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The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends. By Jan Harold Brunvand. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1993. 367pp. 14.95. ISBN 0 393 03438 0
This is the fifth volume in the author's series on contemporary (or "urban") legends. Of the preceding four, most of us will probably remember the first, The Vanishing Hitchhiker (1981), best; it set the tone, provided the format, and served generally as a model for the ones which followed in 1984, 1986 and 1989. The volume under review, The Baby Train (1993), is, on the whole, no exception following in its main characteristics the previous four. After a chatty, autobiographical introduction highlighting some of the occasions on which Brunvand actually heard contemporary legends being told, there follows a sequence of about eighty, usually fairly brief, presentations of particular legend types, most of which have been taken or revised from the author's regular columns which were syndicated by American newspapers for many years. Their original purpose has determined their structure and linguistic make-up, and no attempt has been made to provide any linking narrative. Quite a few of the individual legend discussions pick up and add to themes and topics referred to in one or other, sometimes in all, the earlier volumes in the series; others, however, are included for the first time although it is not always clear whether these are indeed new, more recent legend types.
Among the additional material is the story of "The Baby Train" which gave the volume its title. Dating back to the forties, it is till current in the U.S. today. Brunvand first...