Edith E. Cutting is a former English high school teacher and the author of several collections of New York State folklore. She coedited, with Harold W. Thompson, A Pioneer Songster: Texts from the Stevens-Douglass Manuscript of Western New York, 1841–1856, also from Cornell.
"Essex County is generally thought of by New York State folklorists as the area where the tall tale and ballad flourish most vigorously. Lore of an Adirondack County bears out this assumption. The strongest chapters are those dealing with the tall tales, lumbering stories and songs, and the ballads. The tall tales concern the cold weather, b'ar hunting, farm incidents. Some of the latter tell of Joe Call, the powerful farmer-hero; others are retorts in our sharpest upstate tradition... The value of this in this: it is one of the few published records of the lore of a single family and its immediate friends. It shows us what range and variety such a group can contribute to the body of our folk culture... Because Cutting is of the people from whom she has collected her materials, one never senses the self-consciousness of the outsider relating his findings in a strange area. She has the same kind of familiarity with her material that characterizes Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men."-California Folklore Quarterly
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