Appalachian History

Jane Gentry -- piano teacher, Appalachian folk-music historian, weaver -- was an inspiration for the movie Songcatcher.

She was born Jane Hicks in 1863, the first child of Ransom and Emily Hicks, in Watauga County, NC. "My pappy were a minister, name of Ransom Hicks. Mammy were always peckin' me over the head with a stick. She were turrible ill and cross, pore woman! I were that foundered with the peckin' that I declar'd that I would never whup ef God sent me childern. You'll whup as much into `em as you whup out o' em."

And later, Jane said of her life growing up, "Twere like a three-legged cat's. They didn't show me till I were nine yur old. I used to walk miles and miles bar'foot in the snow." She was twelve years old when the family moved to the Meadow Fork section of Spring Creek in Madison County. At sixteen, Hicks married Jasper Newton Gentry, though her parents were against the marriage because of her age. Around 1912, the Gentry family bought 'Sunnybank' in the town of Hot Springs, moving there so that their nine children could attend Dorland Institute, a Presbyterian mission school.

Irving Bacheller, New York newspaper editor and author of books, short stories and magazine articles, (his novel Eben Holden, published in 1900, outsold The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, To Have and To Hold, and other popular books of that year) met Jane Gentry in April 1914 when he came to Hot Springs on vacation.

"I could hear voices as I came near the house," he recounted in his novel, The Tower of a Hundred Bells (1916), "and chiefly those of young children laughing as if at play. Then I heard the kindly voice of Mrs. Gentry. She sat on her little verandah sewing with a number of small children grouped around her. She was amusing them as she worked."

"Go on with your story telling," I pleaded. "I am a child myself as young as any of these."

"I were tellin’ some mount’n stories," she answered. "It mout be they’d tickle ye. So if you’ll be one o’ the young uns, set down thar an’ I’ll scratch around an’ see what I kin fetch out o’ my ol’ brains."

I took the chair she offered and sat down with a girl of four on my lap while Mrs. Gentry opened a mine of old mountain folk lore which delighted me.

"Well here comes:
Eight humly, bumly bees,
Seven humpity, crumpity no horn cows,
Six hicketty, ficketty, custards,
Five bob-tail, bald-face, skewball nags,
Four colly birds,
Two ducks and an ol’ fat rooster."

Cecil Sharp, founder of The English Folk Dance and Song Society in England, and its American counterpart, the Country Dance Society in the United States, sought Jane out. Sharp visited her home on at least eight separate occasions and was clearly welcome there. He collected more songs from Jane (70) than from any other singer in the ‘Laurel Country.’ Many of the songs were those she sang for children, such as "Sing Said the Mother," "Froggie He Would A-Wooing Go," "The Farm Yard," and "There's Nothing to be Gained by Roving." He included forty of her songs in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians(1932).

Jane Gentry’s stories received as much attention as her songs. Mrs. Isabel Gordon Carter visited her in 1923 and did the first collecting of Jack Tales, as told to Jane by her grandfather, Council Harmon ("Old Counce"), in which Jack is the third son, left behind when his brothers seek adventure. Fifteen of these tales, which Jane called "old Jack, Will and Tom tales," were published as "Mountain White Folk-Lore: Tales from the Southern Blue Ridge," in the March 1925 Journal of American Folk-Lore. Jane Gentry died two months later, on May 29.

sources: findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_1_113/ai_86063336
http://homepage.mac.com/wilsonh/jack/
www.bettysmithballads.com/bettysmithballads/play.cfm
Jane Hicks Gentry: A Singer Among Singers, by Betty N. Smith, Univ Press of Kentucky, 1998


appalachia Appalachian+ballads appalachian+folktales appalachian+history Cecil+Sharp Irving+Bacheller Isabel+Gordon+Carter Jack+Tales Jane+Gentry

Traditional dancing in Appalachia includes several types: step dancing, set dancing, and couple dancing. Step dance traditions include clogging, buckdancing, flatfooting, and the Charleston. Set dances, involving two or more couples, include four couple squares, big set (ring) dances, reels, country (contra) dances, and play parties. Couple dancing, often referred to as "round dancing," includes the two-step and waltz.

Square dancing, one of the oldest forms of American folk dancing, evolved from several different Old World group dances, mainly the English country, or contra, dance and the French quadrille.

In the American version of square dancing, four couples form a square and dance to music from an accordion, banjo, fiddle, and guitar.

An old-fashioned Southern "square", sometimes called "running set"-- English musicologist Cecil Sharp coined the term while describing dancing in eastern Kentucky in 1916--, can accomodate as few as four or as many couples as want to crowd in. The formation is really a big circle with any number of couples. (There are, of course, a body of Southern squares that are done in 4-couple sets.) Most commonly, a Southern "running set" type of square dance is structured in two parts: First the major circle and then the minor circle. With all hands joined in one big circle around the hall, one or more introductory big circle figures are danced.

Square dance, Skyline Farms, AL, 1937. Photo by Ben Shahn.

The big circle then breaks up and each couple joins with an adjacent couple to dance some little circle figures. The movements are not so much geometrical figures but little pantomimes: "Birdie in the cage and three hands around" (a girl steps into the center, the other three circle around her); "Around that couple and take a peek" (the active couple tries to look at each other behind the backs of of the inactives, who try to hinder them); "Chase a rabbit, chase a squirrel, chase a pretty girl around the world" (the man pursues his partner around the other couple); to name just a few.

The little circles can be spaced in a major circle around the hall, as in a Sicilian circle; or they can be scattered all over the dance floor. The couples move on to join a new couple and repeat the little figures; progression may occur several times. To conclude, all rejoin in a large circle and dance a finishing big circle figure. An American addition to square dancing is the caller.

Ladies do and the gents you know,
It’s right by right by wrong you go,
And you can’t go to heaven while you carry on so,
And it’s home little gal and do-si-do,
And it may be the last time, I don’t know,
And oh by gosh and oh by Joe.
—(Ernest Legg, WV)

Ernest Legg’s calls were featured on a number of 78s recorded by the Kessinger Brothers in 1928.

The caller--someone who calls out the dance steps in time to the music--was a completely American invention. At first dancers memorized all the steps for a particular dance, but eventually the dances became so complicated that it was necessary to have someone yell out cues so that dancers didn't have to remember so many steps. The caller didn't just call out "do-se-do your partner"; a good caller also came up with colorful sayings or witty lines that he would say in between the cues such as "Don't be bashful and don't be afraid. Swing on the corner in a waltz promenade." A caller might also come up with new dance steps and routines.

Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennesse and Virginia have all seen fit to make the square dance their ‘folk dance’ State Symbol. North Carolinians prefer clog dancing receive that designation, and West Virginians and Kentuckians haven’t included any sort of dance as a state symbol.


sources:www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jp/dance/square_2
www.library.appstate.edu/appcoll/research_aids/pjamison.html
www.bubbaguitar.com/square/orient.html
www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-7/7-8/dance_beat.html
www.heinerfischle.de/history/history.htm



square+dancing buckdancing clogging Cecil+Sharp appalachia appalachian+mountains+history appalachian+history