Kentucky Folktales

by Mary Hamilton

  3. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, manuscript, “The Family,” from Billie Jean Fields of Martin County, Kentucky, 1970. Sound recordings LR OR 024, Track 3, “Candy Doll,” from Mary Day, and LR OR 024, Track 4, “Candy Doll,” from Margie Day, both recorded at Polls Creek, Leslie County, Kentucky, on October 15, 1952.

  4. Roberts, “The Candy Doll,” I Bought Me a Dog, n.p.

  5. Ibid., n.p.

  6. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, LR OR 024, Track 4, “Candy Doll.”

  7. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, LR OR 024, Track 3, “Candy Doll.”

  8. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, manuscript, “The Family.”

  9. Parkhurst, The August House Book of Scary Stories, 22–26.

  10. Gorham, email correspondence with the author, September 2, 2010.

  11. Ibid., April 19, 2011.

  12. Lord, The Singer of Tales, 36. In his book, The Singer of Tales, Lord includes several comments about the nature of oral tradition and the relationship between oral tradition and fixed text. He writes: “. . . if the printed text is read to an already accomplished oral poet, its effect is the same as if the poet were listening to another singer. The song books spoil the oral character of the tradition only when the singer believes that they are the way in which the song should be presented. The song books may spread a song to regions where the song has not hitherto been sung; in this respect they are like a migrant singer. But they can spoil a tradition only when the singers themselves have already been spoiled by the concept of a fixed text” (79). Later in the book he says, “Those singers who accept the idea of a fixed text are lost to oral traditional process. This means death to oral tradition and the rise of a generation of ‘singers’ who are reproducers rather than re-creators” (137). He concludes: “The change has been from stability of essential story, which is the goal of oral tradition, to stability of text, of the exact words of the story” (138).

  13. Gorham, email correspondence with the author, April 19, 2011.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Since 2003, Linda has met monthly with her coaching group, fellow storytellers Donna Dettman and Sue Black. They usually meet for five to six hours. At the beginning of each session, they allow time for relaxing and catching up. Then, when they begin working, they are focused. First they discuss everyone’s priorities. A schedule is set that usually allows each teller an equal amount of time. Occasionally, when needed, they allot extra time to those who may have upcoming projects that need extra attention.

  Topics they have tackled over the years include: creating, coaching, developing, refining, and presenting stories; editing written work for publication; crafting keynote speeches and workshop presentations; planning, editing, and designing CDs; and developing marketing materials and websites. The coaching sessions also serve as a time to relax and share the trials and tribulations of storytelling as a profession. The group always breaks for lunch and sometimes, in celebration of their hard work, they share a glass of wine at the end of the day.

  Linda, Donna, and Sue stress that getting the right mix of skills and personalities in a coaching group is important. Participants must feel comfortable and safe, and there must be a shared respect for each person’s work.

  16. Gorham, email correspondence with the author, April 19, 2011.

  17. Ibid., September 3, 2010.

  18. Ibid., April 19, 2011.

  19. Learn more about Linda Gorham and her work at www.LindaGorham.com.

  Little Ripen Pear

  1. Sierra writes, “. . . in 1910, Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne published a catalog of tale types that today remains the standard system for folktales of European and East Indian origin. Each tale type is basically a plot type, and is assigned both a number and a standard title, for example, Tale type 510A Cinderella. American folklorist Stith Thompson revised Aarne’s work and translated it into English as The Types of the Folktale” (34).

  Hans-Jörg Uther created a more recent revision of Aarne’s and Thompson’s work, thus ATU stands for Aarne, Thompson, Uther. When I have been able to find a tale type, I note it for you at the beginning of the story commentary. Many folktale collections will contain an appendix listing the stories included by tale type. To learn which tale types are included in this book, see the index.

  Why, as a storyteller, do I care about tale types? Many indexes of folktales, Ashliman’s A Guide to Folktales in the English Language for example, are arranged by tale type. Once I know the tale type of a story I’m interested in learning more about, I can use such indexes to locate variants of the story from a wide variety of sources and cultures. Reading multiple variants often provides me with more insight to a story than I can glean from any single version.

  2. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College. For details on all ten versions, see table 1, “Little Ripen Pear” Comparison Chart. It includes the storytellers’ names and the call numbers for the field recordings or the notation “manuscript” for each version.

  3. From 1983 to 1987, while living in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I studied voice with Gordon Van Ry. My goal was not so much to learn to sing as it was to improve my vocal stamina. I chose to work with Mr. Van Ry because he had worked not just with singers, but also with lawyers and others who wanted to improve their speaking voices and with folks in need of vocal rehabilitation. From Mr. Van Ry I learned the importance of vocal warm ups and proper breath support for speaking and singing, which has served me well over my storytelling career. Yes, working with him improved my singing, but the singing was a means to an end, not the goal of our work together.

  4. Trust me, if I knew exactly who to credit with this idea, I would. My memory says I was first introduced to it by Laura Simms, a storyteller who has been an important storytelling teacher for me. However, I have heard this idea stated nearly this same way in almost every storytelling workshop I’ve ever attended.

  I do know it was Laura Simms who introduced me to a wide variety of ways of learning a story, as opposed to a focus on word memorization. Laura also introduced me to Howard Gardner’s work with multiple intelligences when I first studied with her at her 1983 storytelling residency. Working with Laura changed how I go about learning stories and influenced how I help others learn to tell stories now. At Laura’s yearly storytelling residencies, each participant focuses on a single story throughout the week-long residency. I studied with her from 1983 to 1986, in 1988, and again in 2007, when I devoted the week to grappling with “Little Ripen Pear.”

  Learn more about Laura Simms at www.laurasimms.com.

  5. Boyd, On the Origin of Stories, 209. Boyd contends the draw storytelling has for humans stems not just from a love of narrative, but from evolutionary adaptations: “. . . we have evolved to engage in art and in storytelling because of the survival advantages they offer our species. Art prepares minds for open-ended learning and creativity; fiction specifically improves our social cognition and our thinking beyond the here and now.”

  Birch and Heckler express a similar idea: “The evolution of the opposable thumb on the human hand allowed us to grasp, to wield, to manipulate devices both delicately and powerfully. Perhaps stories are a mental opposable thumb, allowing humans to grasp something in their minds—to turn it around, to view it from many angles, to reshape it, and to hurl it even into the farthest reaches of the unconscious” (11).

  Flannel Mouth

  1. Nora M. Lewis Collection, Southern Appalachian Archives, Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, Tale 31c, “Flannel Mouth.”

  2. I have been unable to verify which relative told me this. A number of years passed between that conversation and my decision to write this book. In the interim, the relatives I could recall by name from our brief conversation had either died or suffered disease-related memory loss.

  3. Jack D. Lewis, M.D., correspondence with the author, August 2003.

  4. Nora Morgan Lewis Collection, Southern Appalachian Archives, Berea College, Tale 31c, “Flannel Mouth.” Lewis f
irst wrote out the title as “How She Paid Her Debt,” then marked it out and replaced it with “Flannel Mouth.”

  The Blue Light

  1. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, manuscript, “The Blue Light.” Handwritten notes clearly establish that the story before this one, “The Unwilling House,” comes from Mrs. Dicie Hurley of Majestic, Kentucky, and the story after this one, “Blue Beard,” comes from Mrs. E. McClanahan of Freeburn, Kentucky. “The Blue Light” begins on the same page as “The Unwilling House” and ends on the same page as “Blue Beard.” Mrs. Hurley’s name is written at the top of “The Unwilling House” and Mrs. McClanahan’s name is written at the top of “Blue Beard.” Because this tale is such a close variant of “Blue Beard,” I’m inclined to believe Roberts collected it from Mrs. Dicie Hurley, not Mrs. McClanahan, but I cannot be sure.

  2. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College. On sound recording LR OR O24, Track 2, recorded by Roberts at Polls Creek, Leslie County, Kentucky, on October 15, 1952, Chrisley Day states the story title as “The Three Girls and an Old Man.” On the transcript of Day’s telling, the title is given as “The Bad Old Man.”

  3. WOW (Working on Our Work) Storytelling Weekends were small group storytelling coaching retreat-style events I co-facilitated with Cynthia Changaris from 2001–2011 at her Storyteller’s Riverhouse Bed and Breakfast in Bethlehem, Indiana. At each of the thirty-four WOW Weekends four to ten storytellers from as far away as Florida and the Dakotas gathered as peers to coach each other. During WOW Weekends participants worked on developing stories for telling, storytelling workshops, marketing materials, or other matters related to the art of storytelling, with each participant guaranteed a one-hour turn to put the intelligence of the full group to work in service to whatever that storyteller wanted the group’s help with.

  Cynthia and I participated in the weekend as equal participants, not head coaches. While we did act as facilitators by helping participants use a formal response process, we also each took our own one-hour turns to receive help with our work. We used a five-step response process based on the story coaching techniques developed by storyteller Doug Lipman (see The Storytelling Coach) and the critical response process developed by dancer Liz Lerman (see “Towards a Process for Critical Response”). Learn more about Doug Lipman at www.storydynamics.com. Learn more about Liz Lerman and the book she wrote with John Borstel about the Critical Response Process at http://danceexchange.org/projects/critical-response-process/.

  What set WOW Weekends apart from other storytelling coaching sessions was that we ignored conventional wisdom that all tellers participating in a mutual coaching session needed to already know each other and be at about the same level of telling experience and expertise. Instead we brought strangers together, including relatively new storytellers and storytellers with years of professional experience. Their common bond was a love of storytelling and a desire to give and receive help to strengthen their work. Shared meals and lodging generated the comfort level needed. We treated participants and their work confidentially, and asked all participants to do the same. While new storytellers sometimes worried they had nothing to contribute, they soon understood that the more experienced tellers wanted to create works with audience appeal. When new tellers recounted their experiences as listeners to works in progress, they provided valuable information.

  While I can’t reveal names or specific projects worked on, I can state that work in progress at WOW Weekends wound up in at least three published books and on at least two award-winning CDs. No, we did not keep statistics to track what happened to the participants and their work—those are just results I happen to know about. In addition to working on “The Blue Light” at a WOW Weekend, I also worked on other stories in this book, “Flannel Mouth,” “The Gingerbread Boy,” and “Kate Crackernuts,” when I was first developing my retellings. At our final WOW Weekend in February 2011, participants read and commented on drafts from this book during my one-hour turn.

  4. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, manuscript, “The Blue Light.”

  The Open Grave

  1. Montell, Ghosts Along the Cumberland, 187–190. Lynwood Montell taught at Western Kentucky University from 1969 to 1999 and is the author over twenty books of Kentucky folklore. You can learn more about his work at http://www.wku.edu/Dept/Academic/AHSS/cms/lynwood-montell.

  2. Benjamin, email correspondence with the author, January 27, 2010.

  Tall Tales and Outright Lies

  1. Livo and Rietz, Storytelling, 251.

  2. Sierra, Storytellers’ Research Guide, 4.

  3. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, untitled manuscript. In 1959, Mrs. Madelyn McKamy from Greenup County, Kentucky, reported that the way to put a finishing touch on a tall tale was to say, “Now, everybody that believes this, stand on your right eyebrow.”

  Daniel Boone on the Hunt

  1. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, untitled manuscript. Jean Singleton of Knott County, Kentucky, reported a version in 1961. In that version Will is hunting and a wounded bear attacks with mouth wide open. Evelyn Gooding of Pineville, Bell County, Kentucky, collected a version from Mayme Dean (also of Pineville) during the 1955–1956 school year. Curtis Sams of Bell County, Kentucky, collected a version from seventy-six-year-old S. D. Sams of Girdler, Knox County, Kentucky, in 1957. Zora S. Lovitt from Williamsburg in Whitley County, Kentucky, attributed a first-person version collected in 1957 to eighty-five-year-old Frank Kedd, also of Whitley County, who Lovitt reports was known as “The Great Prevaricator.” None of the reported versions features Daniel Boone, and in all versions the encounter takes place on the ground, not in a tree.

  Farmer Brown’s Crop

  1. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, manuscript, “The Bushel of Corn,” collected by J. D. Calton, n.d.

  Hunting Alone

  1. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, manuscript, “Half Pint,” collected by Walton T. Saylor from Charlie Day, 1956.

  2. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, manuscript, “Tall Tale,” collected by Lena Ratliff from Boon Hall, 1960.

  3. This was the Florida Storytelling Association StoryCamp 2004 at Eckert College, in St. Petersburg, Florida. Learn more about the organization and its events at www.flstory.org.

  Otis Ayers Had a Dog—Two Stories

  1. Thompson, telephone interview with the author, February 17, 2010.

  2. Clarke and Clarke, The Harvest and the Reapers, 98.

  3. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, untitled manuscript, from Cleadia Hall, 1956.

  4. Thompson, telephone interview with the author, February 17, 2010.

  Some Dog

  1. Reading? Yes, that’s what you are doing; however, when I tell the story, of course, I say “hearing.” Should you happen to read this story aloud, “hearing” would be a better word choice for your audience, too. All in all, I’ve tried to make very few changes between these written versions and what I say when I’m telling. Sometimes more words or different words strike me as taking better care of my audience—in this case, you, a reader.

  2. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, untitled manuscript, collected by Euphemia Epperson, 1957. The turtle story is part of a longer untitled tall tale collected by Epperson in Harlan County, Kentucky. A handwritten note on the Epperson manuscript reads: “This was reported to me by one of the evening loafers.” In Epperson’s retelling she uses Ted Middleton, an attendant at the Baxter Service Station, as the narrator whose telling is prompted by three small boys walking by with a turtle they had caught. When one loafer comments, “That’s the biggest turtle I ever saw,” Middleton responds with his tall tale. To read a published version of this story, see: “The Tale of the Big Turkle,” in Roberts, Old Greasybeard, 36–41, 180 (notes).

  Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, untitled manuscript, collected by Charles Patton, 1959. A second giant turtle story in the Leonard Roberts Collection tells of a sheep-stealing turtle. The
narrator kills it with a hog rifle and stores forty bushels of seed corn in the shell. In 1959, Charles Patton of Floyd County, Kentucky, reported collecting this story and two more tall tales from “my uncle who had heard them from an old Sloan man from Caney Creek when he was a boy. The old man would come through Knott and Floyd County selling herbs” (Patton untitled manuscript).

  3. While I have no doubt that I read a reference to this smart dog story in a book, I have been unsuccessful in locating that publication. However, I can verify the tale is in Kentucky folklore because three Kentucky-collected versions are in the Leonard Roberts Collection at Berea College: Charles A. Blair of Letcher County, Kentucky, reported the version “Tall Tales: A Real Hunting Dog” in 1961. William Ace of Leslie County, Kentucky, collected a version (untitled manuscript) in 1957 from Henery Gibson. Elizabeth L. Dye of Knox County, Kentucky, collected the version “A Good Hunting Dog” from Johnie Miracle in 1955.