Appalachian History

A Kentucky folktale

Back in the olden days, an old man lived alone in a big house on his farm. He never married or raised a family. To him, a wife would have been too expensive. Raising a family would have cost at least half of his farm profit. And money, he believed, was too precious to waste on children. Besides, he believed he would need to spend all his spare time keeping his lazy share croppers busy, or else he'd find himself a pauper.

Over the years, the man who, no doubt, was a miser of the worst kind, accumulated more gold coins than he could carry. He kept the money hidden in small bags, scattered about the house. Then he became afraid that he might forget where he had hidden one or two of these many, small bags, or somebody might break into the house and find some of those many small bags. So he dug a hole inside his cellar, put the money into the hole, then he used a long pry-pole to move a large, flat rock over the hole.


Every time he collected money, he exchanged the silver for gold, pried the rock off the hole in the cellar, and deposited his money. After that, for an hour or more, he passed the gold coins through his hands and gloated.


But as more money piled up in the cellar hole, the miser became afraid someone might watch him go to his hidden money and steal it. Instead of going to his money, two or three times a month, he went only once every six months. Then he handled the money and gloated over it for two hours instead of one.
Then after going for one of his six months, he noticed the heavy, flat rock didn't seem to be in the exact position he'd left it in six months before. As fear gripped him, he snatched his pry-pole and heaved, until the heavy rock slid off the hole. The hole was empty!


The old man fainted for a few seconds, as his arteries almost cut off the supply of blood to his brain. When he recovered, his screams were heard nearly a mile away. The nearby neighbors heard the old man screaming and crying and shouting, "My money is gone!" Several came running to the old miser's house to find out what had happened. Through his sobs and cries, he finally explained how he had his money hidden in the hole he had dug in the cellar. He ended with the sob, "I'll never again go in the cellar and look at the rock my precious gold was buried under. Oh, poor me!"


The oldest and wisest man there said, "Cheer up! You really have lost nothing. The gold did no one any good under that rock. Put the rock back over the hole, then come here everyday. Look at the rock and imagine the gold is under it. It will do you as much good as it always did; as gold is really good, only when wisely spent!"


'Old Farmer Was A Miser Of The Worst Kind! His Love Of Gold Led To Great Misery,' as told by McCreary Roberts in 'Kentucky Explorer,' April 2000 online at http://kentuckyexplorer.com/nonmembers/4-tales.html

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

A long time ago there was an old woman and an old man and a little girl and a little boy and their pet squirrel sitting up on the fireplace. One day the old woman wanted to bake some biscuits but she needed some sody. So she sent the little boy to the store to buy some sody sallyraytus. The little boy went running down the road singing, “Sody, sody, sody sallyraytus.” He ran across the bridge and on to the store to get the sody sallyraytus. Then he went running back home. When he got to the bridge a mean old bear stuck out his head and said, “I’LL EAT YOU UP – YOU AND YOUR SODY SALLYRAYTUS!” And he swallowed the little boy – him and his sody sallyraytus.

The old woman and the old man and the little girl and the pet squirrel waited and waited and waited but the little boy didn’t come back. Finally, the old woman asked the little girl to find the little boy and see what was taking him so long. The little girl went a’skipping down the road – a’skip a’skip a’askip. She skipped across the bridge and to the store. The storekeeper told her that the little boy had already been there and left, so she started a’skipping back home – a’skip a’skip a’skip. When she got to the bridge, the mean old bear stuck out his head and said, “I ATE A LITTLE BOY – HIM AND HIS SODY SALLYRAYTUS. AND I’LL EAT YOU TOO!” And she swallowed her down.

Well the old woman and the old man and the pet squirrel waited and waited and waited, but the children didn’t come back. Finally, the old woman asked the old man to go find the little boy and the little girl. He walked down the road – Karumpf! Karumpf! Karumpf! and across the bridge until he came to the store. The storekeeper told him that both the little boy and the little girl had already been there and left. “Hmmm….they must have stopped somewhere to play,” the old man thought. So he started a'walking back - Karumpf! Karumpf! Karumpf! When he got to the bridge, the mean old bear stuck out his head and said, “I ATE A LITTLE BOY – HIM AND HIS SODY SALLYRAYTUS. AND I ATE A LITTLE GIRL AND I’LL EAT YOU TOO!” And he swallowed him down.

Well, the old woman and the pet squirrel waited and waited and waited but the old man and the little boy and the little girl did not come back. So finally, the old woman went a’hunchety-hunching down the road – A’hunchety-hunchety-hunchety-hunch! She crossed the bridge and went into the store. The storekeeper told her that the old man and the little boy and the little girl had been there and left. So the old woman started back A’hunchety-hunchety-hunchety-hunch! When she got to the bridge, the mean old bear stuck out his head and said, “I ATE A LITTLE BOY – HIM AND HIS SODY SALLYRAYTUS. AND I ATE A LITTLE GIRL AND AN OLD MAN AND I’LL EAT YOU TOO!” And he swallowed her down.

1884 logo for the Arm & Hammer brand soda or saleratus. Saleratus appeared on the market in 1840, replacing pearlash as a baking ingredient to produce rising in dough. By the start of the 1860s baking soda in turn replaced it. For a short time some people called the new baking soda ‘saleratus.’ This story, then, probably dates from that period when both terms were used simultaneously: “soda/saleratus.”

Well, the pet squirrel waited and waited and waited. He was running back and forth on the fire place mantel and he was getting hungrier and hungrier. Finally, he jumped down off the fireplace and onto the floor. He shook out his tail and went a’frisking down the road – A’frisk a’frisk a’frisk a’frisk! He frisked across the bridge and into the store. He stood up tall on his hind legs and asked the storekeeper if he had seen the little boy or the little girl or the old man or the old woman. “Yes – they’ve all been here. Surely they didn’t all stop to play.” So the squirrel stretched his tail out behind him and frisked back. When he got to the bridge, the mean old bear stuck out his head and said, " I ATE A LITTLE BOY – HIM AND HIS SODY SALLYRAYTUS. AND I ATE A LITTLE GIRL AND AN OLD MAN AND AN OLD WOMAN AND I’LL EAT YOU TOO!”

The pet squirrel stuck his tail up in the air and chirred at the bear. By the time the mean old bear lunged at him, the pet squirrel was already halfway up a tree. The mean old bear went clamoring after him. The squirrel scurried out on a limb and the mean old bear started after him. Then the squirrel jumped onto a limb in the next tree. “SURELY IF YOU CAN MAKE IT THAT FAR ON YOUR LITTLE LEGS, I CAN MAKE IT ON MY BIG LEGS!” the bear bellowed. The mean old bear tried to jump but he didn’t quite make it. He tumbled down down down and hit the ground with a thud! As soon as he hit the ground, out came the old woman, the old man, the little girl and the little boy. The old woman looked at the little boy and said, “Well, where’s my sody sallyraytus?” “Here,” said the little boy and handed it to her.

So they all walked back to the house singing, “Sody, sody, sody sallyraytus.” When they got back, the pet squirrel climbed back up on the fireplace mantel and curled his tail around him while he watched the old woman until she took the biscuits out of the oven. They each had a biscuit – the little boy, the little girl, the old man and the old woman. The old woman broke off a piece of a biscuit and handed it to the pet squirrel. He turned it over and over in his paws and nibbled until it was gone. Then he chirred for more. He was so hungry that the old woman had to feed him pieces until he’d eaten almost two whole biscuits!


http://childrensprogrambank.pbworks.com/
http://www.ferrum.edu/applit/bibs/tales/sodysal.htm



saleratus appalachian+folktales appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Ray Hicks, born this day in 1922, was best known for his traditional storytelling and for preserving the original Beech Mountain 'Jack Tales' brought to western North Carolina by his ancestors. Ray, his grandfather Benjamin and his great-great grandfather Counce (Council) Harmon all carefully passed down these tall tales to the next generation.

It seems Ray knew everything there was to know about living off the land and about his family's history. A lot of what he knew-- songs, jokes, and customs of the mountain people-- is in a new book by Lynn Salsi, seven years in the making: "The Life and Times of Ray Hicks-Keeper of the Jack Tales."

Salsi is also the author of "The Jack Tales" and "Young Ray Hicks Learns the Jack Tales." She has received the American Library Association's Notable Book Award, six Willie Parker Peace History Book Awards for her non-fiction books about North Carolina, and was named the North Carolina Historian of the Year in 2001.

We caught up with Lynn this week to get a sneak peek at what to expect from this new book.

Appalachian History: How conscious was Ray Hicks of his role in preserving oral storytelling?

Lynn Salsi: He was well aware that he was saving stories. That was the magical part of many conversations. Jimmy Neil Smith told Ray more than once he [Ray] was saving the art of storytelling. That was a point of pride with Ray. His appearances at the National Storytelling Festival further convinced him that what he was doing was important, and it was. So many scholars studied Ray's speech that he became aware that his accent, coupled with the old mountain way of speaking, was special. Many people traveled to his home just to hear him talk. He once commented that he wished his granddaddy Ben could have lived long enough to know that he [Ray] was making a little pay goin' off the mountain to talk.

AH: In today’s hyper-media culture, oral tales seem to be from another time altogether. Was Ray Hicks the last of his kind?

LS: There are scholars (meaning Ph.Ds in folklore) who have commented that it is a cliche to refer to Ray as such. In a way Ray was the future of storytelling because he was certainly a bridge to future storytellers like his son, Ted, and his cousins, Jerry Harmon (from Franklin, NC) who travels internationally telling Jack tales, and Orville Hicks, who is well-known around Boone. They are all fine storytellers and they tell about Jack. However, since storytelling's an individual art, there'll not be another Ray.

AH: As a transcriber of oral tales, how do you know which version to 'lock down' in print?

LS: Storytellers are unique performers who bring forth stories in their own way. I attempted to write down Ray's stories as often as possible. However, he never told the same story exactly the same way twice. That means that when I combine three versions and then take out redundancies and smooth out some transitions, the stories become my version even though they have the
same plot structure.

AH: You’ve written two books previously dealing with Ray Hicks and the Jack Tale material. How's this new book different?

LS: There are no stories in the book. There are references to many stories, however it seemed appropriate that the book should celebrate Ray's life as the most important story.

AH: Many people comment that the old Jack Tales are nothing but a re-hashing of the Brothers Grimm tales.

LS: I have thought alot about old stories and the way Ray told them. Most of them I have studied and compared to old European versions. However the people in the mountains were telling tales about Jack PRIOR to the Grimm tales (after two hundred years they could not be exactly the same as the early Hicks, Harmon, and Ward family members told them). It is amazing that the families were in the area of Valle Crucis intermarrying decades before the Grimms put together their book.

AH: How did Ray interact with audiences?

LS: Once I had my North Carolina Youth Touring Theater members at his house on a cold March day prior to traveling to England and Scotland where the youngsters (ages 9 to 16) performed in schools and with other play groups. After listening to Ray for at least two hours, one of the kids said, "Ray, we want to tell you a story." They jumped up in front of him and told him a Jack tale. He got the biggest kick out of them and later said, "Now, I hain't never heared that tale. Why don't ya' teach 'em one of mine."

After we returned from Europe, those same students performed with Ray. He sat in a chair and started the story and the students would pick up a line when a certain character came up. Some of those students are now grown. When I run into them, they usually mention the times they performed with Ray Hicks.

AH: What prompted you to first think of a biography about Ray?

LS: After I won an American Library Association Notable Book Award for "The Jack Tales", I had people calling from AZ, NM, CA, CT, MI, IN, and KY asking questions. That got me thinking that there should be a biography about Ray Hicks. One day I started sorting my notes and since I am the type of person who sometimes has to doodle on the church program when the preacher is preaching, I'm good at writing long hand. Most people know that when Ray spoke he often digressed to make a point, to correct a thought, and/or to explain how the action related to something he had experienced. I wrote everything down.

AH: How’d you settle on the idea of writing the biography in the first-person voice?

LS: One day I thought I should get started, but the first three or four pages seemed to be pedantic. I set it aside to think about how to make the prose have some flow. I thought back to a book I wrote about the people who lived on the North Carolina coast and how, after interviewing my subjects, I was able to put the information into an essay form but in first person as though the people I had interviewed were talking.

I enjoy listening to how people speak and envisioning how their paragraphs might be coming together on paper. I think about their colloquialisms and work not to delete the tone and flavor of their voices. A couple of weeks after my first attempt I went back to my hand-written document and threw it away. I pretended that I was Ray Hicks telling a story. After two pages I knew I could do an essay in his voice, but a book was a different matter. I stopped 100,000 words later and I had a book.

I have a lot of things that could be added to the book, but no one had ever done a pure biography of Ray Hicks--just Ray in a book. His life was the Appalachian version of "Angela's Ashes." It begged to be written in first person. Since I have a master's degree in writing, I have ten or twelve writer friends I e-mail often. I told one of them that I was doing something really crazy and she said, "Certainly, you can do that. Don't you know that people are writing non-fiction in novel form and it's called creative non-fiction? At least you're writing non-fiction as non-fiction. It's just in a different form."

That's how I ended up writing a biography in the form of a memoir. I'm sure I'm not the first person to do something like that, but now that I look back on the experience, I wonder how I was able to sustain that first person train of thought for so many chapters.

AH: Did you have any trouble writing the book through a male perspective?

LS: Writing in a man's voice in this book gave me the courage to write a young adult novel about young men serving on a boat in Vietnam. It is a work of fiction, but I wrote it in first person in a male voice. I guess if Nicholas Sparks can write women's fiction, I can write a few books in a
male voice. Needless to say, after taking five years to write the book and two years for the University of Tennessee Press to go through all the publishing processes, I am eager to get some feedback. By writing in Ray's voice, I could more easily preserve mountain language.

AH: Did your publisher ‘rein in’ your use of dialect in order to sell the book better?

LS: If I had my way every word would be in dialect. However, it would be difficult to read. The editors at the University of Tennessee Press were outstanding in the way they helped me analyze the dialect that was essential versus words that needed to be written in standard English. The University of Tennessee Press was the perfect publisher for this material, because every one of the people working on the book, including Tom Post, the marketing director, understood the importance of the language, the history, and the man. The actual essence of the work shows that Ray Hicks, the famous storyteller, lived within the boundaries of his stories. I hope that readers will be awed about Ray's life and times.

AH: Thank you so much for joining us today!



appalachia appalachian+folktales appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Beech+Mountain+NC Jack+Tales Lynn+Salsi Ray+Hicks

During the 1930s and 1940s Rose Thompson worked as a home supervisor with the Farm Security Administration in Georgia. While she worked with farmers and their wives -- teaching them to put up preserves, make cotton mattresses, and build chick brooders -- she listened to the stories they told.

Thompson spent some time during the summer of 1946 in Clayton, in Rabun County GA, where an elderly black preacher told her the tale of Fiddler’s Mountain.

“I had heard that there were very few blacks in Rabun County,” she recounted, “and I knew better than just to go rambling around. So I asked someone at the courthouse if it would be all right for me to go up there, and that person showed me the way to where an old black woman lived. She was nice enough about it, but she was a little vague about why she thought they called it Fiddlers Mountain.

“But she said the Reverend over there, he lived around a bend in the road, would know. She sent for the preacher, and sure enough he could and then they told it together although the preacher did most of the talking.”

“Why do they call it Fiddlers Mountain? Because nothing lives on it except those two musicians---just a fiddling and a swaying as they sit there and play. Any moonshiny night you can see them just a pulling the bow; and if you listen with a keen ear and a fearful heart, you can hear their music.

Bless your time, nobody knows how long they have been sitting there, but they are playing yet---to be sure. It was too long ago that a man came to one of the fiddlers and asked him to play the fiddle for him that night. Come to such and such a mountain. Going to be a big ball. And when night came, the fiddler went up on that mountain and took another man with him.

And when they got up the mountain there, they saw a great big house. Carriages and horses standing around. House all lit up. Laughing and talking going on---men and women all dressed up; women with trail train dresses on. Gave the fiddlers a seat and they went to playing. Every time they went through a cotillion, would come and pay the fiddlers. What a time they had! And just about that time the old Devil pranced in all dressed up and took his seat. They were all dancing and a bold gal walked up to the Devil and asked him to be her partner.

Devil got up and bowed and scraped and led the gal out in the ring. Then he set in to dance. He danced and danced. Cut so many capers that he pretty near danced that poor gal to death. Folks commenced to look at him and saw he had a pewter eye. After a while he cut so many fancy steps, they saw he had a club foot. All quit dancing. But the Devil kept on and danced the gal plumb to death. All the folks fell down on their knees and the Devil went out and took the side of the house with him---a braying like a mule.

And when the clock struck twelve, house went out of existence. House disappeared. House went down like a light going out. Nothing left but the two musicians still sitting up there on the mountain---just a fiddling and a swaying.

Hush, child! Can’t you hear the music?

Source: Hush, Child! Can't You Hear the Music? By Rose Thompson, Charles Allen Beaumont, 1982, Univ of GA Press
The book is illustrated with photographs taken by Thompson and WPA photographer Jack Delano

Rose Thompson was a native of Greene County, Georgia


appalachian+mountains+history appalachian+history Rose+Thompson appalachian+folktales Rabun+County+GA Clayton+GA +appalachia

The Chicken Thumb
A far fetched folktale from NC

Well folks, sit right back and let me tell you a little tale about how Hoopie the farmer and the Rooster named Red went at it one day.

Before I start, it is necessary for me to tell you a little something about Red. Red is one of them Barred Rock roosters. That’s the kind they take to them events called Cock Fights. Now Red was always doing things around the farm that were of questionable nature. To make a long story bearable, he did his job quite well: fertilizing that is. He done it so well that chickens no longer satisfied his insatiable appetite for fertilizing. That’s when the trouble begin.

At first it was Guinea hens that were the object of his desire. That was okay. Then next it was the ducks. That was a little odd but still bearable. It was when he moved up to geese that we began to take notice.

The day Hoopie woke up to Daisy, the milk cow, half mooing half screaming was the day that began as the end, or so we thought.

What happened next is about the craziest thing you ever did see.

Hoopie went running up to the barn to find Red eyeing Daisy in a way that makes your skin crawl, much like when you see a snake crawl up your pant leg. Hoopie commenced to chasing Red. Well Red ran and ran and ran. Hoopie chased that darn rooster for two days. Meanwhile, the weeds were growing up in the fields and the cow was about to burst from lack of milking. Hoopie stopped to milk and weed, then the chase started for another two days.

Something had to give.

Thinking ahead, Hoopie come up with a trap for that darn rooster. He went into his wife Maybelle's closet and picked out a right purty dress that he figured ole Red might find attractive. One thing led to another (you need to use your imagination here) and as Red tried to jump Hoopie, who now was the object of Red's desire, Hoopie swung around and grabbed that dab burn ole rooster around the gizzard.

There was feathers flying, necklaces flying, sqwaking and cursing. When the dust settled, Hoopie was sittin straggle legged on the ground with his wife's wig in one hand and Red in the other.

Hoopie gathered himself and immediately took action. He carried ole Red over to the wood pile where fate awaited.

Now Hoop had a few swigs out of the shine jug before he was able to get into Maybelle's dress and attire. Afterall, this was crazier than he could take sober. So, when the axe swung downward, aim being on the left rooster head instead of the right head, the axe blade cut clean through the fat thumb of Hoopie's left hand.

Red jumped up with just a knick and began crowing his success. Hoopie jumped up with a bloody stub for a thumb screaming for help. The rest of the thumb just laid there on the chopping block and stared blankly at the scene slightly removed from reality.

Hoopie scooped up the rest of his thumb and yelled for Maybelle. Off they went to the hospital with the thumb in a bucket of ice.

When Hoopie returned home from the hospital he was quite a sight. There he was with the thumb all bandaged up and Maybelle's dress and necklace for clothes with boots not to match. He was beyond mad at this point. All he could see were the looks of the people in the emergency room when he and Maybelle came running in with matching dresses and an apparent bucket of ice.

Well now, what happened next is only as predictable as the sun rising in the morning. Hoopie marched up to the barn and cornered Red in the hay loft. Red more or less knew that what was about to occur was destiny. So, Red went the way of all chickens that meet up with the losing end of a twelve gauge shotgun.


http://www.ibiblio.org/bawdy/folklore/thumb.html


The+Chicken+Thumb appalachian+folktales appalachian+folklore,appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+humor