Music: Singin’ Gatherin’

The mountain folk of Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas still follow customs and use much of the lingo of their early colonial ancestors. Though many of them are illiterate, they have handed down by word of mouth, from generation to generation, ballads and hymns that can be traced to Elizabethan England. Still popular among them are such hoary items as Sir Patrick Spens, Barbara Allen, Robin Hood and Little John.

Last week mountain folk from near & far gathered on the hills near Ashland, Ky. for Ashland’s 8th annual American Folk Song Festival. Local roads were choked by the unaccustomed burden of some 6,000 tourists who had come to see the fun. Present were such upland musical celebrities as bristle-bearded Fiddler Jilson Setters and Brother Dawson of Rowan County, who leads his Gregorian Chanters through old liturgical chants. Also present, in full plaid regalia, were ballad-singing Director Lyda Messer Caudill, direct hillbilly descendant of Mary Queen of Scots, and Author Jean Thomas,* “traipsin’ woman” who founded the festival after “traipsin'”all over the neighboring mountains collecting the songs of the mountaineers.

Not all the ballads of the Southern mountain folk have been kept in cold storage since the 17th Century. The hillbillies have inherited not only ballads, but also the tradition of creating them. For three years, Dr. Edwin Capers Kirkland, professor of English at the University of Tennessee, has, like Author Thomas, chased folk songs deep into the Southern Appalachians. Dr. Kirkland has found that twangy-voiced mountain singers and guitar pickers are making ballads from yesterday’s newspaper headlines.

One such ballad, recently created, celebrates the deeds of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Brave Engineer (to the tune of Casey Jones). Sample stanzas:

Now some folks kick, say he didn’t cut his pay; Remember, he’s not fishing, he’s working every day; He gave the Republicans a mighty slam; He didn’t take twelve years to start the Coal Creek Dam. He sent word to foreign countries, both near and far Just what to expect if they started to war ; He put the mills to working under the N. R. A. Which means shorter hours, and much more pay. He’s made his stand, and you know he’s tried; He’s made many friends on the Republican side; He’s balanced the budget with revenue; He’s brought back whiskey and the three point two. An older one. called the Tennessee Evolution Song, commemorates Tennessee’s famous Scopes Trial: Then to Dayton came a man with his ideas so grand, And he said we sprang from monkeys long ago; But in teaching his belief Mr. Scopes found only grief, For they would not let their old religion go.

*Whose latest book (THE SINGIN’ FIDDLER OF LOST HOPE HOLLOW—Button, $2.50), a biography of her colleague, Fiddler Setters, was published last fortnight.