Joe Woods, born Joseph Wojtowicz, was a Polish immigrant who recounted sometimes humorous, sometimes magical folktales that incorporated American and European traditions. Woods came to the United States in 1904 from Csanok, Poland. Although Woods ultimately settled in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, he traveled across much of the United States. Woods was part of the mass movement of European immigrants in the early 1900s, during which many Polish immigrants moved to the Great Lakes region. Woods came from a comparatively wealthy background; his father was employed by the Polish government and his grandfather was a landowner. Woods also claimed to be able to speak and read in seven different languages: Polish, Russian, Croatian, Bohemian, Serbian, Slavish, and English. The many fairy and folklore stories that Woods told were recorded by Richard M. Dorson and then published verbatim in 1949 in two issues of Western Folklore.
Dorson identified the six stories in the first collection as märchen (fairy tales). For example, “Crazy Johnny, or Marble Castle,” with similarities to “Cinderella,” tells the story of a poor young man who, with the help of a magic ring, wins the hand of a princess. This love affair angers the king of a neighboring territory who had hoped to marry the princess himself. This leads to war, in which Crazy Johnny secretly participates. When Johnny’s honorable deeds are revealed, he is made king. The stories in the first collection focus on protagonists of lowly origins. While some of the stories highlight the use of magic to overcome the character’s circumstances, others focus on the protagonist’s use of cunning and guile to outsmart others of supposedly higher status or intellect. For example, in “The Rich Landlord and the Poor Shoemaker,” the landlord bets increasing amounts of money that the shoemaker cannot perform a series of increasingly outlandish tasks, from stealing dogs from his watchman to stealing the sheets from his bed. In each case, the shoemaker outwits the landlord and wins his prize. The story concludes with the landlord and shoemaker working together against a priest who, having been tricked and embarrassed, agrees to pay the landlord for his silence.
According to Dorson, the second collection of Joe Woods’s stories consists of five humorous anecdotes, a hero legend, three moral tales, two novelle (a type of tale or short story), and one true story. Particular cultural motifs appear in the second collection, especially in the focus on Jews as a source of humor and derision (see “The Jew on the Witness Box” and “The Fish and the Fox”). This undoubtedly reflected Woods’s Polish origins, where in the Pale of Settlement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anti-Jewish attitudes and stereotypes were abundant. Other tales express anticlerical sentiments, which is evident in both collections. For example, in “The Priest and the Money Collector,” labeled a humorous story, a poor woman, after acquiring some money, seeks advice from the local priest on how to keep it safe. After offering his counsel, the priest instructs the money collector to steal it, admitting that he (implicitly in contravention of his priestly status) will use the money to buy alcohol. Finally, in “Janosek,” a Slovakian Robin Hood figure (who appears in many Polish folktales) steals from the rich to give to the poor. Woods’s version explicitly draws on Eastern European legend and even references former European royalty. However, Woods also brings the story back to the American context, comparing Janosek to Abraham Lincoln.
Collectively, Woods’s tales represent different genres of folklore and offer examples of how immigrant cultures influenced the nature of the stories told. In some cases, there was direct Polish influence (such as in “Janosek” or in those tales that featured Jews). In others, the stories reveal the cross-cultural origins of many folk and fairy tales (e.g., Dorson notes that “Crazy Johnny” has origins similar to tales from Finland, Norway, and Sweden). American folklore clearly has a rich heritage, drawing on and being influenced by numerous groups including Native American, African American, and various European and Asian nationalities. Woods’s stories demonstrate how immigrant tales can become culturally acclimated and in turn create a distinctive genre of American folktales.
Jennifer Reeve
See also Cante Fables; European Sources; Yarns, Yarn-spinning
Further Reading
de Caro, Frank. 2009. An Anthology of American Folktales and Legends. New York: Taylor Francis.
Dorson, Richard M. 1949. “Polish Tales from Joe Woods.” Western Folklore 8: 131–145.
Dorson, Richard M. 1949. “Wonder Tales of Joe Woods.” Western Folklore 8: 25–52.
Dorson, Richard M. 1983. Handbook of American Folklore. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
McCarthy, William Bernard. 2007. Cinderella in America: A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.