VOLUME XII DECEMBER 1964 NUMBER 2 NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE ARTHUR PALMER HUDSON Editor ., a CONTENTS·- ... Page INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS: TRADITIONAL FIDDLE TUNES, Joan Moser •••••••••• CRITERIA FOR THE MELODIC CLASSIFICATION OF FOLKSONGS, Patricia Mosely • • • • • • • •••• 9 POTATO LORE, Joseph T. McCullen •••••••••••••••• \ 14 UP IN OLD LORAY: FOLKWAYS OF VIOLENCE IN THE GASTONIA STRIKE, Charles W. Joyner • • • • • • • • • 20 THE OLD BLIND MULE, Mrs. John L. Johnson • • • • • ••• 25 NOTE ON "OLD VIRGINIA NEVER TIRE," Jay B. Hubbell 26 SANDLAPPERS AND CLAY EATERS, Francis W. Bradley • 27 "MY EYES ARE DIM -- I CANNOT SEE" ••••••• 29 FOLKLORE IN THE TRACK OF THE CAT, Jack B. Moore 30 BOOK NOTICES Baum: Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book, Archer Taylor • 35 Poe: My First 80 Years, A. P. Hudson • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 37 Warner: Folk Songs and Ballads of the Eastern Seaboard, A. P. Hudson • 38 A Publication of THE NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE SOCIETY and THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE COUNCIL Chapel Hill NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE Every reader is invited to submit items or manuscriprs for publication, preferably of the length of those in this issue. Subscriptions, other business communications, and contributions should be sent to Arthur Palmer Hudson Editor of North Carolina Folklore The University of North Carolina 710 Greenwood Road Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Annual subscription, $2 for adults, $1 for students (including membership in The North Carolina Folklore Society). Price of this number, $1. THE NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE SOCIETY Holgec 0. Nygard, Durham, President Philip H. Kennedy, Chapel Hill, 1 Vice-President Joan Noser, Brevard, 2 Vice-President Mrs. S, R, Prince, Reidsville, 3 Vice-President A. P, Hudson, Chapel Hill, Secretary-Treasurer The North Ca~olina Folklore Society was organized in 1913, to encourage the collection, study, and publication of North Carolina Folklore. It is affiliated with the American Folklore Society. THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE COUNCIL ..... Arthur Palmer Hudson, Chapel Hill, Chainnan Isaac G. Greer, Chapel Hill, Vice Chainnan /I/only Wade Wei Iman, Chapel Hil I, Secretary The Folklore Council was organized in September, 1935, to promote the cooperation and coordination of all those interested in folklore, and to encourage the collection and preserva­ tion, the study and interpretation, and the active perpetuation and dissemination of all phases of folklore. INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS : TRADITIONAL FIDDLE TUNES By Joan Moser /Miss Moser grew up at Swonnanoo, North Carolina, a doughter of Mr. Artus M . Moser, from-whom she inherited her interest in folk music, and whose extensive folklore collection she has been privileged to use and enjoy. She received her higher educotion at the University of North Carolino {B. A. ond M.A.), with special troining in musicology. Recently she spent a year in Norway, under a Fulbright grant. Since she was sixteen years old, she has ap­ peared severol times on programs of the North Carolina Folklore Society and has served several terms os o vice-president. She is now teaching music at Brevard College. Following is the paper which she presented at a meeting of the Americon Folklore Society, the North Carolina Folklore Society, and other organizotions at Duke University lost April.J Once, when a certain area in London was cleared of old buildings to make a new Kingsway, it loy for o yeor exposed to the I ight and air. A strange sight drew notura I ists to the ruins. In some spots the soi I had not felt the touch of spring since the time of the Romans. When the sun- I ight poured its I ife upon th is uncovered soil, o host of strange flowers sprong up. Some were unknown in Englond. They were the plonts the Romans had brought with them. Hidden oway in dorkness, lying dormont under the mass of bricks ond mortor, they seemed to have died. But under the new conditions, obeying the low of I ife, they escoped from death and blossomed into new beouty. To the foregoing occount there is a close onalogy in the discoveries in folklore which have been proceeding in North Corol ina ond surrounding reg ions for the past holf a century. We are meeting here this weekend to celebrote the completion of o published edition containing some of those discoveries. However, Iest you be satisfied to rest on your lourels and assume thot the bulk of North Corolino's folklore is now represented in the Brown-Collection, or in ony other pub I ished work, I would I ike to suggest that the cose is quite to the controry. To return to the flower anology, for only o moment, I might further suggest thot you have discovered perhops two-thirds of the blossoms thot were really there. There remoins o vitol body of moterial, yet to be explored, more alive today than ballod­ singing or any other orol folk art. Thot extensive body is the instrumentol trodition of fiddle, dulcimer, ond five-string bonjo music. Published editions of this moteriol ore procticolly non­ existent. Of course, one must hove the technicol troining essential for transcription of the music, but even Ceci I Shorp, the first collector to pub I ish his transcriptions of the bol lad tunes, in­ cluded only o holf-dozen or so fiddle tunes which he labeled "jig" tunes. He wos not ignorant of the trodition of instrumentol music, for his Country Donce Book, Port V, deols exclusively with the description of mountoin doncing os he observed it in Kentucky. At o loter dote, Fronk Smith of Berea College included in his book The Appalachian Square Donce transcriptions of nineteen tunes. These frogmentory col Iections of Shorp ond Smith ore obsol utel y the only pub I ished works ovailoble, scholarly or otherwise, of the Appolochian instrumentol trodition. Nor is this lock of documentation of such a vitol trodition peculiar to this region olone. There is o paucity of sources in the United States at large ond hos been for yeors, with the rore exception of Somuel P. Bayard's Pennsylvonio Hil I Country Tunes, published in 1945. Yet, if populor usoge by the "folk" of today is ony meosure of the vitol ity of this materiol, then one must note that in North Corolino, olone, for every festivol or program of ballad­ singing produced todoy, there ore half-a-dozen fiddlers' contests, ot least. Admittedly, the best ballad-singing is a solitary art and not often found a t its best in public performances> yet, it is the value judgements of the folk at large that determine what is to be preserved in oral tradition and what is to be retained in public performances. , . The oldest of these so-called "fiddlers' contests" of predominantly instrumental music is one founded forty years ago at Union Grove, near Statesville. Similar gatherings, to mention a few, are held at Elkin, at Vienna (pronounced Vye-enna), and at Oak Ridge, North Carolina. Often, too, the commercial exploitation of these is far less than that of the ordinary folk festival. The proceeds, for instance, usually go to local non-profit educational or charitable funds, and for this very reason the music is less likely to be "dressed up" for audience appeal. It is performed in more traditional styles than is the case with more commercial and sensation­ seeking festivals. This is not to say that showmanship and artistic virtuosity are missing, by any means, but they do remain within the bounds of traditional practice. Now, you may ask just what is this music that people seem wil I ing to dance to, or I isten to, as is the case with the contests, for half a night or more. On the Saturday night preceding Easter Sunday this year, for instance, I served as a judge for the contest at Union Grove. It started at seven p.m. and went without a break until twelve-thirty a.m. That was only the final evening, too; the preliminary fiddling got under way much earlier in the day. This music is a part of a cultural heritage which extends back as far as the ancient Morris dances and forward as far as modern ragtime and jazz. The tunes the fiddlers play include sw ord dance tunes which have been adapted to square dances, Scottish marches inherited from bagpipe melodies, waltzes of a more recent vintage, and tunes with a definite ragtime beat and tonal organization. To cite an example of but one tune meriting extensive study, there is the one called "Fire on the Mountain" or "Old Daddy Bowback," which is almost note for note the same tune as a Norwegian "Halling" collected by Hansen. Norway, by the way, proceeded in the opposite direction from us in its folk investigations. The definitive edition of Norsk Folkemusikk, like the Brown Collection, contains seven volumes, but in this case, the first three, now complete, are devoted exclusively to fiddle tunes. My own research in Norway and Scandinavia under a Fulbright Grant in 1961 convinced me that comparative studies of the instrumental folk music of American and Scandinavian as well as other European countries merit_ as much attention as have studies in balladry in the past. The function of this music in the folk culture has been twofold--first, to accompany dancing, and second, for recreational listening. Further, since folksong tradition, like its British antecedents, has been one of unaccompanied song, it is mainly in this area of instru­ mental music that one discovers the folk art of building musical instruments and the preservation of a wealth of dance melodies and programmatic tunes. In addition, these tunes are not limited to a couple of dozen only, and they do not all sound the same, as some people have commented to me upon a first hearing.