Western Kentucky University TopSCHOLAR® Faculty/Staff Personal Papers WKU Archives Records 1950 UA37/44 Tidbits of Kentucky Folklore Gordon Wilson Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/fac_staff_papers Part of the Folklore Commons, Journalism Studies Commons, Linguistic Anthropology Commons, Mass Communication Commons, Oral History Commons, and the Social History Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty/Staff Personal Papers by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ORIGINALS TIDBITS OF KENTUCKY FOLKLORE by Gordon Wilson Vol. V Nos, 750 - 899 Missing: #800, 801,802,805,806, 832,857,858 ,Tid Bits Article 750 ADUL1'S AND CHILDREN Right now there is a growing tend,,ncy to g£t more and more folklore into text­ books for children; a very good idea, of course, but I cannot help being a little concerned with the likelihood that this !'lay make adults think that folklore is so!'le­ thing purely childish, I am certainly in favor of having folk idea~ taught and ex­ plained to children of all ages, We need to have our backgrounds made more clear; too long we have talked about our lengendary past with more warmth than sense, If it is good for children to be taught basie phases of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and is equally good for them to know the b0lids of their ancestors. Many of the traditional things that children know anyway c.:tn thus be dignified by having them made a serious part of their education, Properly taught, folklore can thus become of as great moment as any part of the curriculum. One of my fears, however, is that we may overemphasize the folk elem,mt at the wrong time in the child I s growing up, We 'mc1y get the child to thinking that hu­ manity, as the well-kno~m old Quaker said to his wife, is queer, that is, all except us, Since authentic folklore is not easily obtained for use in schools, a lot of bogus folklore, such a1o is bGing turned out--I should s,ty ground out--by some of our nati vo KentucJCians could easily dwarf the child I s mind and make him believe that Kentucky, for example, is merely Doepatch of Lil Rbner fame, Another fear I have is that grown-ups will come to think of folklore as some­ thing they learned about in the early grades and proceeded to forget or grow away from as they became more and more sophisticated, !~my shallow peoplo whom I have known have felt that they were learned in Longfellow, for instance, because they memorized a few of his simpler lyrics when they were little childrGn; unfortunat0ly, many of these same people have not read a line of Longfellow or any other poet since poetry was an assignment in a schoolroom. Physically and financially such people have grown, but thoir tastes in podry became fi.xed entirely too early, Some people whdm I often run into havo alr0ady developed this aloof attitude toward folklore and assume that only the very young or the very simple-minded could possibly know Tid Bits Article 750 Pago 2 or care anything about it, As I have said, probably too rnany tirnes, in this column, folklore rumi through justabout everything we do. If we destroyed the folk attitudes we possess, we would have a very slender basis for our sophisticated education, Even bookish people like rne, with omnivorous appetites for anything that has ever appeared in print, are not half so bookish as they love to fancy themselves. Even the books they read are read in an atmosphere of folk thinking and folk reasoning. A few nights ago I heard a great speaker describe very effectively the age-old strata of rocks visible in a deep canyon of the West. I am sure that only a wery small per­ centage of the college audience got tho point that he tried to convey, so set are they in their own early ways of thinking, when a few thousand yEOars seemed longer than any geological eternity could seem now to a thinker. I could almost detect the self-satisfied smiles on the faces of some of the audience whon the speaker casually alluded to millions of ye ctrs that stand pictured in that canyon wall• Podunk and its early folk point of view triumphed in many a mind that night, and the pathetic thing roeut it all is that that very triumph closed the gates to any further effort to comprehend the vast stretch of time and space. Talk llbout foll,lorc; that audience probably had as big a share of it as any similar group you could g11ther, in spite of the seeming breadth of view symbolized by the college where the speech took place. Now there is a grown-up chance to see that folklore enters into the life ;:;nd thought o.f every type of porson, into the most bookish or the mos·:; il1i·0er­ ate mind. Tid Bits Article 751 Page 1 THREE AGE'J OF FARMING Though I have not yet attained to great age, I have known three ages of farm­ ing, at least so far as Kentucky and its adjoining states are concerned. When I was a boy, the farmer still had some of his ancient honor as a basic worker, Had not Adam himself been a farmer? Farms were self-sustaining; even small ones seerned able to feed and clothe large farnilies, in the stylfl of the time. No one looked down at his nose at a farmer except some city upstart who failed to realize that his own meat a.nd bread came from the very farms that he sneered at, No one apologized for having beGn reared on a farm: most people were proud of this fact and saw no rec1son to regard the farm and farming as the best things in the world. Neighborliness, swapping work, cleaning off the graveyard, house-raisings, barn­ raisings, hog-killings--these and dozens of othcer things brouglt farmers t,ogcthcr and helped·_ weld the farm economy into a .unit, Howevc·r much politics and rnligion may have separated people on some occasions, a neighbor was a nciehbor, to be helped, to be tr0ated like another hwn"-11 being, to be endured if he• were not exact­ ly like -everybody else;, Self-sufficiency was the ru:ie, not the exception, 1dth the coming of the railroad and th8 automobile, the farmor underwent a great decline, Thousands of farmers, especially the younger ones, sought jobs in tho cities and the factories. For some three decades the farm ,seemed to go clown whilo the farmer was adjusting himself to new conditions, The horse-md-buggy days died within a few years, but it was still a while before the tracter succeeded the mule, One-crop farming, in many areas, got a black eye, Hosts of one-crop farmers did not know how to adjust to more general farming and left t,he farms to work in factories. For a "time the farm child was loft far behind in educational advant,ages, as compared with the town or city child, The farmer, formerly literally the "lord of th8 earth, 11 caJ!lBto be. ashamed of his calling and often unable to compete wit,h other business men, But, humrmj_t,y has to ec,t, and clothes arc still necessary, Within the last Tid Bits Article 751 Page 2 fifteen years farming has become adjusted to changed conditions and has become one of the skilled business ortrades thdt men pursue, No longer do men cast se0ds into the ground and J.ope for the best. Armed with the latest agricultural knowledge,, they plant and fertili 2,e, they rec!p and mow, according to te.ste,d procedure. The old myth of cultivating many acres to be a big farmer died slowly, but now few people judge a farmer merely by his acreage, By careful selection of improved seeds, such as hybrid corn, the present-day farmer is realizing some acutual profit on his labor and time, This profit is evident in the lone-nesded improvements in his livine conditions, in his ease of manner, for is he not a business man amone business men? When I remember how a few yeDrs ago pcopl8 sneered a-y the wisdom of farmers, I wish I could place some of the scorners in the presence of dozens of farmers whom I know personally, A compact, growir,e group of skilled men such as the farmers in my area cannot be found in any other eroµp of people. Somethine of the elderly dignity of farming is here again, Two inventions have done much to make this condition possible: the tractor and R, F:, A, Hundreds of farm homes are now the equal of the best the cities or suburban areas have to offer, I refuse to be a prophet, for I have too often seen prophets come to grief; but I can see no reason why farming cannot romain, as it now is, a business cha.lleneing the best minds and brint3ing a great satisfaction as a profc,ssion. I hope the careless, ignorant rEif Prences to farmers as a class h«vc had their day and will come no more, Tid Bits ,\rticle 752 Pagel N,\MES 11ND PLACES In my vacs.tion in 1949 I was standing one morning looking out over a wild array of mountain scenory in Virginia when the thought suddenly struck me that every field in the mar-like view, evfiry stream, evrcry road or trail had its n'.'lme, some­ times one of vc,r,, long standing, Many of the, fields had ceased to be cultivated and had been taken over by a grc:at nationnl forest; others were still growing crops on their stc,,p acres.