Mexican Border Ballads and Other Lore Page: 63
vii, 143 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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MEXICAN BORDER BALLADS
learned the alphabet could read its meaning. It advertises
plainly the poison behind it. It warns every listener to beware
of poison. It would be inhuman to admire poison, but right
there I conceived a kind of respect for poison that is honest
about itself.
I may revert to my raising and kill the next rattlesnake
I meet, but I knew one mighty good man who would not
kill a rattlesnake under any condition. That was the noted
hunter Ben V. Lilly. One cold, damp night while he was out
on the trail of a bear in the Louisiana bottoms, he took
refuge in a hollow cypress log and slept snug. About day-
light he crawled out and made a fire at the hollow. He roasted
an ear of dry corn, and while he was eating it an
immense rattlesnake, thawed out by the fire, ponderously
crawled from where Lilly had spent the night.
Ben Lilly looked at him and said: "Brother, you didn't
bother me last night. I went into your house and you let me
be. I won't bother you now, and I promise you I won't ever
bother any of your folks."
'Transactions . . . 1902, published by The Academy, Austin, Texas,
1903, Vol. V, pp. 36-37, 41.
'In Fauna, published by the Zoological Society of Philadelphia, Sept.,
1942, Vol. 4, page 83, Carl F. Kauffeld, herpetologist and for many
years Curator of Reptiles of the Staten Island Zoo, wrote of rattlesnake
breeding:
"The young are carried by the female until they are completely
formed. All rattlesnakes, therefore, are live bearers, although not in
the sense of mammalian reproduction, for there is no placental attach-
ment to the parent. The eggs are merely retained and the young are
extruded in thin membranous sacs. There is no leathery shell present
at any time during their development as there is among egg-laying
snakes. The new-born rattlers quickly escape from their membranous
envelopes and are quite capable of caring for themselves immediately.
Fangs and venom are present at the moment of birth, and the knowl-
edge of how to use them."
*R. Menger, Texas Nature Observations and Reminiscences, San
Antonio, Texas, 1913, 151-154.
'Manuscript in the archives of the Library of the University of Texas,
pp. 15-16. In his biography of James Buckner Barry, A Texas Ranger
and Frontiersman . . . 1845-1906, Dallas, Texas, 1932, James K. Greer
"eliminated Barry's views on natural history."
5The Austin American, Dallas Morning News, Houston Post, and
San Antonio Light.
"Note by the eminent anthropologist Frank G. Speck in Journal of
American Folk Lore, Vol. 36 (1923), 298-300. Dr. Speck attempts, not
at all conclusively to my mind, to trace the snake-swallowing idea back
to Aristotle and to find evidences of it in Egypt and Japan. He cites the63
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Mexican Border Ballads and Other Lore (Book)
Collection of popular folklore from Mexico and Texas, including ballads, personal anecdotes, folktales of the Alabama-Coushatta Indians and other miscellaneous legends. The index begins on page 141.
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Boatright, Mody C. Mexican Border Ballads and Other Lore, book, 1946; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67652/m1/71/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.