LITTLE ROCK — While many people familiar with Arkansas history and folklore recognize the name Vance Randolph as the state’s leading folklorist before his death in 1980, few know that his wife was an accomplished folklorist and collector of Arkansas music in her own right.
Mary Celestia Parler came to the University of Arkansas in 1948 to teach Chaucer in the English Department, but by the time she retired in 1975, Parler had amassed a large collection of interviews, manuscripts such as student project reports, and the largest body of Arkansas music in existence. Today, students of Arkansas and Ozark folklore have access to a trove of resources due to the sustained efforts of Mary Parler.
Born October 6, 1904, in Wedgefield, South Carolina, Mary was the daughter of a cotton farmer and country physician, Marvin L. Parler, and teacher Josie Platt Parler. Mary was educated in the local Wedgefield schools until the 10th grade, when she was admitted to Winthrop College in Rock Hill. Taking a BA degree in English in 1924, Mary went on to graduate study at the University of Wisconsin, where she studied Chaucer-a lifelong interest. Mary also pursued a doctoral degree at Wisconsin with a specialty in southern dialects.
In 1948 Parler came to the University of Arkansas, where she began teaching Chaucer and folklore in the English Department. When queried about the diverse nature of her teaching subjects, she replied that “it is perhaps in exploring the intricacies of human behavior that Chaucer and Arkansas folklore are relatable,” concluding that “there’s a good deal of folklore in Chaucer.”
Parler wasted no time. Within a year of her arrival, she was teaching a course in Arkansas folklore, and she established and directed the UA Folklore Research Project. She was a popular teacher, and her folklore course attracted bright students. Each student was expected to conduct field work and make a report to the class. The Parler Papers at the University of Arkansas Libraries contain 21 volumes of data collected by her students on topics such as riddles, proverbs and religious beliefs.
While Parler’s work in the classroom will be remembered by her students, her primary legacy is a gigantic collection of music recorded in the field. With the help of field assistant Merlin Mitchell, Parler traveled across the region with a tape recorder the size of a suitcase interviewing and recording musical performers. While much of the music is today known as folk music, Parler occasionally turned her microphone on such groups as a Cherokee choir singing Baptist hymns in the Cherokee language or immigrants performing in their native languages.
Folklorist and Parler biographer Rachel Reynolds has noted that Parler’s collection totals 3,600 recordings of folk songs, 800 oral histories, as well as more than 700 comments and tales from performers. It amounts to 442 reels totalling 137,400 feet of audiotape. Parler also transcribed all the song lyrics.
Though an unassuming person who mostly worked behind the scenes, Parler became the subject of a CBS television program, The Search, in 1954. The show revolved around a staged search for an ancient Elizabethan ballad, The Two Sisters. Viewers are treated to Miss Parler traveling about the Ozarks in a Jeep as she stops at isolated cabins and visits with one over-all clad performer after another. Finally, they come across a party in Yocum, in Carroll County, where a young girl named Mary Jo Davis sang the ancient song while leaning against a tree.
While Parler was an astonishingly prolific and accomplished folklorist,she was overshadowed by her husband, Vance Randolph. She met Randolph soon after arriving at the University when she helped organize the Arkansas Folklore Society in 1950, and they took a liking to each other from the start. Being from a respectable South Carolina family did not prevent Parler from flirting with Randolph.
Vance Randolph liked women and he could certainly hold his own in a flirting match. However, these were two middle-aged people who were married to their work-and their courtship moved along slowly. They worked together closely on a number of Randolph’s books, starting with his dialect book, Down in the Holler (published 1953). The couple married in 1962, when Parler was 58 and Randolph 70.
Parler published her only book, on Arkansas ballads, in 1963. She retired in 1975, and died in 1981, less than a year after the death of her husband.
Tom Dillard is head of special collections at the University of Arkansas Libraries in Fayetteville. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial, Pages 80 on 04/17/2011