people, then they would have less frustration performing in roles that required them to be, in many important ways, both incapable and untalented. If these women never raised their expectations of life, never expected to have the excitement and feel the power of developing and using their minds and skills, then they would never feel thwarted or miserable. Only, it didn't turn out that way for most of them (1981, 42). Mormon women writers are expressing their fear that mother- hood may be infantilizing to a woman and keep her immature. Myrna Marler tells how, as a young girl, she watched on a city bus - + + while a man talked endlessly to a little girl about her new dress, her new purse, and how her daddy was going to take her to the park. The mother beside her beamed as each lisping syllable dropped from her prodigy's mouth. Is this motherhood then, I asked myself, long days spent in the company of immature minds? At that moment I was aware of fear, fear that a good Mormon girl isn't supposed to have, a fear so alarming that I shoved it to the back of my mind'and didn't examine it again until it was too late (Marler 1982, 70). In a short story by Marla Zollinger Russell, Taira notices one effect of her constant association with her one-year-old daughter April. “Since April had begun to say 'bye-bye,' 'momma,' and ‘daddy,' Taira had lost some of her own vocabulary by prompting her daughter, in simple words, over the months to speak. Recently, as Jim and she left for a few groceries during April's nap, she said, ‘Bye-bye house, see you,’ and waved. jim looked at her with his eyebrows in a question, and she pretended it was a joke, and felt very strange" (1981, 55). linda Sillitoe has noted that the frequent theme of creation in recent Mormon women's poetry more often expresses the idea of the child forming or at least fulfilling the mother, rather than the mother creating the child. Sillitoe believes that this reflects the reality of the authors’ lives. “The child makes the woman a mother. Since motherhood is the most valued status women attain in our society, the child who achieves that for the mother is intrinsically powerful and valuable. The woman's worth is drawn from the child and is dependent on the child's future. No wonder there is such adulation of already endearing, eternal children. Again and again I read words to the effect, 25 — ell"You, child give life to me'" (1980, 52). What do Mormon women find frustrating and unfulfilling about their experience as mothers? Some of them are beginning to tell us clearly and specifically. One admits that she never dreamed her sweet baby would in time Le able tc infuriate her to the point of physical violence. Her chilaren, as they grew, became--as she calls them-—"brats": They whined, declared my dinners were yucky, and refused to take baths. Where I had envisioned a gathering around the piano in the evenings, they fought at the dinner table and threw themselves down hypnotized in front of the television set. They teased each other, poked each other, hit each other, twisted each other's ears, tattled on each other, and when in public, acted as if they had never even met. : + + My children are not achievers in school; they fight and hit each other and the neighbors, turn family outings into free-for-alls, don't take care of their possessions. + + + And so I walk around from church meeting to church meeting oppressed first by guilt and inadequacy, finally by resentment (Marler 1982, 83-84). A mother's strong feelings of responsibility and guilt regarding her children is a frequent theme in contemporary literature by Mormon women. Mothers feel more responsible than do fathers for the children--and they resent their husbands’ relative nonparticipation while flogging themselves because of their children's failings or problems. The "Prodigal's Mother” in Elouise Bell's poem of that title takes all the responsibility for her son's waywardness upon herself but never loses hope. She works with a frenzy to keep her mind busy and asks her dearest friend the familiar question: Where did I fail? Sariah, oldest friend, no mock honey ever oozed from your lips, So tell me: where was I amiss? If only someone would tell me! This endless chasing after “maybe's" Like some dull ox chained to his round-- I fear I will end by wandering the hills, A madwoman in shreds and shards! Maybe I didn't teach him well enough In earliest days, when he tugged about my skirts (Always crying for dates and figs, he was.) But goodness knows, I did my best! Tell me Sariah, I implore you! What did I do? What did I not? (1979, 522-24) Several thousand years later a Mormon mother worrying about the 26"family presentation" her family is readying for a church meeting feels the same sense of responsibility and sadness: As our preparation for the program progressed, [her daughter wrote], my mother's anxieties increased. We still had only Sixteen minutes worth of material, and she felt humiliated that the entire family wasn't participating. My brothers! indifference and my sister's vacillation toward the Church were all the more painful by the realization that, for all intents and purposes, it would be broadcast publicly. Two days in a row she dissolved into tears saying, "I'm a failure as a mother. Where did I go wrong?" All I could reply was, "You didn't. They did" (Saderup 1980, 114). in a short story, “Prayer for Tommy: A Chant of Imperfect Love," Myrna Marler shows us the pressures on Sharon, the nother of Tommy--a "different" child, and subject to violent Tages. Somehow her efforts to teach him just didn't "take" as they did with her other children. She wonders, “Was she a hegiectful mother? Was the one soap opera she allowed herself every day a sin? It came on just before the kids got home from School so every day they found her sitting there watching the tube. Was that the sin that had done it?" (1981, 33). The neighbors dislike Tommy, her friends at church tell her to “love him more," but Sharon continues to feel inadequate. Once after Tommy has confronted the family in an angry rage, Sharon feels overwhelmed by all of the demands on her. "Tommy was locked tight in his room, and her husband was leaving for a meeting, and her responsibilities continued, the dishes still not done, the laundry to fold and her Mutual books lying open on the desk, and Ronnie, the youngest of her six children, tugged at her pant eg." She feels anger at her husband when he gives what she considers cheap advice from a comfortable distance: “You worry too much," Gene had told her. “Well, somebody has to," she had snapped. “It's not you who has to go to teacher conference, apologize to the neighbors, or put up with his mouth." “Sharon, that's not fair." “Why isn't it fair?" she had demanded, knowing as she said the words she was attacking the whole structure of their Mormon lives--and maybe in that sense it wasn't fair (1981, 32, 35). Sharon is experiencing internal changes and wants some changes in her relationship with her husband and son. But she draws back when she realizes that adequate changes in her settled Mormon family pattern cannot be achieved without radically undercutting the entire structure. In the end she hopes that telling Tomm: she loves him even when he is misbehaving might change Bame-it oe never gives up. But the responsibility for dealing with the situation remains hers and remains within the set structure 27 ee”of her home and surroundings. No change in family-roles, no change in society (church, school, neighbors) is available or viable to her. Nor was any possibility of change available to the woman who wrote a letter describing the destructive effect which her compliant support of her husband in his church callings--instead of insistence that he help her with family responsibilities--had had on her own health and her relationship with her husband. Pregnant with her fifth child, she broke into tears when the apostle who called her husband to a high church position asked how she felt about it. She was assured that all would be well, for they were doing the Lord's work, but she realized then and later that it meant the loss of her husband, emotionally and spiritually. Now as I look back, I should have said in that interview, "I think you are making a mistake in asking my husband to take this calling. He has a more important calling--his ghildren and his wife." I should have told my husband, “Look, I can't support you in this. I need you, the children need you. I can't raise five children all by myself. It is physically impossible." But 1 didn't say any of these things. I just sat there blubbering. I could see how much it meant to my husband to receive this call. He loved the recognition, the adulation of the people, the feeling that he was loved and needed by God to do His work here. I couldn't fight that. And I thought it was wrong for me to have such thoughts and so I tried to do what was “right” and accept the calling. Now, years later, it isn't any easier to talk to my husband about my feelings toward church authorities and even the church itself. Our children are all married, my husband now holds an even higher church position. And I, though not a typical Mormon matron--fat and harried looking --am not-quite-thin, and have chronic back trouble. We (the Mormon wives, whose children are raised) are all suffering physical problems. We are battling boredom, fatigue, and depression, and trying to figure out why we are so unhappy (in Johnson 1981, 383-84). These women, and many others, are confronting their realization that change is needed, but they either do not see a workable way to make the changes--or they see it too late. Rubina Rivers Forester's poem, "Mother Doesn't Feel Well," not only captures the sense of isolation and sole responsibility which Tommy's mother experienced but confronts the depressing truth that “nobody really cares 28Lord, my head aches, Throbs press to the pit of my stomach drum, drumming a melody of pain And nobody cares. children gather in the kitchen-- they mess, break, dirty and touch, touch, touch. Lord, my head swirls, Dizziness jellifies my legs, arms, will. And nobody cares. Phone rings: husband is safe at work. Lord, I feel nausea. Waves suffocate me. They will not spill out. And nobody cares. Children play outside. They cry, fight, whine, keeping me awake with complaints. I need sleep, Lord. I cry like a baby because I hurt, I really hurt. And nobody really cares. (1982, 14) one of the most common themes in the writing of Mormon women in the past few years is depression. The fiction contest sponsored by Sunstone a few years ago brought floods of stories dealing with the topic. This outpouring has possibly been influenced by a powerful TV documentary aired in Salt Lake City in 1979 which brought vividly to the public consciousness an awareness that even "good" Mormon women who were keeping all the Commandments and doing all they should were vulnerable to depression and were, in fact, experiencing it in what appeared to be near-epidemic proportions. While depression affects both single and married women, both mothers and non-mothers, a significant number of Mormon women wrote about depression related to their role as wife and. mother. 29 ldTaira, the mother of year-old April, is experiencing many symptoms of depression--fatigue, listlessness, not feeling connected to her surroundings, lack of self-discipline, and a tendency to overeat. She gobbles pie early in the morning and is too tired to pick up her daughter's messes during the day or do the dishes after dinner. She envisions her daughter choking on the leaves of a dying plant--leaves which she has not remem- bered to pick off. Taira does not understand "how she ever got to be twenty-three years old, married, and now a mother; it seemed to have happened while she was looking the other way." Once, seeing her own features in April's face, she “spontaneously wanted to throw April away, to get into the crib herself and begin over again" (1981, 55). Kathy, in "Separate Prayers," becomes depressed even before becoming a mother, as her husband prods her about the issue of children and even uses it to wound her: “Why don't you want children, Kathy?" do want children. I just don't want them right now. “why? "I don't know why. Leave me alone." You and your father--you're so much alike." “What do you mean by that?" "I mean that neither of you has a gift for intimacy." (Edwards-Cannon 1981, 35) The depressed mothers in Linda Sillitoe's story "Demons" are seen through the eyes of Paul, a young Church leader assigned to visit them and help them. He sees women either deserted or patronized by husbands who do not help care for their numerous small children. Paul ascribes the women's condition to the presence of “evil spirits"--as evidenced by the "dark evil feelings" of one woman who “seemed angry, even at us." Paul believes that "maybe if these girls would get out and run every day it would be good for them." He thinks of his own wife who jogs with him each morning, who still looks trim, and who manages her own three closely spaced children beautifully. Yet Paul feels a fear that the demons may invade even his home, that the "disease" may be contagious: "He somehow felt that he brought defeat home with him, that even in his own shining house a rustle would follow him. Or sometimes from the corner of his eye, he would catch a furtive motion. He would have to be on guard, armored against the shadows" (1981, 43). As Mormon women confront their feelings of frustration, guilt, and resentment as well as the possibility of external changes, the solutions in the literature are almost invariably worked out within a Mormon framework. Most of the women handle their situations with some combination of hope, acceptance, rationalization, and a basic reconciliation to the way things 30are. Tommy's mother Sharon decides not to risk toppling the traditional Mormon structure on which her relationship to her husband is built but to continue trying, by herself, to help her son. The mother with the bratty children says it's all worth- while when a son hands her a valentine to comfort her when she cries or when another thanks her for a cut-up orange (Marler 1980, 76). A woman who with the help of her family begins juggling a professional life and outside interests with her motherly duties deals with her discomfort about feeling "selfish" by finally saying, "It isn't selfish. Think about it. Anyone who develops his or her talents will not only have a better self but better skills to share" (Hurd 1982, 146). These women cope within the stability of the Mormon frame~ work or roles and attitudes, somehow finding ways to make everything fit into the mold. The women who don't--who exper~ ence depression or alienation--have until recently usually not written about it (unless they had overcome the problems by faith or perseverance) or they have in some ways ceased to be "Mormon" as their life styles and attitudes diverge from the accepted Mormon pattern. Sonia Johnson was a thoroughly Mormon woman who, when confronted with personal changes, broke the Mormon mold rather than accept its prescriptions. Her autobiography is the most graphic, weighty literary example of change and confron- tation in the life of a Mormon woman to appear in the literature. A young TV cameraman said to her in surprise, shortly after her excommunication, "But you're just a mom!" She was indeed. Although intelligent, talented, and well-educated, Sonia focused her life on her role as wife, mother, and homemaker before her feminist awakening. She describes motherhood for her in the same straightforward way she records all her life-cycle exper~ iences-~puberty, marriage, divorce: As I slogged about in a fog of fatigue and postpartum depression, I found myself wondering why I had to bear this burden so alone. . . - In those first few months of motherhood, before I succeeded in stifling such "unnatural" thoughts, I wondered guiltily whether it was possible that I'd been deceived About motherhood's being the totally fulfilling activity the church and society assured me it was. It didn't take long to learn that this was indeed a myth of a good many women, if not for most. That didn't mean I didn't love my baby and find aspects of being a mother delightful. Though I chafed at the fulltimeness of it and at Rick's nonparticipation, I found Eric endlessly entrancing (1981, 44). Some years later in Palo Alto, with her husband spending most of his time working on computer programs, Sonia found herself "stuck at home with three small children and only the church for an outlet." She awoke one morning with stiff burning 31 SSEEEEEEHEEEEESI=TETENSESERESEEIEIRIEEEEESNOEEEEESESIESESENSEEERDDU SUSI ETSESESEnEnEENSSESESSESEREEREREEES ESERIEShands and painful joints. The diagnosis was acute rheumatoid arthritis, and the prognosis was poor. Sonia writes, I believe that all the frustrations and inchoate longings and boredom of that time, and the guilt at not being perfectly happy doing what the men of the church taught should make a woman perfectly happy--being a full- time wife and mother--all this negative energy turned inward, combined into a potent weapon, and attacked ne. It took me years to figure out that I may very well have given myself arthritis to punish myself for not being happy doing God's will. That I'd turned my body into a battlefield for my emotions (1981, 48-51). While her holistic understanding of the connection between mind and bedy came later, Sonia's only wish and prayer at the tine was to be able to have the use of her hands long enough to raise her children. Sonia's disappointment and resentment at her husband's lack of involvement and even avoidance of parenting responsibil- ities led her to question, in a way that Tommy's mother Sharon backed away from, the traditional assumptions behind the strucé ture of the Mormon family Though I had been left the usual childhood and family residue, too, as we all have, the difference between us was that I knew I was responsible for those kids. The church and society had told me so often enough. I knew I couldn't fail, because if I did, no one would come in and pick up the pieces. He knew he could fail, because I'd be there, finally responsible, to take care of things. The patriarch al notion of the mother's doing the nurturing and the father's making the rules kept him an adolescent parent. Before we can solve the ills of society, we must reorganize parenting. Let the patriarchs of the New Right, who are so concerned about the "family," start taking their share of the responsibility as parents, in keeping the family emotionally secure and united and educating other men to do the same instead of blaming women, who are seldom in positions to make policies that would lift pressures from families (1981, 209). Sonia recognized that personal change on the part of mothers alone will not solve the problems inherent in motherhocd a8 Mormon (and Western) culture has institutionalized it. Changes in family patterns of parenting are imperative and Certainly helpful. But she went further and pointed out the necessity of societal change on a sweeping scale as wel 32 eeeMen own and rule the world. They are the heads of government, the presidents of corporations, the presidents of universities. They are the ones who could, if they cared about families, reorganize society so families could flourish. I£ they really want someone home when children come home from school, for instance, or someone to teke decent care of the little ones during the day, they have the power to institute scheduling flexible enough that at least one parent can be on hand, or see to it that there is good child care available. To insist that women--the powerless, the economically dispossessed of the world--bear total responsibility for child care, and therefore are to blame if families are in trouble, is cruel nonsense. How would men like to be faced with the dilemma of full-time work and full-time parenting and full blame when things go wrong? I lay the blame for the disintegration of family life squarely at the feet of men. They are the only ones who can do anything about it on any scale that would be helpful to families, and they are not doing it (1981, 209-10). These ideas are not particularly new, but to Mormon society they were radical and potentially revolutionary. Eventually Sonia's questioning of the Mormon church pattern extended to the familiar "motherhood-priesthood" division and even beyond. In noting the fear and avoidance her male leaders exhibited about anything concerning the doctrine of a Mother in Heaven and their slowness and reluctance to let women pray in meetings, she writes, If I was excommunicated for not respecting the priesthood enough (meaning the men), then why shouldn't bishops be excommunicated for not respecting "the motherhood" enough (meaning the women)? After all, the Mormons make much of motherhood. Motherhood is supposed to make up for not having anything else. - - - A question I often wanted to ask the leaders of the Mormon church but never got the chance is, “If motherhood is really so revered and so wonderful and is truly the equivalent of priesthood--why can men who not only do not hold the priesthood but are not even members of the church stand in the circle when their children or grandchildren or other relatives are blessed, whereas the mother, though she may have been a devout and worthy member of the church all her life, cannot?" This speaks eloquently of the divinity of maleness in and of itself, which is the basis of patri~ archy. Priesthood is merely a smoke screen to hide this fact (1981, 3478). Sonia Johnson, though now outside of the Mormon Church, went unwillingly at the time and still claims that it made her 33much of what she is. While Mormon women are beginning to write About motherhood with more realism, directness, and honesty, few Of them move beyond a tehtative examination of the "darker" side to question their society's structure, attitudes, and practices concerning motherhood. Most seem to feel that any problems women experience in their feelings or roles as mothers erise mainly from their own inadequacies and shortcomings, or they only hint at inadequacies elsewhere in the system, Sonia Sohison's careful detailing of her own radical internal changes shows us that there is still much change that is needed--witnin marital relationships, Church prescriptions, and societal Structure--to support individual women's personal changes. Her book is valuable to Mormon literature for revealing the processes that shaped one devout Mormon woman, the agony of personal Change, and the dissonance and upheaval that resulted when she made internal change jarringly visible in a conservative society that values permanence, order, harmony, and obedience. Bibliography Bell, Elouise. “The Prodigal's Mother. BYU Studies 19 (Summer 1979): 522-24. ccaceereaeeeret” Bradford, Mary Lythgoe, ed. Mormon Women Speak. Salt Lake city: Olympus Publishing Companys 1982 ~ Edward, Jaroldeen Asplund. "Full House 1971): 9-13. Dialogue 6 (Summer Edwards-Cannon, Ann. "Separate Prayer." Sunstone 6 (Nov.~Dec- 1981): 32-37. Forester, Rubina Rivers. “Mother Doesn't Feel Well." Exponent Ir 8 (Summer 1982): 12. urd, Jerrie W. “The New Reliable Me." In Bradford, pp. 137-47- Johnson, Sonia. From Housewife to Heretic. New York: Double- day, 1981. Marler, Myrna. “Midnight on Mother's Day." In Bradford, PP- 69-76. “prayer for Tommy: A Chant of Imperfect Love." Banstone 6 (July-Aug. 1981): 32-35. Pederson, Cherie T. “Expanding the Vision." In Bradford, pp. 187-94. Russell, Marla Zollinger. “what Wondering Brings." Sunstone 6 (Jan.-Feb. 1981): 53-57. 34Saderup, 1980) Sillitoe, Moxmon Women." "New Voices, ‘amily Presentation." Sunstone 6 (May-June 1981): 40-43. New Songs: 35 Dialogue 13 (Summer Contemporary Poems by Dialogue 13 (Winter 1980): 47-61.Scottish Mormon Immigrants and the Muse: Verses from the Dust Prederick S. Buchanan A poem, observed Robert Frost, "is like a piece of ice ona hot stove." I take this to mean in part that poetry ise response to the heat of life. The purpose of my presentation today is not that of literary criticism; it is rather to bring to you some of the sense and sound of Scottish immigrant poetry-~ as it were, pieces of the Scottish ice which skittered ever so briefly on the hot stove of Mormonism. I make no pretense at being a literary critic; and that fact fits well with the poetry I will present; it is not “profes- sional" poetry, but reflects the feelings, aspirations, thoughts, and recollections of plain Scots--men and women, most of then from the mining areas of central Scotland, whose lives were changed forever by their contact with Mormonism. — These Scots Mormons, of course, were not unique in their efforts to express themselves in verse; but these “folk poets" often use Scots words and idioms and set their words to Scots tunes which give some of their poems a unique flavor and add a distinct regional aspect to Mormon literature. As I uncovered these poems in the journals of Scots immi- grants in the LDS Historical Department Archives, the words of Robert Burns in his "Epistle to J. Lapraik--An Old Scottish Bard" came to mind--words which helped lay the foundation for the widespread myth that Burns was a child of nature without any formal education: I am nae poet, in a sense; But just a rhymer like by chance. An' hae to learning nae pretence; Yet, what the matter? Whene'er my muse does on me glance, I jingle at her. A set o' dull, conceited hashes Confuse their brains in college classes, They gang in starks, and come out asses, Plain truth tae speak. An' syne they hope to climb Parnassus By dint o' Greek. 36Gie me ae spark o' nature's fire, That's at the learning I desire; then tho! I drudge thro' dub an' mire At pleugh or cart, My muse, tho' hamely in attire, May touch the heart. of course, Burns was not the rustic that his disciples in the "Burns Cult" made him out to be; but perhaps this myth may have encouraged Scots immigrants (some of whom mention Burns in their journals) to "jingle" at their muse--although the content of the poems leans more toward having been sparked by “heavenly zeal" rather than "nature's fire." All but two of the writers were nineteenth-century immigrants, most of them coming to Utah in the 1850s and ‘60s, but the poems span the period from 1841 to the 1960s. Most of the immigrants seem to have had a basic Scots education. | Mathew Rowan mentions studying and reading Greek; another individual had an American university education. George Watt was born in England of a Scots father and spent many of his early years living in grandparents in the West of Scot~ and. These poems fall into categories which reflect the themes of (1) restoration and testimony, (2) farewell and gathering, (3) human relations, (4) social commentary, (5) tribulations, (6) humor, (7) nature, and of course, (8) recollections of Scotland.’ While these poems may not add up to great literature, they can give us insight into how common people were viewing the development of Mormon history in Scotland and in Utah. Here then are some "voices from the coal dust," most of which have not known a Scots tongue for many a yea Under the title, "L.D.S. Hymn Common Metre," Andrew Sprowl recorded a hymn "given by the Spirit of the Lord" to Elder Thomas Jaap at Paisley, 24 August 1841: Awake awake the sacred Muse. and tune the hevenly lyre. let holy zeal, and love of god thy new born soul inspire. let erth be glad and man rejoyce and each the other imbrace the fulness of the gospels come to raise our fallen race the grate eventfull day is dawned on our benighted world when priestcraft from its lofty seat must down to hell be hurled. 37 elthe nations that hath long been held in hir unhalod grasp they shall awake & will regain there liberty at last . . - Prais the Lord. In January of the same year, George D. Watt in Edinburgh sent these lines to George A. Smith: I have no doubt that you have seen 'Mong other trees the olive grow And is it not an evergreen In Summer, Winter, Frost & Snow. When cold December ushers in And frosty winds begin to blow The olive it's an evergreen And blooms among both Frost & Snow The church of God's an evergreen In Summer, Winter, Frost & Snow While other Sects are dead it's green And bears immortal fruits below. In response to an anti-Mormon tirade in Fife by one James Ross, John Duncan, a one-eyed, one-legged miner missionary, wrote a twenty-four-stanza recapitulation of Mormon history. Here is a sample, stanzas 12-15, 17, and 21. They are somewhat forced in rhyme and meter--reminiscent of some of the “poetical pearls" of William McGonagall of whom it was said, “He wasn't @ Great poet, he wasn't a bad poet, he simply wasn't a poet"--but thoroughly Mormon in content: When nearly all Mankind had gone astray And but few sought the narrow way Joseph wished some Religious Sect to join And earnestly to God did Pray then. As John said, A Holy Angel from on High Did from the courts of Glory Fly Bringing the Gospel back to Earth Clothing with the Priesthood Joseph Smith. The Angel said, Although those Sects are strong In numbers: Yet they are all wrong And in A short time the Lord will begin To Judge the inhabitants of the Earth for Sin. The command which I have from the Lord Is for you to Translate that second Record Then you shall have power men to Baptize And the Church of Christ to Organize. 38So I am in Joseph Smith A true Believer For he was sent of God, was no Deceiver And to this Truth I will always Testify For I know that it's truth, though I should die. i've answered your letter with this intent To cry to you Repent, Repent, Repent And in God's Holy Prophet Joseph believe The Lord sent him, now don't yourself Deceive. Mormon doctrine regarding Christ as a participant in the creation of the world is revealed in James Hood's twenty-page Milton-like epic (c1900) which, in its interpretation of Eden, follows the Mormon temple endowment: The Father and Son Returns Returning once again to Eden's bless'd domain, The Father and the Son in peace descend. Amid sweet Eden's bloom, with Adam to commune “that further light and knowledge" to commend, "Come hither Adam, here, why cower and show such fear To give thee "light and knowledge" we have come. Hast thou thyself forgot? hast sin become they lot? Are thou my disobedient, fallen son? Adams Guilt In consciousness he strode toward his frowning God In guilt and fear, the Fathers call to fill. So with cowering head, murmering he said "I ate the fruit and disobeyed Thy will. ["] One of the most productive of these Scottish "“rhymers" was Mathew Rowan, who joined the Mormons in the mid-1840s in Glasgow. Eventually he was called to take the "gospel" to the "Sassenachs" in the English Midlands. As a missionary, he produced some four dozen "songs" for the Mormons in Britain--many of them set to tunes made popular by Robert Burns. in 1849 at Ayr, he wrote a parody on "Auld Lang Syne," using as a theme the Mormon belief in pre-mortal existence: Should pre-acquaintance be forgot And never brought to mind, Why should that knowledge aye be hid, Of what we were lange syne? 39 -