Appalachian Folk Magic and Medicine
The folk arts and folk ways revival is not unique to Appalachia, but new interest in ways that define a culture or region are complex topics that includes important discussions of outsider influence and regional autonomy. Appalachia has been defined by outsiders as a “place out of time” which housed “our contemporary ancestors”, since shortly after the Civil War. Many forces outside of the mountains came together to press Appalachia into the cultural diamond it is today at the turn of the century through their distorted witness.
A plethora of eyes turned their sights on our region, envisioning, observing and applying what they saw as a balm to the struggles, both real and imagined of the mountain South. Extractive industries, from coal to timber, had ravaged the mountains in some areas and made agrarian life increasing unprofitable or impossible as Appalachian people moved to work in mill towns, coal mines and urban factories at the turn of the 20th century.
Social and cultural reforms were also on the move through the hands of missionaries and college educated middle class white women from the North seeking to provide aid to Appalachia, or what President of Berea College, William Godell Frost, called the “ward of the nation” .
What is Appalachia? Who is Appalachian? What is NOT Appalachian? These are all important questions to consider before pursuing, studying or practicing any bioregional folk way, especially those of diverse cultural origins like that of the Appalachian region. Also especially right now while Appalachia is having another hay day in media and short form content.
I say another because it has been in the media in waves since the Local Color writers of the 1920’s, people largely from Northern States of means who traveled through the region remarking on its unique character as both a repository of lost folk ways and a place inhabited by poor, rugged uncivilized white Highlanders, officially setting the people of Appalachia apart from the rest of the Unites States in ways that continue to paint a stereotypical, incomplete picture of our region.
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