We’re back with another episode of the Folklife Today podcast! Find it at this page on the Library’s website, or through your usual podcatcher.
It’s October, and we thought it was time for the return of the Halloween episode! In this latest foray, John Fenn and I continue our discussion with Hanna Salmon about the new Research Guide “Folktales and Oral Storytelling: Resources in the American Folklife Center Collections.” Then we introduce some of our favorite spooky stories: the ghost legend “The Vanishing Hitchhiker” as told by students Marty Weathers and Bill Henry of Georgia; the witch story “Skin, Don’t You Know Me” as told by master storyteller J. D. Suggs of Mississippi and later Michigan; and the truly spooky tale of “The Two White Horses,” told by the great Connie Regan-Blake, a leading Appalachian storyteller who has lived in Tennessee and North Carolina among other places. Of course, in addition to some chat about the tales, the episode highlights the stories themselves.
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Resources Related to the Podcast
As is often the case, much of the material in the podcast has been discussed elsewhere on the blog, and other resources are available on the Library’s website. You can find all of this blog’s Halloween content, from scary songs and stories to photos and graphic arts, at this link. Find more relevant links below!
The Guides Behind the Podcast
“Folktales and Oral Storytelling: Resources in the American Folklife Center Collections” can be found here. It contains links to all manner of storytelling collections and performances, and serves as a cross-collection tool for finding folktales and traditional storytelling in our collections.
“Halloween and Día de Muertos Resources” can be found here. It’s chock full of links to Halloween and Día de Muertos content, including notable books to get you started in your Halloween reading; a player to watch the first film version of Frankenstein from 1910; photos from top photographers of Halloween traditions; sheet music and songs of a spooky nature; a gallery of classic Día de Los Muertos posters; and of course, lots of oral singing and storytelling from the American Folklife Center.
The Stories in the Podcast
“The Vanishing Hitchhiker” by Marty Weathers and Bill Henry
Marty Weathers and Bill Henry were two students at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Georgia in 1977 when AFC conducted the South Central Georgia Folklife Project. They recounted tales of student pranks, told tall tales, sang some off-color songs, and discussed legends, including “The Vanishing Hitchhiker.” If you’re interested in more about this particular legend, the standard treatment is Jan Harold Brunvand’s book “The Vanishing Hitchhiker.” If you don’t need that much detail, Wikipedia has a useful article.
“Skin, Don’t You Know Me?” by J. D. Suggs
“The Two White Horses” by Connie Regan-Blake
“The Two White Horses” is one of Connie Regan-Blake’s favorite stories. This telling comes from “Stepping Back in Time: Storytelling with Connie Regan-Blake and Barbara Freeman,” a program we held here at the Library of Congress in September 2018. You can watch that full video, along with interviews that Valda Morris and I did with both Connie and Barbara, at this link. In the podcast, the natural flow was to end the show when the story ended, but in concert Connie gave some of its background after the story itself. Here’s that bonus story-behind-the-story:
That’s a true story that happened in Irwin, Tennessee. It still is one of my favorites. And the woman that wrote the words down to that story, Eliza Sieman…I met her when she was in her 70s. God, I’m in my 70s. Oh, my gracious. I met her a long time ago in 1974. And she lived on this side of Coffee Ridge and Tumbling Creek, a tiny little community outside of Irwin, Tennessee, east Tennessee. And she lived…I went up there and visited many times. She lived at the end of the dirt road and the end of the gravel road, at the end of the road. And back during World War II, she used to go across the mountains, Coffee Ridge, and sit with a woman named Becky Farner. And this had happened to someone in Becky’s family. And Eliza then wrote the words down and gifted me with the story.
And I told that story at the second National Storytelling Festival when I was featured. And now that was 44 years ago. So that was the first time that I told it. […] I will say that you know, people used to really be afraid of being buried alive. And my dad was raised in New Orleans, born in 1911. And he said when anyone died, that there was always this hope they could somehow come back, and also a fear that they might. And people used to be buried with a bell in their coffin. I mean, actually the string was in the coffin and the string then was attached to a bell outside in the graveyard. And it was so they could pull that bell if they had been buried alive. And that’s where we get the phrase, “saved by the bell.”
Now, readers will know that here at Folklife Today we love metafolklore, including stories about the origins of phrases, songs, nursery rhymes, and other folklore. The story that “Saved by the Bell” derives from devices designed to prevent people being buried alive is a great example. You can find numerous examples of this story all over the internet. I will say, though, that most authorities don’t agree; there’s no evidence of “saved by the bell” being used in this context until very recently. Instead, experts trace “saved by the bell” to boxing, in which the bell ending a round could save a fighter from losing the match, and sometimes from serious injury. Phrase Finder in the UK discusses the story at this link, and for an Australian perspective read this treatment from the Australian Associated Press. For more discussion of similar stories, you can read our whole series of metafolklore posts here.