Appalachian Folklore
The folk tradition of Appalachia and the American frontier: the Scots-Irish, English, and German inheritance, the Cherokee voices, the Mothman and the Jackalope, the ballad tradition, and the modern folk revival.
In this section
Jackalope Origins
The Jackalope, the mythical antlered rabbit of the American West: the European roots in the German wolpertinger, the Scandinavian skvader, and the Navajo antlered rabbit stories, and the brothers Hotelling of Douglas, Wyoming.
Mothman of Point Pleasant
The Mothman, the great red-eyed winged being of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, whose appearances in 1966 and 1967 have become a major modern American folk legend.
Appalachian folklore is the folk tradition of the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, the great range that runs from the Canadian province of New Brunswick to the state of Alabama in the southeastern United States. The tradition is, in one sense, a regional tradition, the folk of a particular mountain country, and in another sense, a national tradition, for the Appalachian voices have been among the most influential in the shaping of American national identity. The tradition is built from the meeting of several European immigrant groups — chiefly the Scots-Irish, the English, the Germans, and the French Huguenots — with the African survivors of the slave trade and the Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, Catawba, and other indigenous nations whose lands they crossed. The result is a tradition that is at once European, African, indigenous, and distinctively American.
The Appalachian region has been a centre of American folk life for centuries. The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, the Blue Ridge of Virginia and the Carolinas, the Cumberland Plateau of Kentucky and Tennessee, the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and Missouri — these are the landscapes of the tradition. The people of the region are descended from the settlers who came in the great wave of European immigration of the eighteenth century, especially the Scots-Irish who came from Ulster to Philadelphia and then moved south and west into the frontier, the English who came to the lowlands of Virginia and the Carolinas, and the Germans who came to the Pennsylvania Dutch country and then to the Shenandoah Valley and the Texas Hill Country.
The Scots-Irish Inheritance
The Scots-Irish (or Ulster Scots) were among the most important of the immigrant groups who shaped the Appalachian tradition. The Scots-Irish were Presbyterians from the Lowlands of Scotland who had moved to the Ulster plantation of Ireland in the seventeenth century, and who had then moved to the American colonies in the eighteenth century to escape the harshness of the English rule in Ireland. They came in great numbers to the backcountry of Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee, and they were the dominant group in much of the Appalachian settlement.
The Scots-Irish brought with them the ballad tradition of the British Isles, the fairy belief, the devil lore, and the Prebyterian religion. The ballad tradition is the great treasure of the older Appalachian folk, and many of the older Appalachian ballads — Barbara Allen, The Twa Sisters, The House Carpenter, Lord Randall, Sir Patrick Spens, The Maid Freed from the Gallows — are direct descendants of the older British and Scottish ballads. The Fairy Faith of the older Appalachian folk, the belief in the little people of the hills and the streams, is a direct continuation of the older Scottish and Irish belief in the sídhe and the daoine sìth. The devil of the older Appalachian folk, the figure of the Old Boy who appears at the crossroads, who can outrun a horse, and who can be outwitted only by a clever preacher or a clever horse-trader, is a direct continuation of the older British devil of the medieval and early modern period.
The great ballad of John Henry, the steel-driving man who beat the steam drill and died with his hammer in his hand, is one of the great folk creations of the Appalachian tradition. John Henry is said to have been born in West Virginia (some accounts say New Jersey, some say Alabama), to have worked on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in the Big Bend Tunnel of West Virginia, and to have died shortly after his great contest with the steam drill in the 1870s. The ballad of John Henry was collected in the early twentieth century, and the figure has become one of the great American folk heroes.
The great ballad of Matty Groves (also known as Little Musgrave), a British ballad that was carried to the Appalachian mountains, is one of the great tragic love ballads of the tradition. The Tragic Romance of Fair Ellen of the mountain country, the Tom Dooley of the North Carolina outlaw, the Omie Wise of the North Carolina murder ballad — these are some of the great ballads of the Appalachian tradition.
The English and German Inheritance
The English settlers of the lowland South and the German settlers of the Pennsylvania Dutch country, the Shenandoah Valley, and the Texas Hill Country brought their own traditions. The English contributed the Jack Tales of the clever young man who outwits the rich and powerful, the tales of the Devil and the Doctor, the tales of the witch who can be defeated by the right word at the right time, and the tales of the ghost who is trapped in a particular place and who can be released only by a particular act. The German settlers brought the Hexerei tradition, the folk magic in which a healer could cure illness and protect against witchcraft through a mixture of Christian prayer and inherited charms, and the Powwowing tradition, a similar practice of folk magic in the Pennsylvania Dutch country.
The Pennsylvania Dutch tradition of the Powwower (the folk healer who uses the inherited charms) is a major strand of the older Appalachian tradition. The powwower’s book, the Long Lost Friend (the title of the great powwower’s manual published by John George Hohman in 1819), contains the inherited charms for protection, healing, and the undoing of witchcraft. The Hex (the witchcraft itself) is a major figure of the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition, and the Hex-meister (the practitioner of the dark arts) is a major figure. The Hexenbrennen (the witch-burning) tradition, in which a stuffed figure of a witch is burned at the spring, is a major folk ritual of the Pennsylvania Dutch country.
The Cherokee and African Inheritances
The Cherokee of the southern Appalachians had a rich and developed folk tradition when the European settlers arrived, and the tradition has been carried into the modern period. The Cherokee language is still spoken by thousands of people in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, and the Cherokee Heritage Center in Cherokee, North Carolina is a major centre of the modern Cherokee cultural revival. The Trail of Tears of 1838, in which the Cherokee were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and relocated to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), is one of the great tragic events of American history, and the memory of the event is a major theme of the modern Cherokee tradition.
The African heritage of the Appalachian tradition has been less well documented, but it is a major part of the tradition. The African-American communities of the Appalachian foothills, especially in the Carolina Piedmont and the Tennessee Valley, have kept the older African traditions of the conjure and the rootwork, the spirituals and the ring shout, the ballad and the blues. The banjo, the great instrument of the Appalachian tradition, is descended from the West African akonting and the related instruments of the region, and the banjo music of the Appalachian foothills is one of the great bodies of American folk music.
The African-American ballad tradition, in particular, has been a major influence on the Appalachian tradition. The ballad of John Henry, the ballad of Stagolee (the bad man of St. Louis), the ballad of Frankie and Johnny (the bad man of St. Louis), the ballad of Delia (the murdered woman of Savannah) — all of these are African-American ballads that have been adopted into the broader Appalachian tradition.
The Cryptid Tradition
The Appalachian tradition has been a major centre of the cryptid tradition of the United States. The great cryptids of the region include the Mothman of Point Pleasant, the great red-eyed winged being who appeared in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966 and 1967; the Jersey Devil of the Pine Barrens of New Jersey; the Bell Witch of Adams, Tennessee; the Hodag of Rhinelander, Wisconsin; the Snallygaster of Frederick County, Maryland; the Flatwoods Monster of Braxton County, West Virginia; the Beast of Busco of Churubusco, Indiana; the Champ of Lake Champlain; the Wendigo of the northern United States and Canada; and the Momo the Monster of Missouri.
The Jersey Devil, said to be the thirteenth child of a woman named Mother Leeds who cursed it at birth, has been reported from the Pine Barrens since the early eighteenth century. The figure is described as a creature with the head of a goat, the body of a kangaroo, the wings of a bat, and the hooves of a horse, and it is said to kill livestock, eat crops, and terrorize the residents of the Pine Barrens. The Jersey Devil has been the subject of much research and much popular interest, and the figure has become a major folk figure of New Jersey.
The Bell Witch, said to have haunted the family of John Bell in Adams, Tennessee in the early nineteenth century, is one of the great American ghost stories. The Bell Witch is said to have pulled the covers off the beds, knocked on the walls, sang in the night, and finally caused the death of John Bell himself. The figure has been the subject of books, films, and television shows, and the Bell Witch Cave of Adams is a major tourist attraction.
The Hodag of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, was the hoax creature of the lumber baron Eugene Shepard in 1893, but the figure has lived on in the folk memory of the upper Midwest. The Hodag is described as a creature with the head of a frog, the body of a bear, the claws of a lobster, and the tail of a lizard, and it is said to be the most dangerous creature of the North Woods.
The Folk Music Tradition
The Appalachian folk music tradition is one of the great bodies of American folk music. The tradition includes the ballad tradition, the old-time music tradition, the bluegrass tradition, the country tradition, and the blues tradition. The great instrument of the tradition is the banjo, the fiddle, the guitar, the dulcimer, the mandolin, the autoharp, and the harmonica.
The old-time music tradition is the older tradition of the Appalachian music, the music of the string band of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The tradition includes the great string bands of the early twentieth century, including the Carter Family of Virginia (recorded at the Bristol Sessions of 1927, which is often called the big bang of country music), the Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers of Georgia, the Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers of North Carolina, and the Clarence Ashley of North Carolina.
The bluegrass tradition is the modern tradition of the Appalachian music, the music of the Bill Monroe tradition of the 1940s and the great bands of the 1950s, 1960s, and beyond. The tradition includes the great bluegrass bands of the twentieth century, including the Blue Grass Boys of Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers of Virginia, the Osborne Brothers of Kentucky, the Flatt and Scruggs of Tennessee, and the New Grass Revival of the 1970s and 1980s.
The Folk Healer and the Snake-Handler
The Appalachian folk healer, the root doctor or granny woman (or granny midwife), is a major figure of the older tradition. The folk healer uses a mixture of herbal medicine, prayer, and inherited formulae to cure illness and to protect the family. The root doctor’s bag contains the roots, the barks, the leaves, the flowers, the seeds, and the stones of the trade, and the knowledge of how to use them. The granny woman is the older midwife of the tradition, the woman who has learned the art of the birth from her mother and her grandmother, and who is the most respected member of the rural community.
The snake-handling church is a particular Appalachian tradition, the practice of the handling of venomous snakes in the worship service as a sign of the faith of the believer. The tradition has its roots in the Pentecostal revival of the early twentieth century, and it is associated especially with the Church of God in Cleveland, Tennessee and the House of Prayer of the Appalachian and the Cumberland regions. The tradition is now protected by the law of the state of West Virginia (the only state with a specific law allowing the practice), but the tradition is in decline and is now carried on by only a few small congregations.
The Modern Revival
The Appalachian folk tradition has experienced a major revival since the 1990s. The Appalachian Studies Association, founded in 1977, has been a major centre of the academic study of the region. The Appalachian Regional Commission, founded in 1965, has been a major centre of the economic and cultural development of the region. The Appalachian Trail, the great hiking trail that runs from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine, has been a major centre of the cultural life of the region, and the trail has its own folk traditions of music, story, and community.
The modern folk revival of the Appalachian tradition has been particularly important. The acoustic music revival of the 1960s and 1970s, the old-time music revival of the 1990s and 2000s, the banjo revival of the 2000s and 2010s, and the podcast tradition of the 2010s and 2020s have all contributed to the revival of the Appalachian tradition. The folklorists of the modern revival, including the Ralph Rinzler of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the Mike Seeger of the American Folklife Center, the John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers, and the many others, have worked to keep the older tradition alive.