Taking the time to “talk tell” of the terrible or trippy tenants of the timberlands is a typical task for a taught and tentative teacher. I, myself, am more in the mood to muse many of these myths than most. Consequently, I am confident and competent in my capabilities. Conversely, the caveat is in the craving for challenge not confusion in comprehension. Accordingly, alliteration, I admit, is actually an astonishing avenue to actualize this aspiration and is apt to add to my ambition. Erelong, this exact expression of embellishment is easier and easier with each elaboration. This elocution elevates the entirely of my expatiation and enhances it with an essential essence. Evidently, my energies exerted to exhaustion, and efforts empty-handed in effect, if ever I endeavored to explain this element. Surely, any sensible soul should say that these sentences are self-sufficient in showing and symbolizing a sense of the sensational, surprising, strange and superb. Frankly, it is futile to focus any further on this feature.
    What is worthwhile, what I willfully want to write in words, are well wishes from within. Without the wonderful work of wanderers who once wrote with wit and willed to wonder what the wild wood was withholding from the world, where would we be? The regional “rags” I have read to review reports, are relatively recent, in respect to the remarks readily relayed by regional raconteurs, and rather rudimentary. Seldom are spoken stories still spun, and to seek such a surviving storyteller is a significant struggle. Rather, the reason for this resource rests on readings of resolute and restless researchers.
    My gratefulness, my gratitude, goes to the genuine geniuses, those garrulous and grey-haired guides, gone in grace and glory, who gifted the groundwork for generations. To the wonderful wordsmith of the whimsical, Walker D. Wyman, and the very veracious and vociferous Vance Randolph, a regular record-keeper of the remarkable, are my ready respect and recognition. The contributions of these captains of curiosity to this collection are crucial and considerable.
    Consequently, it is in copying key characteristics from the created collections of Charles E. Brown, biographer of Bunyan, Brinstone Bill, Bluenose Brainerd, boasters, bears, birchbark, and bunkhouse boys to the bottom of the barrel, I boosted the blueprint for this book. Notwithstanding, in this notebook, naturally of nonfiction, my name is notably noted in its nomenclature. Nevertheless—

Let it not be lost, that its lengthy lore is lifted from the lessons left from lifetimes of learning. It was the lone litterateurs, listed, who longed to log the language of laborers, laughed in the loquaciousness of liars, and listen to the last of the long-lived lumberjacks for later lovers of legend and lore.


It is to their diligence and dedication that this dictionary is dully dedicated.


Ⓡ - Randolph, Vance. We Always Lie to Strangers: Tall Tales from the Ozarks. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951.)
Ⓦ - Wyman, Walker D. Mythical Creatures of the USA and Canada. (River Falls, WI: Univ of Wisconsin Riverfalls Press,1978.)
Ⓢ - Schwartz, Alvin. Kickle Snifters and Other Fearsome Critters. (Binghamton, NY: Harpercollins Juvenile Books, 1978.)
ⓘ Ives, Ronald L. (1938, April 2). “You Don’t Have To Believe It.” Science News Letter, Vol. 33, No. 14, pp. 214-215+222.
Ⓒ Cobb, Irvin S. “Alas, The Poor Whiffletit.” Sundry Accounts. (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1922.)