Fanny D. Bergen

Fanny Dickerson Bergen (née Frances Dickerson; February 4, 1846 – September 1, 1924) was an American folklorist, ethnobiologist, and author. She was the co-author, with her husband Joseph Young Bergen, of The Development Theory (1884) and A Primer of Darwinism and Organic Evolution (1890).

Quotes

• Briggle. — To be in an uneasy mental condition, to shift the attention rapidly from one thing to another. “Don’t briggle so.” In common use in Ohio. —Fanny D. Bergen, Cambridge, Mass.
  • "Waste-Basket of Words". The Journal of American Folk-lore II, April-June 1889 (V): 155. text at archive.org

• ... Our popular name of Devil's apron for the familiar kelp, Laminaria longicruris, doubtless arises from the giant size of some of these plants, and I am told that in Japan this prefix sometimes designates an unusually large species. For instance, a monstrous thistle is called devil-thistle. Also a large variety of the particular rhomboidal-shaped Chinese nuts called hishi are popularly known in Japan as devil-hishi. However, with the Japanese as with us, devil may mean "armed," or uncanny in appearance, as the "devil-lotus," one with very prickly leaves. Our well-known prickly pear, Opuntia Rafinesqii or O. vulgaris, when cultivated in northern Ohio, is somewhat generally known as devil's tongue, which must seem a most fitting name to any one who has imprudently filled the tips of his fingers with the insinuating barbed bristles.
  • (November 1892) "Popular American plant names". Botanical Gazette 71 (11): 363–380. DOI:10.1086/326860. (quote from p. 364)

• Our America cuckoos are less common with us than the famous European species seems to be throughout northern and western Europe. The note of our birds is less peculiar, and therefore it does not seem to have attracted much popular attention. Many intelligent people are acquainted neither the appearance nor the notes of the two species common in the northeastern States. It is therefore not remarkable that our folk-lore should be almost destitute of the wealth of significance attached to the European cuckoo as a fortune-teller, a weather-prophet, a magical creature which can change into a hawk, an immortal and omniscient being.
  • Animal and Plant Lore: Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk. American Folklore Society. Memoirs, vol. VII. Houghton, Mifflin. 1899. p. 134. 

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Fanny D. Bergen on Wikipedia