Sarah Binks

Edith Fowke is professor emerita of folklore at York University, the
1986 winner of the Vicky Metcalf award for her body of work for
children, and the author of Canadian Folklore: Perspectives on Canadian
Culture and Legends Told in Canada.

Sarah Binks has been described as “a parody of literary biographies
and a satire of literary criticism and critics.” The book also makes
fun of academic writing, politicians, judges, commercial institutions,
the press, and poetic conventions. Its humor is subtle and only
gradually revealed.

Sarah deserves her title of the Sweet Songstress of Saskatchewan, for
her poems reek of the soil, the flat, treeless plains, and the harsh
climate. They are realistic—and funny: “Sowing is here the breezes
blowing. / Four inches of topsoil going, / Farm ducks rolling across the
prairie, / Spring is here—how nice and airy!” Sarah’s poems, in
fact, are not much worse than some of the verses that do get published
in local papers and magazines. The author will cleverly use a single
word or phrase to subvert an otherwise acceptable line. Sarah, who dies
from mercury poisoning after she bites into a horse thermometer, writes
her own epitaph: “Then perhaps in unknown grave, / By burdock blown
and boot betrod, / I’ll lie a full seven and half feet deep, / And
push daisies through the sod.”

Originally published in 1947, this small book won the Stephen Leacock
Medal for Humour and inspired as much laughter as any Canadian book
before or since. This reprint is very welcome.