Here are the Yankees—the salty, shrewd, thrifty, ingenious, laconic, fun-loving, cantankerous, pixilated, God-fearing people of New England. Here are the stories they tell, the songs they sing and the tricks they play Down East in Maine, on fishing vessels off the Massachusetts coast, on village greens in Rhode Island and Connecticut, in the woods of the White and Green Mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont.  Here also are the customs they live by and the traditions they treasure.

Here are the heroes and sages, the saints and scoundrels, the pirates and devils and witches, the undying fabulous figures that are part of the soil and roots of New England: Ethan Allan, Daniel Webster, Captain Kidd, Lord Dexter, Cal Coolidge, P.T. Barnum, John L. Sullivan, Lorenzo Dow and all the rest.

Ben Botkin whose A Treasury of American Folklore is already an American classic has filled this book with the warmth and wealth of New England's lore: sailors' chanteys, peddlers' patter, farmers' wisdom, trappers' arts, lovers' ways, children's games and rhymes.  There are doleful old ballads and rollicking square dance tunes. 

From the earliest colonial days New England, like England itself, has been a cradle of American culture.  Most Americans and most American things have roots there and in this full, rich book is all the quality and flavor of the Yankee land and the Yankee people.  

From the dust jacket