“DUCK, DUCK, GRAY GOOSE” AND THE PERSISTENCE OF FOLKWAYS. Another important book that is touched upon by “Duck, Duck, Gray Goose” is David Hackett Fischer’s ALBION’S SEED: FOUR BRITISH FOLKWAYS IN AMERICA, which is summarized in this wikipedia entry. ALBION’S SEED’s argument is related to Hartz’s argument (that the nations that developed from settler colonies were European “fragments” that in a sense froze the class structure and underlying ideology prevalent in the mother country at the time of their foundation). Fischer broke down the “English” migrants to America into four different folkways and contended that the cultures they took with them shaped what happened to them in the United States.
This lengthy review by Scott Alexander describes the four English folkways that Fischer discusses: “the Puritans to New England in the 1620s, the Cavaliers to Virginia in the 1640s, the Quakers to Pennsylvania in the 1670s, and the Borderers to Appalachia in the 1700s.” (A caveat. Alexander and Fischer take a number of speculative and sometimes politically incorrect positions.)
Just as the Swedes who emigrated to Minnesota broke into two subgroups with respect to a children’s game, the English migrants to the United States kept many of the particularized folkways from the areas and time periods that they left behind.