[HASSELL, Ethel] DAVIDSON, Daniel Sutherland

Myths and Folktales of the Wheelman Tribe of South-Western Australia by Ethel Hassell. Selected and revised by D.S. Davidson. [Four offprints from] 'Folk-Lore'. Quarterly Transactions of the Folk-Lore Society, September 1934 [to] September 1935

[London, William Glaisher, Limited], 1934 and 1935.

Octavo, [87] pages plus a typed index leaf (verso blank) and the original front covers of the four offprints.

Contemporary binder's cloth lettered in gilt on the spine ('Myths of the Wheelman Tribe - Ethel Hassell'); minor signs of handling (but see below); in excellent condition.

The offprints are from the following four issues of 'Folk-Lore': September 1934 (pages 232-248); December 1934 (pages 317-342); June 1935 (pages 122-148); and September 1935 (pages 268-282). All four items were presentation copies from Daniel Davidson to Charles Mountford, and all four retained front covers are inscribed and signed 'With the compliments | of D.S. Davidson' (the first line lightly cropped in most cases). Tipped in on the blank recto of the first printed page is an autograph letter signed by Davidson to 'Dear Mountford' (octavo, 2 pages on one leaf, on University of Pennsylvania letterhead, 27 March 1936).

The letter mentions the 'myths you requested and hope you find them of interest'. He refers to his forthcoming publication, 'Aboriginal Australian Rock Carvings and Paintings', in which 'an attempt has been made to codify the literary sources and to point out some of the problems for future research. I have made use of your material'. He regrets their paths did not cross in Adelaide: 'My visit there furnished me with many happy memories ... I understand Tindale will be coming this way before long ... Please extend my best regards to the anthropological crowd in Adelaide'.

Daniel Sutherland Davidson (1900-1952) was an American anthropologist who 'visited Australia in 1930-31 and 1938-40, examining private and museum collections and carrying out field-work, mainly in northern Australia, where he excavated several prehistoric sites. In 1934 and 1936 he located and edited important, previously unpublished, material by E. Hassell from the 1880s, on Aboriginal life in south-western Australia. His other research resulted in monographs on rock and decorative art, social institutions, tribal distribution and string figures, and in some forty papers on a wide range of subjects, including rafts and canoes, utensils, weapons, stone artefacts, netting and basketry, throwing darts, footwear, mourning caps, fire-making, and the origin of the boomerang. He wrote also on the relationships of the cultures of Australia, Tasmania, Melanesia, Indonesia and Tierra del Fuego, and on trans-Pacific migrations.

Davidson's periods of research in Australia were brief, but so little was then being done in the fields of art and material culture that his perceptive work in these neglected areas was above contemporary Australian standards and has proved of use to later prehistorians' ('Australian Dictionary of Biography').

The first footnote to the series explains the importance of this material: 'The information contained in this paper has been selected from a 100,000 word manuscript entitled "Sketches of Native Life and the South-Eastern Natives of Western Australia". It is fortunate that Mrs. Hassell had the interest to record this material when it was available, She was married in 1870 and immediately took up residence in the then pioneer country of the Wheelman tribe. Her husband's experience with the tribe goes back to 1856 or to a time when Europeans were first coming into this part of Australia.... The manuscript was secured by the adviser in 1930'.

The 'Encyclopedia of Australian Science' has the following very short entry on Ethel Hassell (1857-1933): she 'wrote to Professor D.S. Davidson between 18 September 1930 and 19 February 1931 concerning the publication of her MS by Macmillan & Co., and some customs of the natives between Albany, Broome Hill and Doubtful Island Bay'. Apparently nothing came of the Macmillan proposal. There is an interesting footnote to the footnote: mounted on the rear pastedown of this volume is a typed letter from The West Australian Trustee, dated 23 July 1943 and addressed to Mrs C.P. Mountford: 'Dear Madam ... We are in receipt of your letter of the 20th July and are interested to learn that you propose to use the late Mrs. Hassell's manuscript dealing with Folk Tales. We have much pleasure in giving our formal approval to their publication by you'. This proposal seems to have come to nought too, and some twenty years later, in 1962, Charles Mountford (1890-1976) gave this slim volume to his friend, the artist Ainslie Roberts (1911-1993), his collaborator on numerous books of Aboriginal myths published from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. Ethel Hassell's day would appear to be yet to come.

Item #144238

Price (AUD): $1,100.00
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