Editorial Note



The first edition of Paul Bunyan and His Big Blue Ox appeared in 1922,
with ten thousand copies, followed in the same year with a printing of
five thousand. Subsequent editions were printed in 1924, 1927 and 1931.
Since the first edition, copies have been sent out only on request.

With this printing, January, 1934, the size of the book has been changed
and the supplementary text has been revised. The stories are the same as
in the preceding editions, and include material used in small booklets
issued by The Red River Lumber Company in 1914 and 1916. So far as we
know, this was the first appearance of the Paul Bunyan stories in print.

The student of folklore will easily distinguish the material derived
from original sources from that written for the purposes of this book.
It should be stated that the names of the supporting characters,
including the animals, are inventions by the writer of this version. The
oral chroniclers did not, in his hearing, which goes back to 1900, call
any of the characters by name except Paul Bunyan himself.

Investigators have failed to establish the source or age of the first
Paul Bunyan stories. One of our correspondents, a man of advanced years,
wrote us in 1922 that he had heard some of the stories when a boy in his
grandfather's logging camps in New York, and that they were supposed to
be old at that time. A distinct Paul Bunyan legend has grown up in the