The singing style itself is generally stark but discretely embellished by vibrato and grace notes. The ballads are sung with a conspicuous lack of emotion, even during dramatic passages. It seems almost as if the song itself, not the singer, is in the spotlight. Although the singer may use vocal style effectively to set a mood, the subtlety and restraint of the singing reinforce the sense of emotional distance created by third-person narratives.
Howell, Benita.
More information on ballads, as well as examples...
Sackett and Koch in Kansas Folklore (p. 140) define a ballad as "a folksong that tells a story, usually in extremely condensed fashion. Because this separate term exists to describe narrative folksongs, some folklorists have reserved the term folksong for songs which do not tell a story but express an emotion, which may be serious or humorous.
Ballads and folksongs have been an important part of Monroe County's heritage across the years. This we know because of the great numbers of old-timey string bands and individual singers whose repertories and reputations are still known.
Some English and Scottish ballads have been recovered in Monroe County along with a sampling of the hauntingly beautiful songs of early American creation. Neither are here in great abundance at the present. Regretably, no early folklore collections from Monroe County are available to indicate musical tastes of early years. Ballet collections from the 1880s are available however. These handwritten song and ballad texts tell us something about the popularity of certain titles at a given time in history.
The musical genius of Monroe County is lies in the area of local balladry, which chronicles historical occurrences at the grass roots level (the Beanie Short sona is a prime example), and in the sentimental song genre. Sad songs, or tear jerkers as they are often called reflect much of life's experiences and hardships. It is only natural for a people to immortalize in song those things that touch their emotions most deeplv. Common indeed were such titles as "The Blind Child,"' "The Baggage Coach Ahead," "The Prisoner's Song,""The Dream of the Miner's Child," and "Little Joe."
The advent of the record player, radio and television has done much to diminish the folksinging traditions in Monroe County. It is no longer necessary to commit our favorite songs to memory; they are available at the flip of a switch. The following examples reveal that many of the old songs are still remembered and sung in the county. They call to mind once again memories of earlier years when the pace of living wasn't so hectic.
The texts are keyed to scholarly regional collections of folksongs and, when applicable, to the following standard song indexes: Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballad; Malcolm G. Laws, Jr., American Ballads from British Broadsides, and Laws' Native American Balladry.
1.
The popularity of the "Brown Girl" (Child 295) in America is perhaps exceeded only by "Barbara Allen." This particular version was sung by Dimple Savage Thompson.
Oh riddle, oh riddle dear mother, dear / Now riddle us both as one Must I marry Fair Ellen / Or bring the Brown girl home.
The Brown girl has her house and lands / Fair Ellen she has none So that is the reason I say my son / Go bring the Brown girl home.
Lord Thomas went to fair Ellen's inn / And jingled hard at the ring And none was willing as fair Ellen / To arise and let him in.
Lord Thomas, she said, what news, what news / What news have you brought to me? I've come to invite you to my wedding / That's very sad news to me.
Go ask my ma, go ask my pa / Ask them both as one Shall I attend Lord Thomas' wedding / Or shall I stay at home?
She dressed herself in scarlet red / Her maidens all in green Every town she rode around / They took her to be the queen.
She rode and rode 'til she came to his hall / So loudly did tinkle the ring No one was so ready as Lord Thomas himself / To rise and let her in.
He took her by the lily white hand / And led her through the hall And set her down by his own brown bride / Among the ladies all.
Is this your bride? Lord Thomas she said / I think she's awful brown You could have married the fairest young girl / That ever the sun shone on.
Don't run her down, Fair Ellen he said / Don't run her down to me I love much better the tip of your finger / Than the Brown girl's whole body.
The Brown girl had a little pen knife / It was both keen and sharp She put it to Fair Ellen's breast / And pressed it through her heart.
Lord Thomas took her little brown hand / And led her through the hall Drew out his sword, cut off her head / And flung it against the wall.
Go dig my grave, Oh mother, he said / Go dig it wide and deep Bury Fair Ellen in my arms / And the Brown girl at my feet.
He turned the handle toward the wall / The point toward his breast Saying this is the last of three lovers / God send their souls to rest.
2.
Riddle ballads are extremely old and equally rare. This ballad originated in the British Isles years ago in a differe¤t form and under the title "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" (Child 46). In its present form, sung by Ova Hunter, this ballad is widespread across the United States. Hazel Goodin also contributed a fragmented version.
I gave my love a cherry without a stone I gave my love a chicken without a bone I gave my love a baby with no cryin'. When a cherry is blooming it has no stone When a chicken is pipping it has no bone When a baby is sleeping there's no cryin'.
I'll send my love a palace without any door I'll send my love an apple without any core I'll send my love a chicken without any bone I'll send my love a cherry without any stone I'll send my love a ring without any rim I'll send my love a baby no cryin'. I'll send my love a room and in it she may be And she may unlock it without any key.
How can there be a palace without any door? How can there be an apple without any core? How can there be a chicken without any bone? How can there be a cherry without any stone? How can there be a ring without any rim? How can there be a baby that's not cryin'? How can there be a room and in it she may be? And how can she unlock it without any key?
When the palace is a-building there is no door When the apple's in the blossom there is no core When the chicken's in the egg there is no bone When the cherry's in the bloom there is no stone When the ring is a-running there is no rim When baby is asleep it's not cryin' My heart is the room and in it she may be And she may unlock it without any key.
3.
"Barbara Allen" (Child 84) is perhaps the most popular of all the old ballads that made the trip from England to the New World. Dimple Savage Thompson sang this version. Other versions were sung by Hazel and Myrtle Jobe and Hazel Goodin. Mrs. Goodin calls it "The Rose and the Green Brier."
It was upon a high, high hill / Two maidens chose their dwelling, And one was known both far and wide / Was known as Barb'ra Allen.
T'was in the merry month of May / All the flowers blooming, A young man on his deathbed lay / For the love of Barbtra Allen.
He sent a servant unto her / In the town where she was dwelling Come Miss, O Miss to my master dying / If your name be Barb'ra Allen.
Slowly, slowly she got up / And to his bedside going She drew the curtain to one side / And said, "Young man you're dying."
He stretched one pale hand to her / As though he would to touch her She hopped and skipped across the floor / Young man, she says, I won't have you.
Remember, 'member in the town / 'Twas in the tavern drinking, You drank a health to the ladies all / But you slighted Barbtra Allen.
He turned his face toward the wall / His back upon his darling I know I shall see you no more / So goodby Barbtra Allen.
As she was going to her home / She heard the church bell tolling She looked to the east and looked to the west And saw the corpse a-coming.
Oh hand me down the corpse of clay / That I may look upon it I might have saved that young man's life / If I had done mv duty.
Oh mother mother make my bed / O make it long and narrow Sweet William died for me today / I shall die for him tomorrow.
Sweet William died on a Saturday night / And Barbtra Allen on a Sunday The old lady died for the love of them both / She died on Easter Monday.
Sweet William was buried in one graveyard / Barb'ra Allen in another A rose grew on Sweet William's grave / A brier on Barb'ra Allen's.
They grew and they grew to the steeple top / And there they rew no higher And there they tied in a true lover knot / The rose clung round the brier.
5.
Known widely throughout the eastern United States, "Lord Randal" (Child 12) is another of Monroe County's ballads which came to us from the British Isles. This version was sung by Dimple Savage Thompson.
Where have you been Lord Randal my son Where have you been my handsome young man I've been to the wild wood, Mother make my bed soon I'm weary from hunting and fain would lie down.
Whom did you meet Lord Randal my son Whom did you meet my handsome young man I met with my true love, Mother make my bed soon I'm weary from hunting and fain would lie down.
What had you for supper Lord Randal my son What had you for supper my handsome young man Eels fried in butter; Mother make my bed soon I'm weary from hunting and fain would lie down.
Who got your scraps, Lord Randal my son Who got your scraps my handsome young man My dogs ate them all; Mother make my bed soon I'm weary from hunting and want to lie down.
What did your dogs do Lord Randal my son What did your dogs do my handsome young man They stretched out and died; Mother make my bed soon I'm weary from hunting and want to lie down.
I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal my son I fear you are poisoned, my handsome young man Yes I am poisoned; Mother make my bed soon I'm sick at my heart and want to lie down.
6.
This is a version of the Wexford Girl (Laws P35), which is widespread throughout the United States. It was sung by Ward Curtis.
When I was but a friendless boy / Just nineteen years of My father bound me to a miller / That I might learn the trade.
I fell in love with one dear girl / With dark and roving eyes, I promised her I'd marry her / If me she would not deny.
Up stepped her mother to the door / So boldly she did say, Oh honey do marry her / And take her far away.
zHer mother she persuaded me / To take her for a wife, Oh, Satan persuaded me / To take away her life.
I asked her for to take a walk, / Over the blooming field so good, That we might have some secret talk / And name our wedding day.
We had not travelled very far / When I looked all around and around, I picked up an old fence stick / And straight way knocked her down.
She fell upon her trembling knees / For mercy sake she cried, Oh Johnny dear don't murder me / For I'm not fit to die.
I took her by her little hand / And threw her around and round, Then I drug her to the riverside / And threw her in to drown.
And I returned to the miller's house / It was ten o'clock that night, But little did the miller know / What I had been about.
He looked at me most earnestly / Said Johnny what bloodies your clothes, I answered her most quickly / I was bleeding at the nose.
About three days and better / This damsel she was seen, Floating by her sister's house / Down in old Knoxville Town.
7.
This version of "The Bramble Briar" (Laws M-32) was sung by Ward Curtis. In earlier versions the Brown Boy is a servant.
In Fairview there lived a rich old merchant He had two sons and a daughter fair A pretty brown boy all robed with danger Come courting of the lily fair.
As they were talking of their lovely courtship Her younger brother overheard He went straight way and told the others And this deprived her of her love. He went straightway and told the others And this deprived her of her love.
Oh early, early the next morning Out into the wild woods all three did go They rambled over hills and mountains And to some dark valley they did go.
They rambled on till they came to a lonely desert; And thar they killed him and throwed They rambled on till they came to a lonely desert; And thar they killed him and throwed.
And they returned back home that evening Their sister asked for the loving one We lost him out in the wild woods hunting And more of him could we ever find >We lost him out in the wild woods hunting And more of him could we ever find.
So early, early this morning Out into the wild woods she did go She rambled over hills and mountains And to some dark valley she did roam. She rambled on till she came to a lonely desert And thar she found him killed and throwed His rosy lips were inclined to hell His dimpled cheeks were aflow with blood.
She kissed him over and over crying He was a bosom friend of mine When she returned back home that evening There brothers asked where she had been You've harmed, you've harmed, you cruel wretches And for the same you both shall hang. You've harmed, you've harmed, you cruel wretches And for the same you both shall hang.
They went out to sea that evening The lightning flared and the wind did roar They both got drowned and it was no wonder That the raging sea proved their overthrow. They both got drowned and it was no wonder That the raging sea proved their overthrow.
Not only ballads of the Cumberland had their origins in the borders of Great Britain. Instruments such as the bagpipes and the fiddle that thrived on the Anglo-Scotch borders are prevalent in the Cumberlands as well.
Jim Bowles has lived in Monroe County almost all his life. He was born in 1903 in Rock Bridge, where his family farmed for most of his early life. Traditional fiddle music was at its peak of popularity at that time, and Jim began to play at an early age:
"I guess I was about ten years old. I'd always play you have those little sticks of stovewood, you know, and I'd get 'em up and saw on 'em, like I was a-fiddling when I was a little bitty feller.
"And my father, times was hard and he had to go to Indiana and make money. Back in them days, there wasn't no money to be got, hardly. "I think then he only made thirty-five dollars a month. And he came through Louisville, and he come to a pawn shop. He bought me a fiddle. And, of course, I learnt several tunes.
I know the first tune ever learnt to play was Steamboat Bill. There was an old colored man, when we lived out on Uncle Jim Carver's place. They had him a-building a barn. I remember hearing him sing, and I kind of picked it up:
Steamboat Bill, steaming down the Mississippi Steamboat Bill, thought I heerd the puffing of the Whippoorwill."
Like all the traditional fiddlers of his day, Jim Bowles learned to play from local musicians. His uncle, Wash Carter, was undoubtedly the most important influence on both his style and repertoire, but he was also influenced by a neighbor named John Brady, a local traveling photographer named Homer Botts, Henry Carver, Tom Biggers, and others. By the time he was about fifteen, Jim was good enough to start playing for dances, and he has continued to do so for most of his life. In addition, he has traveled to Columbia, Glasgow, Scottsville, and other Kentucky towns to compete in old-time fiddler's contests, where he has won dozens of ribbons.
At different times in his life, Jim Bowles played semi- professionally with bands. In the early days of radio, he played with Finley "Red" Belcher, who went on to become a well-known performer in Kentucky before his death in an automobile accident:
"We played all over this country. We played at Tuscola, Illinois. We had a program there. He got us in there Lazy Jim Day. He was on radio. We'd get up and play before daylight, you know. That'd be on that program about four o'clock. And I just got tired of it. We came back here, me and him. We put on a program at Fountain Run, one time acting, you know. We had a man with us, was kind of a comedian. That's been forty or fifty years ago.
"I was always with somebody. We played at Columbia. And then we went oter to Glasgow and played, I don't know how many times. I used to play out at Tompkinsville. I used to play out there for four years every Saturday morning at eight o'clock. Me and Early Botts and this here Biggers. I'd guess that was about '64. We just went on and advertised for them stores and places like that."
Since the death of his wife in 1966, Jim Bowles plays less than he used to. Still, he remains one of the best of the older traditional fiddlers in southern Kentucky. His extensive repertoire includes manY rare and unusual early tunes, such as Christmas, Old Sage Fields, Drunkard's Hiccups, Calico, Mary Marshall, Nancy Dalton, Railroad Through The Rocky Mountains, and There'll Be No Supper Here Tonight, as well as fine versions of popular standards. Stylistically, he plays in the tradition of the best of the eastern Kentucky fiddlers. Many of his versions of tunes are modal in nature and are played with drones, slides and rhythmic tension that few musicians can achieve or imitate. His bowing technique is complex and does not follow a set pattern allowing him to create a very individualistic and emotional sound. Still, his playing is firmly rooted in the musical traditions of the Monroe County area, and he remains today as one of the few faithful practitioners of a dying folk art.
The dulcimer, which is popularly associated with Appalachian music, is completely unfamiliar to most of the local old-time musicians. The dulcimer was known in Wayne County, and one Fentress County family brought an instrument from Claibourne County, Tennessee. Informants familiar with the dulcimer agree that it was used chiefly in playing sacred music.
The harmonica or "French Harp" was a popular instrument in the past, and people also played jews-harps and other novelty instruments purchased from mail-order houses or from peddlers. Homemade flutes and whistles were fashioned from cane or bark cylinders. But the story of traditional instrumental music in the Big South Fork is largely the story of the fiddle and the banjo.
The fiddle was used in the British Isles and the American colonies before the Big South Fork region was settled, so it probably was present in the area from the beginning. It remained the fundamental instrument, next to which the banjo was of secondary importance and served mainly for accompaniment. The fiddle repertoire (i.e., items which continue to be identified as "old-time fiddle tunes" even when they are played on another instrument) forms the Big South Fork's second major category of folk music. Like folksong, this instrumental music is a composite: it includes ancient Celtic airs ("Soldier's Joy," "Billy in the Lowground," "Rocky Road to Dublin," "Devil's Dream") melodies that originated on the Appalachian frontier ("Cumberland Gap," "Sally ~oodin"'); minstrel shownumbers ("Arkansas Traveler," "Turkey in the Straw," "Listen to the Mockingbird"), and popular tunes of the early twentieth century ("Down Yonder," "Chicken Reel").
Breakdowns or reels make up the standard part of the local fiddle reportoire. Breakdowns are fast dance tunes played in two-four or four-four time, the sort of tunes associated with popular images of mountain fiddle music. Many of these pieces are quite old, with popular counter-parts in the British Isles. Their titles are often obscure and may vary from place to place, or even from performer to performer. Titles also appear to have changed through time, according to information supplied by older informants. Lyrics to quite a few numbers survive and sometimes shed light on the meanings of the titles. However, it is impossible to know whether the words were original or composed later. There are undoubtedly instances of both.
Other fiddle pieces include waltzes, slow-to-moderate dance tunes in three-four time, and hornpipes, sprightly tunes which originally accompanied a kind of solo dance brought to America in the eighteenth century. The hornpipe tunes survive even though the dance has been forgotten, and they are usually played fast like breakdowns.
Some fiddle pieces were not dance tunes at all but were performed as solos. They contain rhythmic intricacies and modal elements which make them unsuited to accompaniment. These numbers were played between dance sets to give the dancers a break and to allow the fiddler to demonstrate his skill. "Bonaparte's Retreat" is probably the most popular survivor of this idiom.
Most fiddle tunes consist of two strains of equal length: a high-pitched part sometimes referred to as the "Fine" and a low part known as the "Coarse." Each part is usually repeated once, but this practice varies from one performer to another. Most tunes begin with the "Fine" and end on the "Coarse" and are played over and over for as long as the dance demands or until the musicians give out. Some tunes, such as "Bonaparte's Retreat," have three parts repeated in this manner.
Fiddle tunes are played in various keys, with the most common keys being D, G, and A, followed by C and F. Fiddlers will occasionally use E and B-flat. Tunes tend to be fixed in certain keys: "Soldier's Joy," for example is always played in D, "Old Joe Clark" in A, "Tennessee Wagoner" in D. Certain breakdowns like "Fire on the Mountain" and "Orange Blossom Special" rock back and forth between two keys. Alternate tunings ("round keys") which let the four open or unfingered strings sound a chord are essential to some breakdowns.
Fiddles are precious heirlooms around the Big South Fork, and every old, well-played fiddle in the area has at least several stories attached to it. Some very old handmade fiddles are still being played by local ancient musicians. In the days before mail-order or store-bought instruments became easy to obtain, fiddles must have been even more cherished than they are today. The fiddle was the most difficult stringed instrument to make, but the Big South Fork had at least one well-known fiddle maker, Hiram Sharp (1885-1976), who lived at Norma in Scott County.
Fiddle-playing style is a highly idiosyncratic matter, and every good fiddler tries to cultivate a distinct sound and technique. Style tends to be transmitted through personal contact and imitation, usually between a parent and child, but occasionally between an outstanding local fiddler and an eager young protege. Fiddling, like other forms of musical expertise, has been a family tradition for the most part, and certain Big South Fork families have long-standing reputations for producing good musicians (see Section V).
In spite of all the individual variation among fiddlers, some generalizations about style are still possible. Local informants themselves recognize two distinct patterns. In the common old-time hoedown or "jig" style, the fiddler may hold the instrument under his chin in the typical violin fashion, or he may play with its bottom resting down against his ribs. He may grasp the bow at the frog, or he may hold it by the as did the European elite musicians of the seventeenth century. The hoe-down fiddler relies on short bow strokes embellished by frequent "digs" in which the upward accentuation of a certain note is produced by applying pressure on the bow as it travels across the string. "Double- noting" in which two adjacent strings are played simultaneously to produce a drone effect (as typified by the bagpipes) also embellishes the hoedown style; some fiddlers, after modifying the bridge of the instrument, even employ "triple-noting."
Another manner of playing, the "smooth" style, was popularized locally by Leonard Rutherford (c. 1900-1954), a well-known Monticello musician identified by many informants as the region's virtuoso fiddler. Exactly where Rutherford learned the syle remains unclear. In smooth fiddling the instrument and bow are almost invariably held in the conventional violin manner. The whole bow, manipulated in slow, smooth strokes, produces a legato effect. Other technical hallmarks of this style include glides, vibrato, slurred notes, and little double-noting.
Because the fiddle was an integral part of folk dancing, and because it seemed to encourage revelry, it was condemned as "the devil's instrument' during the wave of religious fervor that swept the country in the early nineteenth century. Its notoriety lingers on around the Big South Fork today 1n conspicuous ways: in the old simile "as thick as fiddlers in Hell," in the disapproval of square dancing that persists in some quarters, and 1n conservative churches' ban on musical instruments in their services. In some slyly self-conscious ways, local fiddlers maintain the tradition themselves, through the high-spirited revelry suggested by the titles of such tunes as "Devil's Dream," "Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia," or "Dance All Night With a Bottle in My Hand," and by the custom of putting a few sets of rattlesnake rattles in the fiddle, if only for the practical purpose of keeping the soundbox free of cobwebs. `
In the Appalachian region, musicians discovered that the fretless five-string banjo was well-suited to playing the old modal melodies that survived in many of their songs and fiddle tunes. A number of open banjo tunings were devised to facilitate the playing of certain songs, and several of these are still used by old-time banjo pickers around the Big South Fork. Factory-made banjos with frets began to appear in the 1800's, but many homemade instruments continued to be made without frets, partly because of tradition and their suitability for modal music, partly because it was difficult to install the frets properly. However, fretted banjos became universal when mail-order and store-bought instruments replaced homemade ones. Frets permitted greater accuracy in noting the instrument, and made possible both the playing of chords and the playing of melody lines farther up the neck of the instrument. This innovation enhanced the development of the Earl Scruggs or Bluegrass three-finger banjo style that is so popular today.
Nineteenth-century methods of playing the banjo were quite different and have recently gained renewed interest among fans of old-time music. The old minstrel show "frailing" or "clawhammer" style called "knocking it" by Big South Fork musicians was probably derived from the Afro-American banjo tradition. In this style of playing, the right hand functions as one rigid unit, with the thumb and index finger held in a "claw" position. Melody strings are sounded with the index finger as the hand moves down across the strings, and the thumb plucks the drone string as the hand moves back up on the following off-beat. Bailey (1972) believes that an African influence may endure in the inherent syncopation common to this manner of playing.
This particular banjo style no longer survives in the Big South Fork area, although the parents of this generation of old-timers did play in this fashion. The prevalent old-time banjo style in the area today is two-finger picking involving the right thumb and index finger, in a manner similar to two- finger banjo styles that have been recorded in Western North Carolina. The index finger picks out the melody, punctuating it in rhythmic downward brushes across the lower strings, while the thumb continues to sound the drone string on the accompanying off-beat and occasionally drops down to play a "drop thumb" lick on the second or third string. When and how this two-finger style came to replace the clawhammer style in the Big South Fork area are interesting questions which informants cannot answer.
Banjo-picking, like fiddling, is very idiosyncratic, and zindividual players have their own unique technical variations even if they all follow the same basic pattern. Drawing on the simpler aesthetic of an earlier time, their understated playing contrasts sharply with the flashy exhibitionistic "virtuosity" of today's Bluegrass banjo style. The folklife study's sample of recorded music includes many fine examples of old-time banjo playing (see Supplement, Catalogue of Music Tapes and Section V).
Played together, the fiddle and the banjo were the foundation for the latter-day string band which developed after the guitar and other instruments appeared in the Big South Fork area around 1910. But into the early twentieth century, "string band" usually meant fiddle and banjo. In one playing style, the banjo closely followed the fiddle line, playing practically in unison with the fiddle. The other style used the banjo more as a rhythmic accompaniment. Both styles are heard on music tapes recorded during the Folklife Study.
Allen, James Lane.
We learn what they brought with them by studying the fruits
of their hand and mind and spirit. And what they brought they
adapted to the task at hand and in general improved upon it.
From the humble one-room log cabin, they added stone chimneys
and well boxes and warmhouses. Still later some of the more
enterprising residents built what has been termed "log
castles." These were the more decorated two-story dwellings
with windows and winding stairs, stoups, with gingerbread
trimmings throughout. The houses were filled with the most
gifted handicrafts. They stocked their rooms with homemade
spinning wheels and looms, and from these poured all the
clothing, curtains, carvings, carpeting. Men and women made
chairs bottomed with hickory bark, baskets of willow,
furniture, churns, and carved smaller items for use and show
such as dolls and other toys, musical instruments, butter
molds, rolling pins, ramrods; and from their
own tanned leather they made moccasins and shoes, shoelaces,
hunting jackets, shot pouches, harness, bridles, saddles,
checkreins. About the farm they made, besides numerous
outbuildings, their wagons with wrought iron hardware, sleds,
plows, singletrees, harrows, reap hooks and wheat cradles and
scythes, corn knives, gristmill stones, grindstones, oxen
yokes. Some made their own pewter utensils, clay vessels,
earthenware. At the present time with a revival of
handicrafts, many of these items are, according to Allan
Eaton in his Handicrafts in the Southern Highlands, the best
and most artistic handmade goods in all of North America.
Shattuck, Tom. The Cumberland homes
also originated in the cabins first constructed on the English-Scottish border. These cabins reflect the frequency with which homes were re-built due to the continual wars that destroyed them, and also due to the high-level of migration in the borderlands. The Indian battles and migratory patterns of the Cumberland mirror these Anglo-Scotch cultural patterns, as is exhibited--in one instance--in the parallel use of the cabin.
Return to Table of Contents
Not only "Cumberland," but also other regional
place names arise from British border names.
or skip ahead to "Foreigners" in the Cumberland
In the spring of 1888 Arthur and his English companions began
constructing a town in the sparsely occupied area of Yellow
Creek and named it Middlesborough after the successful steel
industrial town of Middlesbrough, England. The name was soon
shortened to "Middlesboro" except for the early official
documents. The town design began with a 100 foot wide
thoroughfare running east and west called Cumberland Avenue.
Parallel to Cumberland, the avenues were given English names
such as Winchester, Doorchester and Ilchester. Streets
running north and south were numbered. The three small hills
of the area were named Queenabury Heights, Maxwelton Braes
and Arthur Heights. To protect the area from flooding a canal
was dug to redirect water flow around the residential and
commercial development. A rail line was constructed around
the town to provide access to the prearranged industrial
sites and coal mines. An earthen dam creating an artificial
lake three miles long was constructed for the towns water
supply. By 1890 there were 16 industries operating and 41
others under construction, 7 hotels and 9 more under
construction, 6 banks, 5 churches, a library, school,
exhibition hall and a city hall. Over the entrance of one of
these buildings is an embossed figure of a dragon confronting
a serpent. This scene represents the dragon as the keeper of
virtue in constant vigilance against evil, represented by the
serpent. This building is located at the intersection of
Cumberland Avenue and Twentieth Street called Fountain
Square. Many of the sturdy buildings and well engineered
municipal facilities are being effectively utilized by the
towns inhabitants of today. The water impoundment of Fern
Lake is even yet reputed to be among the purest of water
sources in the country.
Return to Table of Contents
Allen, James Lane.
Allen, James Lane.
When someone needed a new barn or house, often the neighbors would come in to help build it, getting it finished in a short period of time.
"All the neighbors would come in. We'd commence' lay the ground rocks for corner stones. We'd lay them first. Then put our sills on, and go to building.
"We'd get it done in about two days. They'd be anywhere from 20 to 25 hands a workin' on it." John Dossey. + + + + "All the neighbors would come in and help. The women would come in and help cook dinner." Gertie Dossey. + + + +
"They had barn railings back in my early days. The barns were built of logs. They'd cut the logs off their farm and then the neighbors'd come in and they'd drag these logs to the spot where they wanted to build the barn. And maybe they d build one big square barn or they might build several little square barns and connect them together. And all the neighbors would help and the women would come and help to get the dinner. It was pleasure and work mixed kindly together for them all to be together. So we have one on our farm today, a big log barn that my husband said was built that way. They came in and raised it, and that was called barn railings." Rosa Walden.
The small community was self sufficient, having no roads or means of communication with the outside world other than a hard walk or horseback ride to the valleys below. Most of the basics of food, clothing and shelter were made or grown. The result of this isolation was a way of life more similar to the pioneer period of 1790-1800 than that of the twentieth century. This community survived until its first and last inhabitant, Sherman Hensley, left in 1951.
Shattuck, Tom.
Memorializing eventually became an annual affair in conjunction with the Annual Meetings and Associations of the sects. And growing up with these three-day gatherings was another custom, that of the jockey ground, or just good old-fashioned hoss swapping. The people attending the Associations from miles around came in wagons and horseback. On a day in the afternoon, or throughout the whole event for that matter, the men would choose a bottom piece of ground of several acres and trot their nags and mules up and down, calling out, "How'll ye swap?" Men could be seen looking into the mouths of horses, taking little jog-trots up and down the dusty field, clapping the nag's rump with his willow switch, putting harness on mules and making them pull a log up and down the bottom. Of course there were many other kinds of trading, such as in livestock, work swapping, dog chasing, and even a little knife throwing swapping from the fist, sight unseen.
After a lengthy study of Tennessee ridge communities composed of a few intermarrying families, Elmora Matthews (1965) identified several benefits of marrying kin: it is a means of consolidating land ownership and conserving wealth within families) it strengthens cohesion within the community by continually reinforcing its kinship bonds; and it provides mates who sharecommon experiences and aspirations, who are "expected" end therefore approved of by the community at large.
Where kindred and neighborhood have become coterminous, a formal organization to provide for governance and community services seems less necessary than in communities solidified by no such moral bonds. Neighborly obligations which are also kinship obligations insure mutual aid through informal cooperation. Such kin-based patterns of social interaction have persisted to a great extent in communities within and near the BSFNRRA boundaries, although informants agree that community-wide labor exchange began to decline many years ago.
The household survey of BSFNRRA residents (see Appendix I) revealed that social interaction is more frequent with close kin than with neighbors who are related only distantly or not at all. With the exception p churches, organization memberships are almost non-existent, and some church members do not attend regularly. Family activities tend to be non-specific and unplanned with the exception of large family reunions which involve out-of-town relatives. Casual interaction with kin and exclusion of non-kin relationships are reinforced by the continuing practice of living near kin. Typically, adult siblings with families live near one another and near surviving parents. Along the Leatherwood Road and in the Beech Grove section of McCreary County where most of the families affectedby relocation live, there are several clusters of households which form extended families of this kind.
Visible proof of the continuing importance of kinship comes from the large collections of framed family photographs and snapshot albums which are proudly displayed in the living room of every home. Where labor out-migration has caused temporary separations, the photographs make it possible to introduce absent family members to a visiting newcomer. These introductions are an essential part of becoming acquainted.
Howell, Benita.
Like most of Appalachia, the Big South Fork area was first settled nder frontier conditions. It was some time before formal political and llegal institutions followed the settlers. These frontier communities had some internal resources for social control--the obligations of kinship and a system of ethics derived from their religion. Theirs was a society based on a moral order (see Redfield 1947).
Although some influential authors (e.g. Caudill 1963) still subscribe to the notion that Appalachians are inherently lawless because they are the descendants of outlaws and social misfits who sought refuge in the mountains to evade the legal and social order of the seaboard colonies, scholarly historians have convincingly discredited this myth (see Caruso 1951; Leyburn 1962).
Informal social controls could be effective in Appalachia as in other "folk" societies so long as the settlement was a homogeneous unit based on kinship obligations and a shared moral code. But before the nineteenth century was over, economic development was already placing severe stress on the traditional system of social control. The population grew and became more heterogeneous. New quasi-urban towns and camps sprang up, bringing together people who did not feel that they were members of a community in the traditional sense. Those who abandoned farming for wage work suddenly had extra cash and leisure time, and whiskey was the most convenient means of spending the two simultaneously. Disputation and lawlessness increased under these circumstances. Formal political and legal institutions wer strengthened to deal with these problems, but they did not always coexist comfortably with the traditional pattern of kin loyalty.
Howell, Benita.
"When two got married they'd shivaree 'em. They'd get 'em out and ride the man around the house on a rail and the women had to ride in a tub. They never did shivaree us. It was just fun. Nobody didn't get killed or hurt or nothing." Gracie King. + + + + "My husband and I were shivareed when we got married. The way they did it was they got a rail and rode the man on a rail and they put me in the washing tub, and a couple of men carried me all the way around the house in a washing tub." Eva Bybee. + + + + "Got me on a big cedar pole. Cut a cedar pole you know with knots all over it. Come up there and got me up out of bed 'bout midnight, and here they took me around for about a couple of hours and they brought me back and put me in the bed. Didn't do a thing to my wife." Lank Kirkpatrick. + + + + "When a couple got married, why it was a custom in the neighborhood to shivaree the boy and the girl. And they'd go to find out what home they's in. Lots of times the boy and girl would have to slip off and hide to keep them from shivareeing them. But they'd go to the homes; if they caught them there why they had bells and fired guns and they usually had the girls to take the girl out and put her in a tub and carry her around in the tub. And they d put the boy astride a rail and make him ride this rail. They'd take him in a pond. They made us think they were going to shivaree us. They got to the window where we were sleeping and fired some guns and ran around the house a little time, but it wasn't no group that came in to shivaree us; just scared me." Rosa Walden. + + + + Mrs Gertie Dossey: They was a lot of fun. Mr. John Dossey: I went to my uncle's shivaree about two miles from here. We commenced at eight o'clock and wound up at ten-thirty. We had old muskets and double-barrel shotguns loaded with powder and shot. We didn't use no shot that night. Just powder. We jarred out twenty-one window lights out of the house by iust settin' the gun up against the house and bang! bang' bang! Mrs. Dossey: Used to ride 'em on a rail. Mr. Dossey: We made up money and paid for them winder lights. We had a friend, Owen Lawrence, he rung an old dinner bell for two hours and a half, just stood there, it in the night time now. We was keepin' everybody awake and ourselves. too, I guess. But we had a wonderful time. Mrs. Dossey: I've been to 2 or 3 where they'd ride the man on a rail I've seen 'em ride a bride in a tub. + + + + "One of the things that people really looked forward to was when a couple got married, they would have what they called shivaree. Everybody that was going to take part in it, they would slip right easy, and nobody would know they wuz anywhere about until the guns went to shootin'. They would just march around the house shooting guns one right after another. When they would go so many rounds around the house shooting their guns, and then they would go to the door and stick a fence rail through the door and the man would get on the rail and they would ride him around the house on the rail or down the road. Sometimes the women would join in and push the man's wife in a tub and carry her. I was shivareed. They put me on a rail and rode me around, and I fell off of it and I just got up and went in the house and told them that was all the riding on a rail I was going to do." Oral Page.
...the semblance of popular joys, and which certainly were not passed over without merriment and turbulent, disorderly fun, were really set apart for the gravest of civic and political reasons: militia musters, stump-speakings, county court day assemblages, and the yearly July celebrations. Still other pleasures were of an economic or utilitarian nature. Thus the novel and exciting contests by parties of men at squirrel-shooting looked to the taking of that destructive animal's scalp, to say nothing of the skin ; thehunting of beehives in the woods had some regard to the scarcity of sugar; and the nut gatherings and wild-grape gatherings by younger folks in the gorgeous autumnal days were partly in memory of a scant, unvaried larder, which might profitably draw upon nature's rich and salutary hoard. Perhaps the dearest pleasures among them were those that lay closest to their dangers. They loved the pursuit of marauding parties, the solitary chase ; were always ready to throw away axe and mattock for rifle and knife. Among pleasures,certainly, should be mentioned the weddings. For plain reasons these were commonly held in the daytime. Men often rode to them armed, and before leaving too often made them scenes of carousel and unchastened jocularities. After the wedding came the " infare," with the going from the home of the bride to the home of the groom. Above everything else that seems to strike the-chord of common happiness in the society of the time, stands out to the imagination the picture of one of these processions--a long bridal cavalcade winding slowly along a narrow road through the silent, primeval forest, now in sunlight, now in the shadow of mighty trees meeting over the way; at the head the young lovers, so rudely mounted, so simply dressed, and, following in their happy wake, as though they were the augury of a peaceful era soon to come, a straggling, broken line of the men and women who had prepared for that era, but should never live to see its appearing.
Allen, James L.
While subsistence farming remained the predominant means of livelihood along the Big South Fork, recreation was tied to work activities, especially labor exchange between kin and neighbors. "Workings" were organized for every task from clearing land, barn raising, and house building, to cornhusking, bean shelling, and molasses making. Strenuous or technically complex work required more manpower, more tools and implements, or more specialized expertise than a single nuclear family could muster; but many of the lighter food preparation tasks could have been accomplished by individual families. These workings were as much social as economic in function, for they provided a socially approved setting in which young people could initiate a courtship. For all of the participants, the burden of monotonous work was relieved by conversation and rewarded by a big dinner spread by the hostess and other women whose families were present. In the more liberal households, the working often ended with square dancing. Even the oldest informants interviewed had not participated in log rollings and barn raisings but had heard stories from their parents or grandparents which described these events. Apparently the means of accomplishing heavy work hadchanged by the mid-nineteenth century. Informal mutual aid with unspecified obligation for future repayment was replaced by some more formal arrangement for hiring extra manpower. Workers were paid in return services, goods, or cash. But corn huskings and bean shellings persisted as community-wide events until well after the turn of the century. These socials are fondly remembered by informants who attended in their youth. "Candy-makings" also provided a pretext for young people to meet. The idea of a "working" was perpetuated but removed from its earlier agricultural context. One informant commented perceptively on workings of various kinds:
All the social activities were connected with the growing and production of food and fiber for the county's people--to benefit around the neighbors. They'd gather up and have a quilting party, gather up and around the neighborhood andhave a bean shelling party or a corn shucking party, and the girls-any girl that found a red ear of corn, everyone in the country would grab her and hug her and kiss her for it. ....Such things as that was all they had back then for amusement. You couldn't sit down and listen at a ball game on the radio or see one on the television or something like that. You made your own amusement, in other words, if you wanted to get out and shoot squirrels or shoot targets, take a gun out and fire it two or three times and get arrested and throwed in the calaboose sometimes for it, if you happen to be a little high. But people 'ud gather up around about and they would have those parties, first one kind and then another. I know I used to go to 'um around here. We'd make candy with a candy-makin' outfit. We'd gather in a bunch and buy the material. I forget what kinds candy we made, but it was pretty good candy and it was made from 30 or 40 cents worth of ingredients. We used to gather up there at _____'s. He had a store back then, and his girls, two or three of 'um. . .we'd always go up there. The girls would make the candy and we'd set there and eat candy. It was the only way we had of meeting other people, was going to some party like that.
Howell, Benita.
Shattuck, Tom.
Following is another discussion of the high fertility rates of the area
Marriages take place early. They are a fecund race. I asked them time and again to fix upon the average number of children to a family, and they gave as the result seven. In case of parental opposition to wedlock, the lovers run off. There is among the people a low standard of morality in their domestic relations, the delicate privacies of home life having little appreciation where so many persons, without regard to age or sex, are crowded to~ether within very limit
Allen, James L.
After the Stearns camps were established with company doctors in residence or on call, some women chose to have the services of a professional even though their children continued to be born at home. Others preferred midwives, who of late, at least in McCreary County, have been able to tn and receive official state certification. One veteran of sixteen live home births has tried to persuade her granddaughters to have their babie' at home, but without success. She says: "I had all my children at home. I reckon that's the reason I'm living, 'cause they'll kill you if they q you at the hospital. It shortens your days."
It is too simple to conclude that such attitudes toward the haspita which are encountered fairly frequently, merely reflect a fear of modern medicine. Equally important is the belief that personal crisis, whate~e its nature, should be faced at home with the support of the immediate family and the wider community.
Before adequate medical care was readily available, birth and the first few years of childhood were periods of great uncertainty. A rich body of folk belief helped to allay the anxiety surrounding birth-and early childhood. Although prenatal care was unknown, mothers-to-be tried to avoid unusual experiences which they believed might mark their infants After the child was born, it was carefully examined and its early behavic was observed and regulated in an attempt to determine or shape its future character. There were many magical cures for childrens' maladies~and ~n good luck and bad luck omens relating to young children. Morton (1978) provides a well-rounded sample of such beliefs from East Tennessee. 0lder female informants are familiar with these beliefs but do not admit tofollowing them personally during pregnancy and child-rearing.
Howell, Benita.
Allen, James L.
Allen, James L.
There were many beliefs that portended good luck, bad luck, or even death. These ideas were looked upon very seriously. There were many things that the people just wouldn't do if they could get by without it because they felt to do so would bring bad luck. Then there were other things that were sure signs of good luck. There were still other things that, if they happened, the people felt sure someone would die. Listed below are some of these superstitions:
"When you borrow a pocketknife, if it was open, leave it open. If it was closed when you got it, close it back before giving it back to the person. If you don't do this it will bring bad luck." Bonnie Reagan. Brown 2872. "It's bad luck to enter a house through one door and go out through a different door." Rosa Walden. Brown 2969. "It's bad luck to walk under a ladder." Rosa Walden; Bonnie Reagan. Brown 3064. "If you start on a trip and forget something, it's bad luck to go back and get it." Myran Goodwill. Brown 3762. "If a black cat crosses the road in front of you, it's a sign of bad luck." Bonnie Reagan; Ada Gettings; Oral Page. Brown 5185. "If a black cat crosses the road in front of you, you can erase the bad luck by making a cross mark on the window and spitting in it." Rosa Walden. Brown 3830. "I you sneeze with food in your mouth, there would be a death in your family." Oral Page. Brown 4935. "A wild bird in the house means death." Marion Goodwill. Brown 5006. "If strange noises were heard in the house and you didn't know what they were, it was a sign of death." Ada Gettings.Brown 5048. "If your dog howled at midnight, it would mean the death of someone close to you." Myran Goodwill. Brown 5207. "When a hen crowed there would be bad luck if the hen wasn't killed." Betty Page. Brown 5250. "There would be bad luck if a rooster crowed after midnight." Oral Page. Brown 5265. "When you heard the first dove in the spring, you would have to get a lock of cat's hair, bury it, and dance on your heels around it three times. If you didn't do this there would be a death in your family." Earl Walden. Brown 5298. "Deaths occur in series of three." Marion Goodwill. "Always pick all the beans out of your garden. If any of the old beans come up the next year, someone will die." Earl Walden. "You can hold up a piece of cloth and look toward the evening star and there will be some little stars around it. The number of stars indicates how many children vou will have. If one of the stars disappears, one of the children will die." Melinda Hoffman. "When sharpening a straight razor, strap it three times on each side. If you don't do this, you'll cut yourself." MyranGoodwill. "If you find a pin on the floor, don't pick it up if the head is pointing toward you because there is trouble ahead. If the point is toward you, pick it up because trouble is behind you or you'll have sharp luck." Earl Walden. "Always get out of the same side of the bed as when you went to bed. If you don't do this, you'll have bad luck." Willie Montell. "It would bring bad luck to take the ashes out of a stove on Friday." Oral Page. "If a woman came to your house on New Year's Day, you would have bad luck. But, if a man came in first, they would bring good luck." Hazel Montell. "A crowing hen and a whistling woman will come to some bad luck." Ova Kirk. "If you hang mistletoe over the door, the first unmarried person that walks under it will be the first to get married." Rosa Walden. "Never rock a rocking chair unless you're sitting in it. If you do, it means you're due a whipping. " Marian Goodwill. "If you've got a dog, just clip the end hairs off his tail and bury them under your doorstep and he'll never leave home." Lank Kirkpatrick. "Always get married when the hands of the clock point up so the love will be in its cup." Myran Goodwill.
One of these customs has been termed funeralizing. But it rightfully should be called the more sacred and traditional term - memorializing. In the mountains there were a few churches but not enough pastors to go round. There were fewer trained preachers than in more populous regions. The people had to be served by the famous circuit riders. These made their rounds in late summer and fall well enough, but in winter and in the busy early spring they could not visit the flooded and shut-in valleys. But life went on in thesevalleys: an elderly brother passed on, and a mother died in childbirth, a couple began housekeeping by parental consent or on the strength of papers from the squire. Children grew into their teens and began to "run wild." In the late spring and summer the ministers would return to their charges. They would baptize the young, hold memorial funerals for the deceased, and hold religious weddings for those couples who already had families started. The funeral services, more sacred and touching than any other events, often occupied an all-day preaching "with dinner on the ground." Very often in the congregation a man (more rarely a woman) would hear the virtues of his dead wife praised while his new wife sat by his side.
Memorializing eventually became an annual affair in conjunction with the Annual Meetings and Associations of the sects. And growing up with these three-day gatherings was another custom, that of the jockey ground, or just good old-fashioned hoss swapping. The people attending the Associations from miles around came in wagons and ahorseback. On a day in the afternoon, or throughout the whole event for that matter, the men would choose a bottom piece of ground of several acres and trot their nags and mules up and down, calling out, "How'll ye swap?" Men could be seen looking into the mouths of horses, taking little jog-trots up and down the dusty field, clapping the nag's rump with his willow switch, putting harness on mules and making them pull a log up and down the bottom. Of course there were many other kinds of trading, such as in livestock, work swapping, dog chasing, and even a little knife throwing swapping from the fist, sight unseen.
Another religious observance developed soon after the Civil War. The mountain people were among the first to set aside a day "to decorate the graves." This day became fixed on May 30 or the nearest Sunday to it. Earlier in the week the menfolk would go to the graveyard and clean off the creepvine and shrubs and remound the sunken graves. Soon as daylight on Sunday the mothers would rise and send their children to pick the flowers of the field and around the house and to cut green shrubs from the hillsides and along the streams. The women would pack every basket on the place with flowers and bulbs to transplant and all the pies, cakes, fried chicken, and pickles and make their way to the meeting house. After Sunday school the congregation would adjourn to the graveyard on the point. There under the largest clump of sassafras trees the preacher would take his stand and talk in a thin wavering voice about "this land of trial and tribulation, where we all totter over the earth until we lay this body down." And after naming those who had come there to rest within the year he would continue, "And we must prepare to meet those who have gone on before and join our loved ones there with no more sorrow and where our tears will be wiped forever from our eyes.¯ Sometime between twelve and two the ministers would "give way" and the people would wind about among the graves scattering their flowers and setting out their shoots of evergreen and roses. Then they would leave the sacred grounds and have dinner together on the hillside.
"People didn't really dress up to go to church like they do now. I remember they just wore shirts and overalls. They had their "Sunday-go-to-meeting overalls" as they were called. It would be a new pair. Their old ones they wore to go to work in on the farm. The new ones were held in reserve to wear to church. If a feller had a new pair to go to church in, he was really dressed up. A lot of times they would get between a rock and hard place and couldn't afford a new pair of overalls and they would have to wear their old ones to church. I have seen some at church with their old ones on. They would be clean, but they would be patched. But they were just as good as anybody else, I reckon. That is the way everybody felt about it, that clothes didn't make the man. This day and time some people seem to entertain the idea that if a man is well-dressed, he is all right every other way. But as the old saying goes, "Clothes doesn't make the man." Oral Page.
Amid a rural people, also, no class of citizens is more influential than the clergy, who go about as the shepherds of the right ; and without doubt in Kentucky, as elsewhere, ministerial ideals have wrought their effects on taste in architecture. Perhaps it is well to state that this is said broadly, and particularly of the past. The Kentucky preachersduring earlier times were a fiery, zealous, and austere set, proclaiming that this world was not a home, but wilderness of sin, and exhorting their people to live under the awful shadow of Eternity. Beauty in every material form was a peril, the seductive garment of the devil. Wellnigh all that made for ‘sthetic culture was put down, and, like frost on venturesome flowers, sermons fell on beauty in dress, entertainment, equipage, houses, church architecture, music, the drama, the opera everything. The meek young spirit was led to the creek or pond, and perhaps the ice was broken for her baptism. If, as she sat in the pew, any vision of her chaste loveliness reached the pulpit, back came the warning that she would some day turn into a withered hag, and must inevitably be " eaten of worms." What wonder if the sense of beauty pined or went astray and found itself completely avenged in the building of such churches? And yet there is nothing that even religion more surely demands than the fostering of the sense of beauty within us, and through this also we work towards the civilization of the future.
Allen, James L.
Many Big South Fork communities disappeared from the map when most of residents moved away, their stores and post offices closed, and their one-room schools closed. The institution that remained most vigorous in the face of community dissolution was the church. As long as some residents remain to form a congregation nucleus, the small rural churches continue to function. An overview of church history and belief will help to explain these churches survive in spite of small congregations, limited activities, and the attractions of larger, more active churches in the towns.
The denominations represented by churches in the Big South Fork area include Baptist, Methodist, Presyterian, Congregational, Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah'sWitness, Church of God, Church of Christ, Church of the Nazarine, Mormon, and unaffiliated Pentecostal and Holiness groups. A majority of the churches and church members are Baptist. Historically, Baptists dominated the immediate BSFNRRA area and have continued to do so. For these reasons, the Baptists will be the focus of this discussion.
Because Baptist doctrine and church organization inherently preclude a single invariant theology and church doctrine, conflicting schools of thought have flourished and left their traces in frequently encountered denominational labels--Regular Baptist, Separate Baptist, United Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Free Will Baptist, and Primitive Baptist. Still other labels are encountered elsewhere in the South but are not common in the Big South Fork area. An historical overview will help to explain the church names which are most common near the recreation area.
A few English Baptists settled in colonial Virginia and North Carolina. They styled themselves General or Armenian Baptists and adhered to the doctrine of free will (Sweet 1931). The Great Awakening revival movement began in New England in the 1730's although it did not gain a foothold in Appalachia until the last decade of the eighteenth century (Boles 1972; Johnson 1955). The New England revival greatly swelled the ranks of the Baptists; in keeping with Great Awakening theology, the new convertswere Calvinistic predestinarians rather than advocates of free will. These were Congregationalists who were reformed by revival spirit first to become "New Lights" and later to form Separate Baptist congregations when they gave up infant baptism in favor of adult baptism. Soon after 1750, Baptist converts began migrating southward from New England where the Separate Baptists were strong and from Pennsylvania where the Regular Baptists had an active association. The Regulars shared a Calvinistic outlook with the Separates but were less revivalistic and evangelical.
Sweet (1931: 9-10) describes the antagonism the Separates aroused when they came in contact with the General Baptists in Virginia and North Carolina.
The older Baptists in Virginia and North Carolina, as well as other denominations in contact with them, generally disapproved way of the Separates. This disapproval was largely based upon the pulpit mannerisms and type of preaching generally followed by the evangelists, and by the effects they produced upon the Congregation. . .One of the peculiar mannerisms developed by the preachers was the "holy whine," a sing song method of speaking which seems to have arisen with outdoor preaching, and which continued to be practiced by the less educated Baptist ministers of the frontier for many years. . .The Separate Baptists had the reputation for being an ignorant and illiterate set. As is generally the case, the people attracted to the kind of meetings conducted by the Separate Baptist evangelists represented the lower classes economically and educationally.
Membership gains by the Separate Baptists durinq the 1760's and 1770's were in part the result of a popular reaction against civil persecution of Separate Baptist preachers and of general support for separation of Church and State after the Revolutionary War. Both Regular and Separate Baptists emigrated from Virginia and North Carolina to Kentucky and Tennessee when western settlement began. The Regular Baptists established more churches in Kentucky, and the Separate Baptists established more churches in Tennessee. Soon after the turn of the century, however, a new movement to achieve a compromise between the Calvinistic and Armenian positions touched both states. Adherents to the compromise formed the UnitedBaptist Church in 1807-8 (Sweet 1931: 22-27).
Meanwhile, Andrew Fuller had organized the first Baptist missionary society in England in 1792. Sweet (1931: 61) reports that the missionary message was at first warmly received in Kentucky and Tennessee. The Great Awakening spread to Appalachia through the efforts of circuit-riding preachers imbued with missionary fervor. However, by the1820's controversy over missionary activity began to develop, and churches split in consequence. Anti-mission sentiment, which Sweet (1931: 58) interprets asa frontier phenomenon, was especially strong in Tennessee. The anti-mission Baptists rejected the notion that clergy needed special education or that they should be paid salaries. The protest was also directed against what seemed t• be a trend toward more rigid and centralized church organization. On theological grounds, the anti-mission congregations took an extreme Calvinist position that viewed any proselytizing as presumptious tampering with God 's foreordained will for each individual. These views were shared by the Primitive or "Hardshell" Baptists, the Reformer Baptists who were followers of Alexander Campbell, and the Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Baptists, who subscribed to Daniel Parker's view that each individual was born with either the seed of good or of evil, and hence was either elect or damned from birth (Sweet 1931: 67-72).
Sanderson's (1958) history of Scott County sheds some light on the history of the Baptist Church in the immediate Big South Fork area. The United Baptist Church was organized in the area in 1842 and flourished until the 1880's. At that time, controversy over the mission issue caused Scott County Baptists to split into Separate and Missionary Baptists. At present, Missionary Baptist Churches are found in the towns and along High way 27, but further west in the heart of the Big South Fork area, congregations are either Separate or United Baptist.
Some communities have both United and Separate Baptist churches, suggesting factional splits in the past, but church members now do not identify any major theological differences and freely attend one another's services. A Separate Baptist preacher who was asked to explain the origin of the label "Separate" referred to the scriptural injunction, "Be ye separate." He interpreted this verse as a guide for contemporary behavior, not in terms of church history. A United Baptist lay member volunteered his understanding of the difference between Separate and United Baptists: the Separate Baptists believe that a person can be saved today and lostagain tomorrow, so they permit repreated baptisms, the United Baptists believe in one baptism.
Encouragement of personal intrepretation of the Bible and congregational autonomy have insulated the Appalachian churches from outside influencesand have splintered congregations within the area. Parker (1970) sees in these circumstances a fertile field for the formation of folk religion. Folk religion is evident in widespread regional observances like Decoration Day; in less common practices like faith-healing; and in the rare but heavily publicized snake handling practiced by some Appalachian Holiness sects (see La Barre 1962, Kane 1974). Kane's work and some sketchy informationa obtained from informants suggests that snake handling may persist on the Cumberland Plateau even though both Tennessee and Kentucky have outlawed it. But there is no evidence to suggest that it is practiced in the Holiness churches near the Big South Fork.
Individualism and personalism in religion do not encourage regular church attendance and participation in church-sponsored social programs. The activities of the rural churches reflect the limited resources of their small congregations but also a traditional resistance to participation in organized social groups. The more conservative congregations frown upon associating sports and other common youth program with the church.
James Kerr in his analysis of Appalachian religion (1979:71) argues that congregations want preaching, not pastoralism. The preacher who is a neighbor, kinsman, and who works at the same tasks as the rest of the community during the week is a more credible figure than the outsider specialist. Again, the necessity of using part-time, unpaid ministers because of limited financial resources is turned into a virtue.
The call to preach in a rural Baptist church may come toanyone, literate or illiterate, but the novice preacher must gain congregational approval before he is confirmed in his work and ordainedto preach by his fellow preachers. The call has been a stimulus for many preachers to learn to read or to improve their reading in order to study the Bible in depth. Nevertheless, many preachers express the belief that they are divinely inspired during their sermons; they do not prepare before they get up to speak. They generally begin quietly with a particular Bible text, but when they "get going good,"they fall into the "holy whine" noted by Sweet and begin to arouse affirmative responses from the congregation. Despite the extemporaneous content of sermons, the oratorical style employed is highly stylized, and preachers acknowledge that as novices they modeled their preaching after successful preachers whom they admired.
The same egalitarian tendencies which favor the local part-time preacher also promote full and equal participation by lay members in services and church affairs. Their participation takes the form of group prayers, and lengthy personal testimony in addition to the affirmations interjected into the preacher's sermon. Each congregation as a democratic body conducts its own business affairs. In the early days, this function extended beyond church business into the regulation of members' conduct. This aspect of church life will be discussed more fully in the chapter on social control (Chapter Seven).
Some of the smaller rural churches no longer have a preacher available for services every week but must participate in a circuit with other churches. Circuit churches may hold services only once a month, and this situation encourages visiting at nearby churches between times. Regular services are held Sunday mornings or evenings, and prayer meetings may also be held on Wednesday evenings. Congregational business meetings and association meetings are often held on Saturday evenings. Special Sunday School programs for the children are seldom provided by the smaller rural churches. One Preacher rationalized this lack with the observation that Sunday School couldn't save anybody; only responding to the preached Word could do that. Emotional conversion rather than a prolongedprogram of religious instruction is the prerequisite for baptism.
Regular weekly and monthly church services and meetings may be attended by only a small core of faithful members, but the revivals which last a full week or longer draw larger crowds to the churches and may produce conversions to swell the membership rolls. Most revivals are now sponsored by a particular church and held in its building, but tent meetings and brush arbor meetings are not unknown. Kerr (1979) identifies revivalism and emotional fundamentalism as important characteristics of Appalachian religion and notes that church participation which may lag at other times of the year is stimulated by revivals. Perhaps the Pentecostal and Holiness sects which currently are gaining members throughout Appalachia are successful because they manage to satisfy these emotional needs more continuously than the older churches.
The following description of the old-time revival matches informant memories in most particulars, but shouting was another characteristic they mentioned. One woman vividly recalls having to climb up on the bench as a small child in order to get out of the shouters' way. She observed that shouting was expected behavior and not always spontaneous, at least this was true of one old lady in the church who always tied her bonnet tightly on her head before beginning to shout.
Many of these early revivals followed along the camp-meeting type of procedure. Whether or not the ministers could carry a tune in a sack" they usually led off with a solo. . .The whole procedure was democratic in keeping with the ideas of the frontier people. Every minister participated in the services which held three or four hours. The entire congregation participated in the singing, and Christians and sinners joined in mass prayer. Some minister or devout man or woman usually led off with the prayer at the mourner's bench, but all joined in as the spirit led them. Sometimes fifty would be praying aloud at one time. . . The revivals usually lasted two to six weeks, depending upon the interest taken. At the close of the revivals the new converts were taken into the church. All the converts came forward, testified, and expressed their desire to join the churchand be baptized. The baptizings were held in May the next spring. These were called the "May Meetings" (Sanderson 1958: 117).
One informant described May Meetings and Association Meetings recalled from childhood. The May Meetings she likened to Easter because everyone attended and the women and girls decked themselves out in new Sunday clothes. The association meetings were held in early fall, usually September. Congregations loosely affiliated together into an association conducted their mutual business at that time, but the week-long meeting also provided an occasion for the host community to entertain and hear all of the visiting preachers.
Another special church observance provides a time for former members of a congregation to reunite, whether they have moved away from the area or simply transferred membership from the family's church to one of the larger town churches. These reunions, called Homecomings, are held at each church sometime during the summer. There is a special church serviceand dinner on the grounds. Tables, sometimes covered by asshed, can be seen near many church buildings in the area; these have been installed to accommodate dinners on the grounds.
Many younger families in the Big South Fork area now are active in the larger town churches which are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. These churches have trained, full-time ministers and a full program of activities, including youth programs for the children. Research conducted throughout Appalachia suggests that more affluent familiesaffiliate with more modernist, less fundamentalist churches while the Holiness sects attract the very poor (Photiadis and Maurer 1974; Garrard 1970).
Most of the BSFNRRA residents surveyed are church members, but many do not participate regularly in church activites. Extremely religious individuals sometimes rationalize their lack of participation- in organized church activities by stating that none of the churches nowadays strictly follows the Bible. Because their religion is oriented toward personal commitment rather than participation in group ritual, Bible-reading and listening to religious broadcasts are very important parts of their lives Some of the gospel programs heard locally have a national or regional distribution, but the most popular are broadcasts of local preachers an singing groups. Although many church buildings attract small congregations, the invisible radio congregationsare large and strong.
Howells, Benita.
Beliefs of various kinds were sometimes wholly accepted, some partly accepted, some not at all. The use of iron under the bed to cut childbed pain, horseshoes over the door to ward away witches, pokers heated in the fireplace to scare away hawks- these disappeared early and are now barely remembered. One old man of 77 told me about being passed through a split tree trunk to be cured of the phthisic. Omens and weather signs have persisted longer and only now are fading away. Their ancient omens have probably been re-inforced by their experiences with the Indians back on earlier frontiers. An owl hooting, a rooster crowing, especially in the doorway, a dog howling were signs of bad luck or of a death in the family. Weather signs of course were handed down from the Old Country and from the New England almanacs, and the almanac is still sold or given away in country stores. They gave the signs of the zodiac, a year's coverage of the weather, crop dates, when to plant according to the phases of the moon, eclipses, sayings, proverbs and remedies. The mountain folk adapted, improved upon these written records by their own observations. They studied the direction of the wind and rain clouds, saw the animals' habits and customs, plant and tree growth and were able to make good use of these experiences. The largest collection of Kentucky superstitions (many from the hills) totalling about 4000 is in the volume Kentucky Superstitions by Lucy and Daniel Thomas.
There is a persistent and continuing belief in ghosts, walking spirits, haints, and revenants in the region. They are seen as shapes in the road or near graveyards, along stretches of winding creek road and at lonely spots, or where someone lost his life, or in rooms where people died. Foul play leaves the most grisly and lasting spot. Many ghosts are to be seen, some to be heard, some to be felt. Ghosts sometimes walk and have nothing to say, others tell the person that all will be well in the other world, or warn him to stop a certain way of doing, or to help a certain person, or even to go right and return to church. The longer stories of the ghost who wants to see that his murderer is brought to justice, or to see that his family gets his property, or to tell where money is hidden are from Old World archetypes. These in many versions are told throughout the mountains See Nos 4, 5, and especially 16).
In Monroe County, just as in most other rural areas across the nation our former generations didn't have access to very much medical technology. There were a few doctors scattered across the area, but they were usually located in the communities, towns, or trade centers. The people that lived away from these areas had an especially hard time obtaining the services of a doctor.
Due to this lack of medical services, the people in these rural areas developed their own beliefs as to how to prevent and cure their diseases. Mr. M. S. Agers illustrated the importance of these remedies when he was talking about a homemade linament freauently used made by his mother: "We had to use it. That was all we had. We could be dead by the time we got to a doctor."
These remedies have been passed on from generation to generation and many are still in use by some people today.
"When a woman was in labor, if you put an axe under her bed, it would cut the pain in two.' Earl Walden. Brown 45.
'Many times a mother, having no baby food would chew the baby's food and then put it in the 6aby's mouth." Rosa Walden.
"If a baby was fretful and crying, they would fix a sugar tit for it. They would put sugar in little bags and let the baby suck on it to pacify him." Rosa Walden. Brown 80.
"If a child wets the bed, feed him fried mouse the next morning and he won't wet the bed any more." Emma McDonald. Brown 279.
"Give babies catnip tea to make them sleep good. " Kate Holland.
"If a child had the thrash (sore mouth), they would take it to some person that had never seen his own father. This person would blow his breath into the child's mouth to cure the thrash." Rosa Walden. Brown 413.
"Wearing an asafetida bag around the neck would keep away contagious diseases." Rosa Walden. Brown 735.
"Wear an asafetida bag around the neck for the tizzy." (A wheezing disease). J. T. Brown. Brown 735-36.
"Set a jug of corn whiskey on top of roots, herbs, and barn and drink it off of them and you won't get sick. " Oral Page. Brown 792-94.
"If a young boy had asthma, they would stand him up against the wall and mark where the top of his head came. As he grew above this mark, the asthma would leave him." Lank Kirkpatrick. Brown 829.
"Sassafras tea is good for the blood." Kate Holland. Brown 895.
"If a person had the chickennox, he should go out in front of the hen house and let the ch~ckens all come out the door over him." Rosa Walden. Brown 1022.
"Wet a paper and put it around an onion and put it in the ashes where there'd be enough heat to bake it. It creates enough juice that you can mix it with sugar and give it to a baby for a cold." Elzady White; Emma McDonald. Brown 1113.
"Polecat grease would clear up a cold." Emma McDonald.
"Wear a greasy rag around the neck for a cold. This was a rag saturated with a mixture of tallow or lard, kerosene, campher, and turpentine." John McDonald.
"Wintergreen tea was good for a bad cold." John Dossey.
"Ground ivy would make babies break out with hives." Elzady White. Brown 1689.
"Poke berry root was used for the itch. The patient was bathed in the water the root was boiled in." Emma McDonald. Brown 1750.
"Rub sulphur and sorghum molasses on the itch anc wear it for nine days." John Dossey.
"Watermelon seed tea was good for the kidneys. " Emma McDonald. Brown 1765.
"Make tea out of sheep manure and drink it to cure the measles." Vaner Tooley; Rosa Walden; Emma Mc- Donald. Brown 1806.
"To stop a nosebleed, take some hot water and salt and sniff it three times." Ova Kirk. Brown 1882.
"If a person has a nosebleed, put a pair of scissors in the bed with him." Oral Page. Brown 1901.
"Put scissors on the back of your neck to stop a nosebleed." John McDonald. Cf. Brown 1901.
"To stop a nosebleed, hold a dime in your mouth. " Oral Page. Brown 1904.
"To keep a nose from bleeding, put a hole through a dime, tie a string through it and wear it around your neck." Rosa Walden. Brown 1906.
"Put a dime under the nose to stop a nosebleed. " Emma McDonald.
"Pour whiskey on red, ripe poke berries and take it for arthritis." Kate Holland. Brown 2015.
"For rheumatism, get a piece of copper wire and tie it around the arm." Oral Page. Brown 2053.
"Red oak bark ooze, made by boiling red oak bark, was used to keep down swelling." Kate Holland. Brown 2324.
"To get rid of a wart, go somewhere and steal a dish rag and rub it over the wart." Rosa Walden. Brown 2597.
"Pick a wart until it bleeds. Get a little stick and break it in the middle. Get a little blood on the stick and go hide it and don't tell anyone where you hid it and the wart will go away." Emma McDonald.
"To stop the hiccoughs, put your nase down in a paper sack and breathe in it." Ward Curtis.
"Corn silk tea was good for the kidneys." Emma McDonald.
"Pumpkin seed tea was good for the kidneys." John Dossey.
"Take castor oil for bad colds." J. T. Brown.
"In case of an injury where the person is bleeding, put a chopping axe under the bed to stop the bleeding." Oral Page.
"Put a piece of fat meat on a bee sting to keep it from swelling." Ward Curtis.
"Don't let a baby nurse its mother while the mother is hot. The milk will be hot and make the baby sick." Rosa Walden.
"Pumpkin seed tea was good for high blood pressure." T Brown
Local healers were the primary medical consultants. This was universally true before improved transportation and the Stearns company doctors made professional medical care reasonably accessible. However, even after trained doctors were available, many families continued to prefer home remedies and the advice of local healers. The doctor was called only for the most serious problems or after less drastic forms of treatment had been exhausted without success.
Local medical practitioners included herbalists who treated a variety of ills, midwives, and home dentists who pulled teeth with pliers mace by the local blacksmith or occasionally supplied by some overworkedphysician who hoped avoid practicing dentistry. Although every family knew the most common herbal remedies and grew or collected materials needed for the common house- hold remedies, each community had its specialist whose knowledge was more extensive. This person could be called upon to give advice or prepare special medicines when necessary. A number of the experts traced their special knowledge of herbal medicine back to Indian ancestors.
One Indian doctor, a man who called himself Dr. Medico, seems to have set up a commercial practice near the Wayne-McCreary County line around the turn of the century. He may even have traveled into Fentress County to practice on occasion, but he was exceptional. Most lay healers worked close to home and took no pay for their services. Rather, they could expect favors in return through the community system of mutual aid. In late years when commercial transactions began to supplant labor exchange, lay medical practitioners still did not accept payment because they knew they might be liable to criminal presecution for practicing medicine without a license.
Informants' recollections of early medical practices include a sketch of the country doctor's life as well as anecdotes from the patient's view. One may infer from these reminiscences that most doctors were conentious but nevertheless limited in their training and in the equipment Ipharmaceuticals available to them. In this context, primary reliance local practitioners made technological sense. It also made sense soly as an expression of community values. Wherever possible, the city served its own needs through mutual aid, a practice that simtaneously strengthened community bonds while it minimized unnecessary terference from outsiders. Even today, many old-timers consider capitalization a real misfortune. While they recieve better medical care, they are separated from home and family during their personal crisis, the very time when support from home and family traditionally have been most important and most reassuring.
Howell, Benita.
Allen, James L.
Among the potherbs or sallet greens used by informants, poke is the
most frequently mentioned and is still collected by a good many
informants. However, some families used to gather other greens also
yellow dock, sour dock, old field lettuce, pigweed, lamb's quarters,
crow's foot, mustard, danGreens were also a popular food, both of the backcountry and the borderlands...
Beechnuts, black walnuts, hickory nuts, and chestnuts were gathered in the fall, and chestnut mast also fattened the semi-wild, semi-domestic hogs ranging free in the woods. Old timers condtend that the chestnut-fattened hogs yielded better flavored pork than animals finished off on grain. The chestnuts are no more, but black walnuts are still a popular wild food.
Among the wild fruits and berries collected both in the past and presently are persimmon, papaw, blackberry, huckleberry, frost grape, and muscadine. The two wild grapes are quite sour but produce flavorful jellies. Muscadines used to thrive in the cleared areas along the O & W railroad tracks, but reforestation has destroyed that former habitat.
Various plants were used to prepare table beverages. Sassafras tea was brewed from sassafras root bark; spicewood bark and twigs, and the leaves of bee balm, also known as Oswego tea, were steeped for table beverages. Many other teas were prepared for medicinal purposes. Persimmons were turned into mildly alcholoic persimmon beer. First the persimmons were baked in corn bread. Then the bread was crumbled into a crock, covered with water, and allowed to ferment for a few days.
Big South Fork residents have been able to use a variety of substitutes for refined sugar. Honey and sorghum molasses are sti11 quite popular, but in the early decades of this century, maples were tapped and the sap was boiled down into maple syrup and sometimes maple sugar. In the process of logging out the area's hardwoods, some fine old sugar groves were lost. An additional natural sweet for children was the balsam exuded from sweet gum trees. This balsam was chewed like chewing gum...
Howell, Benita.
Along with foodstuffs, the backcountry shared taste in beverages with the borderlands. The most wellknown of these common drinks was
A: Why, they used to make whiskey around our part of the country th everybody nearly made it. They made some good moonshine whiskey then. We'd sprout the malt and go to the barn and dig us a hole in the stables where the manure was--it couldn't never freeze-and bury that box down in there. It'd hold water. We'd put th corn in there--it'd have a lid to it, you see. We'd go every d or two and put warm water in that, and that's the way we sprout the malt corn. See, we had to sorta watch about the revenue too, you know, so whenever we let that lid back down, we'd thro some stalks and ol' hay over that, and may be a mule in there ( the stall). That's the way we sprouted that malt corn. Then you got one of these sausage grinders and run it through that, then was ready to go in that still cap. They'd run a quill down thr that cap and drink that (the still beer). It's good, law yeah. See, it'd form a cap on top of it. You could tell when it got to work. The cap would get thinner and thinner. Directly it'd break up, and she's ready to go in the pot and go to boiling it. They wouldn't put no sugar in that first. That was called sweet mash, that first. That was the corn likker, nothing in but just the corn. Whenever it got boiled off, it got weaker and weaker. Whenever it got down to what we called backin's, then just empty that pot into barrels, and that's when they'd put t, sugar in it. And it'd make more the next time than it did the time, but it wouldn't be as good.
B: That sugar whiskey's what gave people hard liver and everything, but that corn likker, old people used to drink that. They'd keep it in the home and drink it for medicine, maybe. Keep it on the table and all the family had to take a swallow every morning to keep 'em healthy. But after they got to putting that sugar in, made 'em sick, poisoned 'em.
A: Gave 'em jake leg.
B: Made their liver get hard.
A: The revenuers got so hard on 'em they wouldn't half make it. Made it on an old thump keg, they called it. They didn't run it through much of a copper pipe and take that grease (verdigris mixed with corn oil, called bardy grease) out of it.
B. My grandmother said that the way her daddy made it, he d take a yarn sock and put that pipe, let that whiskey run through that yarn sock, and she said there'd be a great big ball of that oldgreen stuff come off that copper. That was poison, and they'd (makers of bad whiskey) just let it go down in, pay no attention to it.
Here is another informant's account of whiskey making after widespread bootlegging, fueled by demand from Streans miners with cash on hand, became the order of the day in river gorge communities just across the state line in Tennessee.
Did you know that cane seed would make whiskey just the same as corn? This man had a still up yonder and wanted me to put up some with him. He had two big homemade barrels, riv out of chestnut flats big at the bottom and sloped up at the top, wooden hoops on 'em, heft 90 gallon apiece. Well, we put a bushel of meal in them, made two run out of that; the still held 45 gallons. Well, one day he said, "Let's make some out of cane seed. We both had a big cane patch, had a barn and crib oiled full of seeds. I said, "That stuff won't make no whiskey." "Yes, it will too." I had a big grist mill in the creek there. We flew in and shelled us off a lot of these cane seeds and we'd go there and grind the seed of a ni