SOURCE: "The Impact of Folklore on American Poetry," in A Tribute to George Coffin Taylor: Studies and Essays, Chiefly Elizabethan, by His Students and Friends, edited by Arnold Williams, The University of North Carolina Press, 1952, pp. 132-47.

In the following excerpt, Hudson examines the folkloric roots of works by an array of American poets from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Wallace Stevens.

At Cairo, Illinois, the Ohio joins the Mississippi. It is said that for some miles below the junction point, one can distinguish the Ohio by its clear stream from the muddy Father of Waters. Yet who could speak accurately of the "impact" of the Ohio on the Mississippi? They are both basically water, H₂0, with various organic and inorganic matter in solution or afloat. So with folklore and poetry. They are both creations of the human fantasy or imagination operating upon the material of human experiences. In...