The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 50, July 1946 - April, 1947 Page: 412

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Of the Night Wind's Telling. By E. Adams Davis. Norman
(University of Oklahoma Press), 1946. Pp. xxiv+176.
Drawings by Dorothy Kirk. $3.00.
Of the Night Wind's Telling presents the Mexico of fantasy
-the old tales, legends, and folkways that live on, undisturbed
by modern contrivances of man. These legends of the Valley
of Mexico reflect extensive research and fairness in the retell-
ing. "Dr. Davis has caught the spirit of and has accurately
preserved their original gentle simplicity of style." Amidst the
din of the modern metropolis, the City of Mexico, new tales and
growing legends are born, to be told and retold until they be-
come a part of the folklore of the country-legends of Emiliano
Zapata, or Pancho Villa, or of some older and more respected
revolutionary figures.
The author claims no part in fashioning these legends. He
did rediscover, collect, and select them from dusty, timeworn
tomes in the libraries, from the works of modern writers, or
from the tongues of the loquacious raconteurs and credulent
believers. His research took him to private libraries, to little
book stalls that flank the old calles, to the works of noted Mex-
ican or Spanish writers and of foreigners who traveled or lived
in the country.
In the collection are to be found Indian myths, tales of the
Spanish viceroys, and accounts of the Mexican revolutionaries.
Aztec gods vent their wrath on the world; the Indian prince
guards his sleeping princess forever; the Spanish viceroys-
good and bad-dispense their separate brands of justice; and
Maximilian's lancers engage in high adventure. Here are all
manner of myths, folk tales, grim histories, and spectral hor-
rors-sometimes shocking, sometimes pathetic or humorous, but
always intriguing.
E. Adams Davis, a native of Missouri and a graduate of
Kansas State College, State University of Iowa, and Louisiana
State University, has for nearly ten years made annual excur-
sions to Mexico and lived for a year in Mexico City. He is the
author of Plantation Life in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana
and of many articles on the history of the lower Mississippi
Valley.
The pen and ink decorations are the work of Dorothy Kirk,
associate professor of art in the University of Oklahoma, whose
acquaintance with Mexico has resulted in a delightful merging
of text and illustration.

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