4. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, Epperson manuscript.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Tale Talk, a monthly gathering of storytellers in the Louisville area, has met monthly for over twenty years now. Participants are welcome to tell old favorites, new work, or be supportive listeners for others’ tellings.
9. Folklorists have identified the split dog story as tale type 1889L, one of many tales known collectively as Munchausen tales. For more information on the mix of folk and literary heritage of Munchausen tales, see Ashliman, A Guide to Folktales in the English Language, 300.
10. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, untitled manuscript. In 1960, Dorothy Major from Greenup County, Kentucky, collected a version from Marquita Dunaway, age eighteen, also from South Shore, Greenup County (untitled manuscript).
In the Appalachian Sound Archives, see LR OR 012, Track 15, Dewey Adams recorded by Leonard Roberts in Perry County, Kentucky. For a published version of Adams’s telling, see: Roberts, “The Split Dog,” South From Hell-fer-Sartin, 145, 262 (notes).
11. The Meade County Fair takes place every summer. It probably evolved from the Meade County school fairs my parents (Robert F. Hamilton Jr. and Martha Jane Hager Hamilton, both born in 1930) remember attending during their childhoods. Those events featured students from each school marching in parade and being judged for their parade presentation. There were academic competitions, livestock competitions, bicycle races, a small carnival ride area, and more. My parents recall the Meade County school fairs taking place on the grounds of what was once Brandenburg High School, near the corner of Bland and West Broadway in Brandenburg, Kentucky.
During my childhood (I was born in 1952), we attended the fair every summer. I looked forward to catching up with friends I hadn’t seen since the end of the school year. In my memory the Meade County Fair always took place in Brandenburg, Kentucky, the same location as today (the northeast corner of the intersection of Highways 1692 and 1051; for locals that’s Fairgrounds Road and Brandenburg By-pass). I don’t recall how long the fair ran when I was young, but today the Meade County Fair is an eight-day event with over 45,000 paid admissions. (This in a county with a population of 28,602 in the 2010 census.) The 2010 fair featured a parade (no unaccompanied pets allowed), entertainment shows including a Community Gospel Sing, and competitions galore—beauty pageants, a talent contest, baby shows, livestock shows, tractor pulls, demolition derbies (even a lawn mower demolition derby), a Rook tournament, 4-H and FFA events, a Guitar Hero contest, a 5K race and other athletic events, a cornhole tournament, and exhibits where judges awarded prizes for fruits and vegetables, field crops and forages, plants and flowers, fine arts, cooking, canning, sewing, knitting, quilting, and much, much more. Learn more, including upcoming Meade County Fair dates, at www.meadecountyfair.com.
12. I’m not talking about raising and lowering of the theatrical fourth wall. Instead I’m referring to something more akin to meta-narration and narration. The theatrical fourth wall is already down in the telling of a story.
More Kentucky Folktales
1. Lindahl, American Folktales from the Collections of the Library of Congress, 1:lii.
The Enormous Bear
1. Spellings vary. I’ve seen “Sody Sallyraytus” (Chase, Grandfather Tales, 75–80), “Sody Saleratus” (Tashjian, Juba This and Juba That, 55–59), and “Sody Sallyrytus” (MacDonald, Twenty Tellable Tales, 79–89). I’ve spelled it like I pronounce it.
2. Roberts, Old Greasybeard, 44–47.
3. Roberts, South From Hell-fer-Sartin, 155–156.
4. Ibid., 157–158.
5. Roberts, Sang Branch Settlers, 256–257.
6. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College. For details on all eight versions, see table 2, “The Enormous Bear” Comparison Chart. It includes the storytellers’ names and the call numbers for Roberts’s field recordings. To learn more about Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship, see http://www.berea.edu/hutchinslibrary/specialcollections/amfp/amfp.asp.
7. To learn more about Barbara Freeman and Connie Regan-Blake, see note 6 in the Introduction.
8. Ed Stivender has told stories professionally since 1977. Learn more about Ed by contacting [email protected].
9. Chase, Grandfather Tales, 75–80.
10. Ibid., vii. “In this book I have taken a free hand in the re-telling. I have put each tale together from different versions, and from my own experience in telling them. I have told the tales to all kinds of listeners, old and young; and only then, after many tellings, written them down.”
11. Chase, Grandfather Tales, 235. Chase notes the tale was collected from “Kena Adams of Wise County, Virginia.”
12. Chase, Grandfather Tales, vii.
13. Davis, Telling Your Own Stories, 76–83.
The Farmer’s Smart Daughter
1. Campbell, Tales from the Cloud Walking Country, 198–200.
2. Ibid., 261.
3. Ashliman, A Guide to Folktales in the English Language, 175.
4. Campbell, Tales from the Cloud Walking Country, 199.
5. Ibid., 200.
The Fortune Teller
1. Black, interview with the author, January 2009 and January 2011.
The Princess Who Could Not Cry
1. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, LR OR 003, Track 3, “The Princess That Could Not Cry,” collected from Agnes Valentine, 1949.
2. DeSpain, Thirty-Three Multicultural Tales to Tell, 47–49, 122 (notes).
Rawhead and Bloody Bones
1. Ashliman lists over fifty different variants.
Ruth Stotter’s book, The Golden Axe, includes the full text of thirty-three variants, summaries of seventeen more, plus summaries of another six in her notes on the other tales.
In my own artist-in-residence work for the Kentucky Arts Council, I have found the underlying pattern in tale type 480 is so strong that, once exposed to several variants, even young elementary school students are capable of creating original stories using the folktale plot type as a base.
2. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College. Stand-alone versions collected by Roberts include: LR OR 002, Track 6, “Rawhead and Bloody Bones,” recorded from Jane Muncy, age eleven, from Leslie County, who heard stories from her grandmother, recorded in October 1949; LR OR 016, Track 7, “Rawhead and Bloody Bones,” recorded from Patricia McCoy, age eighteen, from Leslie County, who heard it from her grandmother, recorded in May 1950; LR OR 028, Track 3, “To the End of the World,” recorded from Dave Couch in 1952 near Putney, Harlan County, Kentucky.
The segments where the girls encounter the rawhead and bloody bones at the well are included in multiple versions of a longer story, LR OR 056, Track 15, “Rushy Coat,” recorded from Rachel Williams by Leonard Roberts, and in additional manuscripts collected by students of Leonard Roberts. One version, “Russia Coat,” was collected from Margaret Mosley by Elizabeth Lee Dye, in Knox County, Kentucky, in 1955. Four versions were collected by Gerald Syme of Knox County, Kentucky, in 1958: (1) “Rusha Coat,” collected by Gerald Syme (his source is not given); (2) “Rusha Coat,” told by Margaret Mosley and written down by Geneva Mosley; (3) “Rushy Coat,” collected by Gerald Syme from Mary Hannah Marcum; and (4) “Rusha Coat,” “told to Georgia Williams by her mother Mrs. George Williams” (note at beginning of the story) and/or “told by Rachel Williams most of this recorded from Mrs. Miracle, Trosper, [Knox County] KY” (note at end of story).
3. Nora Morgan Lewis Collection, Berea College, Tale 32e, “Rawhead and Bloody Bones.” Nora Morgan Lewis was an aunt of Jane Muncy, from whom Leonard Roberts recorded a version of the tale, cited above. Jane Muncy reported hearing many stories from her grandmother, Nora Morgan Lewis’s mother. Notes at the end of the Lewis manuscript state, “It is a story passed down from many generations and told to the children, especially at family gatherings and events such as July 4th or Christmas.”
To learn more about the st
orytelling traditions in the family of Jane Muncy and Nora Morgan Lewis, see works by folklorist Carl Lindahl listed in the bibliography. Lindahl’s book in progress about the life and work of Leonard Roberts, tentatively titled One Time: The Kentucky Mountain Folktale World of Leonard Roberts, will also contain information about Nora Morgan Lewis and Jane Muncy.
4. The rawhead and bloody bones characters from the well are sometimes called bloody heads, sometimes bloody skeletons, but the visual image is consistently of a raw, bloodied head and bones, except in the Couch version, where this role is played by little foxes laying in the road. Many people also use “rawhead and bloody bones” as synonymous with the “boogyman” that will get you if you don’t behave. Before encountering the phrase in this story, that was the only way I’d heard it used. However, the rawhead and bloody bones in this story struck me as powerful but—as voiced by the various recorded storytellers—not especially terrifying or even threatening.
5. Leonard Roberts Collection, Berea College, LR OR 016, Track 7, “Rawhead and Bloody Bones,” recorded from Patricia McCoy, age eighteen, from Hyden, Leslie County, Kentucky.
Kate Crackernuts
1. Jacobs, English Fairy Tales, 258 (source note), 198–202 (“Kate Crackernuts”).
2. Lang, “English and Scottish Fairy Tales,” 289–312 (“The Story of Kate Crackernuts,” 299–301).
3. Dallas Morning News, “Jury Convicts Mom of Hiring Hit Man in Cheerleader Case,” September 4, 1991; Kennedy, “Cheerleader’s Mother Guilty in Murder Plot,” Los Angeles Times, September 4, 1991; Koidin, “ ‘Cheerleader Mom’ Freed After Serving Six Months,” Texas News, March 1, 1997.
4. See the note 4 in “Little Ripen Pear” for information on Laura Simms.
5. Candy Kopperud heard “Kate Crackernuts” at a two-day storytelling course she coordinated and co-taught with me at Palmer Public Library in 2001. Participants had received copies of my outline, time line, and map in advance as examples for their own workshop preparations. At the end of the course, they wanted to hear the story told.
6. The mother was not jailed the entire time. Koidin reported that the mother “served six months of a 10-year sentence” and “initially was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1991. That conviction was overturned when it was discovered a juror was on probation.” Smith reports, “On September 9, 1996, a month before her second trial was to begin, she pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.”
The King and His Advisor
1. Umang Badhwar, correspondence with the author. The story arrived as one note in a packet of thank you notes from the Thompson students given to me by her teacher, Mrs. Frona Foner. A subsequent letter from Umang Badhwar to me is postmarked May 19, 1986.
2. Mohanty, “What God Allows Is for Man’s Good,” Folk Tales of Orissa, 84–86. Folk Tales of Orissa is the fourth volume in a twenty-volume series of folk tale collections from various places and people of India, published by Sterling Publishers.
3. Mohanty footnotes Savaras as “An aboriginal tribe of Orissa. The Savaras are great hunters” (85).
4. Mohanty, Folk Tales of Orissa, 13.
5. Email correspondence with Umang Badhwar, November 20, 2011.
6. The version of the story I received in the mail from Umang and reprint in this book, was her translation of the story from her first language, Hindi, into her second language, English. She not only translated the story when she was thirteen, but she also retold it simply so I would be able to grasp the basic plot.
7. Phone call with Umang Badhwar, November 27, 2011.
8. Umang Badhwar explained her understanding of the story in a phone call with me on November 27, 2011. She also observed that whenever she tells the story to her brother’s children, she always begins with wording like, “Once upon a time there was a king in India,” and then she describes the grandeur of his palace so her listeners will know he is truly a powerful and wealthy king.
9. Email correspondence with Umang Badhwar, November 20, 2011.
10. According to family genealogy records, my first ancestor to die in Kentucky was George Edelen, born in Maryland in 1760 and died in Kentucky in 1809. The first to be born in Kentucky was Nelson Claycomb, born 1811 to parents born in Virginia. The last to be born outside the United States was either Daniel Foushee, born in France in 1775, or his son William Foushee, a great-great-great-great-great grandparent, who was born 1795 in an unknown place and died in Kentucky in 1860. In addition to strong Kentucky ties, I also have strong ancestral ties within Meade County and neighboring Breckinridge County. I must go back to my great-great grandparents to find an ancestor who was not born in one of those two counties.
11. Lane, Picturing the Rose, 9.
Rabbit and the Alligators
1. MacDonald, The Storyteller’s Sourcebook, 285.
2. One print variant of the tale I suspect I had read and barely recalled that long ago day was “The Counting of the Crocodiles,” in Courlander, The Tiger’s Whisker, 87–89. This version is a Japanese folktale. Courlander refers to other Asian variants in his notes.
Another was “Why Rabbit Has a Short Tail,” in Leach, How the People Sang the Mountains Up, 69. In her notes Leach cites A. H. Fauset, Negro Tales From the South, published in 1925, and discusses other variants.
I suspect these are the variants I had read because these sources were part of the folktale collection in the children’s department of the Grand Rapids Public Library.
3. “One, two buckle my shoe” is in #385 in Opie and Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 333. They cite many sources from the 1800s and state the rhyme was in use as early as 1780 in Wrentham, Massachusetts. Versions described include counting going up to twenty and thirty.
4. My first audiocassette, The Winter Wife and Other Stories, recorded in 1988, included both “Rabbit and the Alligators” and “Jeff Rides the Rides,” told in the Family Tales and Personal Narratives section of this book. I later released “Rabbit and the Alligators” on my CD Alligators, Bees, and Surprise, Oh My! Folktales Revived! a compilation of several previously recorded tales from my early audiocassettes. The CD won a 2010 Honor Title Storytelling World Award in the Storytelling Recordings category.
Family Tales and Personal Narratives
1. Montell, Don’t Go Up Kettle Creek, 8.
2. Lee, “Folk Narrative,” 337.
3. I understand that the story is not the same as the experience. While the experience is actually lived, the story of the experience is created or made up. Even though transforming an experience into a story may involve embellishment or reshaping, the resulting story is still essentially true. In my family, when we say, “You made that up,” in response to something we’ve just heard, we mean the person is not telling the truth, but is instead attempting deception.
A Place to Start
1. Uncle Sammy went to Flaherty Elementary, in Meade County, Kentucky.
Jeff Rides the Rides
1. To learn more about the Meade County Fair, see note 11 from “Some Dog” or visit www.meadecountyfair.com. Also, the fair does not take place in August, but in July. In the telling, Jeff’s annoying us from April to August simply sounds better than his annoying us from April to July.
2. I recorded this story on my first audiocassette, The Winter Wife and Other Stories, in 1988. I recorded it a second time for my Some Dog and Other Kentucky Wonders CD in 2001. It ran five seconds shorter the second time around, and no, I haven’t attempted to figure out what changed!
3. This is not the only story Jeff used in his vocal music classroom. Early in each school year Jeff also told his students about the time he, our other brothers, and our father were in the tobacco barn, stripping tobacco, and Daddy asked them how they would manage to run the farm if he died. Jeff replied that he would climb the silo so he could see what other nearby farmers were doing, and the next day he would do that. Of course, climbing a silo has nothing to do with singing, so his students thought they were just being entertained inst
ead of working when he told that story in chorus class. However, in a chorus it is very important to listen to those singing around you. After a student missed a chorus class, all Jeff needed to say was “climb the silo” and the returning student knew to listen to other singers in the same vocal section to learn missed material.
Jump Rope Kingdom
1. The story appeared on my CD Some Dog and Other Kentucky Wonders.
2. Munds and Millett, The Scenic Route, preface. Learn more about Storytelling Arts of Indiana at www.storytellingarts.org. Some of you may question whether Kentucky can be considered a midwestern state. In the A Kentucky Journey exhibit at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History, there is a display which talks of Kentucky’s role as a border state during the Civil War. It concludes with, “The debate over Kentucky’s regional identity continues today. Some geographers classify Louisville and Covington as midwestern cities. Others identify the state as southern on the basis of cultural characteristics. Kentuckians surveyed in 1988 identified themselves as southerners, but respondents in states to the south did not include the commonwealth in this region.”
3. Medway Elementary is in the Tecumseh Local School District in New Carlisle, Ohio. I told stories at the district schools in 1993, 1994, and 1996. I’m not sure which year I told the story. Many thanks to the current library aides at Medway and Donnelsville Elementary Schools, Jo Ruiz and Helen Mullins, for using my fifteen-year-old memory of a school library configuration to help me identify the specific school in which I overheard this conversation.
Kentucky Folktales Page 22
