About Boatright et al.'s Madstones and Twisters

Madstones and Twisters is now available as a free e-book at the UNT Digital Library and The Portal to Texas History.

The madstones that J. Frank Dobie writes about have their counterpart in the bezoar stones of ancient India, and some of Howard C. Key’s twisters dipped down into Texas last spring. There are still people who believe that a madstone will take the poison out of a bite by a mad dog or a rattlesnake, and the devastating and freakish tricks of tornadoes will always make the front pages of the newspapers.

Some of the pieces deal with what happens to folk beliefs and practices when a people exchange one way of life for another. The lore of weather and of planting that used to be expressed by the almanacs has been weakened, though many people still believe that root crops are to be planted only when the moon is in the dark. Like almanacs, prairie dogs have seen their day.

Mexican lore is well represented in this volume as is family lore.