Mountain Homespun, and: If I Ever Return, Pretty Peggy-O (review)

from persons from the region itself, let alone authentic "folk." The more recent studies do seek a functional "folk voice" by having a psychiatrist or a folklorist interpret the folk phenomena. But most of us can hear the folk voice much more clearly through the simple and straightforward methods of the Foxfire kids. -Richard Drake Goodrich, Frances Louisa. Mountain Homespun. (A facsimile edition with an introduction and additional photographs by Jan Davidson). Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990. 91 pages. Cloth: $23.95. McCrumb, Sharyn. // / Ever Return, Pretty Peggy-O. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990. 224 pages. Cloth: $17.95. The reprint of Frances Goodrich's 1931 study is enhanced by Jan Davidson 's thoughtful introduction, which does much to place Miss Goodrich and her work in the proper context. Anyone familiar with the Appalachian craft revival of the 1920s and 1930s already knows how Frances Goodrich, inspired by the gift of an old coverlet, a brown-and-white "Double Bowknot" pattern dyed with chestnut-oak bark, developed her Allanstand Cottage Industries ' weaving and marketing program in Western North Carolina, then handed Allanstand over to the then-new Southern Highland Handicraft Guild. As Davidson writes: "Mountain Homespun's central dramatic incident, the gift of the Double Bowknot, caught the attention of feature writers, who retold it frequently and compared that gift to the gift of Allanstand, thus making the blessing of the Guild the final step in conferring the management of crafts from the family, to the individual saintly woman, to a corporation directed by northerners, to a coalition with other production centers." Davidson's paragraph is a succinct but somewhat biased nutshell history of how the mountain missionaries preserved (or perhaps "created") an Appalachian craft culture and marketplace. The definitive study of such possible cultural manipulation is David Whisnant's 1983 All That Is Native and Fine, a book which infuriated many of the region's craft leaders. Miss Goodrich's study, especially after she gets past the technicalities of "The Old Crafts," is still fascinating. "The Allanstand Cottage Industries," she wrote, "grew out ofpure neighborlinesson one side a gift, and on the other a desire to promote the happiness of the women of a mountain cove." In "Part II. The People," Goodrich's stories recall a lost way of life. Or, as she says, "This is a record of a generation that is gone. The homespun world of which it tells is vanished. A few of us, to whom it was dear, hold it still in our hearts, and to us it is living." These are stories about real people in the 1920s in Madison County, North Carolina , who may be "quare-turned and ill" or "mighty public spirited, always ready to stop and sit on a fence and talk politics ," or so pleased with the joy of creativity as to proclaim "Shucks, ain't it grand, the things they TsIo do and to find out about." In my opinion Frances Goodrich is given, or takes, too much credit for being the "godmother of the Guild." Many more-Helen Dingman, Allen Eaton, Lucy Morgan, Clementine Douglas, and Olive Campbell, just to name a few-were equally active and influential in creating the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild. But Allanstand , the shop, was the Guild's first foothold into the marketplace, and the legend lives on in the Guild's Folk Art Center near Asheville. Recent arguments, fueled by David Whisnant's study, accuse Frances 64 Goodrich and her contemporaries of manipulating the mountain craft culture. Davidson says that "Craft work, Goodrich believed, was a way for people to stay on their family farms until the blessings of education and community would allow them to build Appalachia into New England, or at least a reasonable facsimile." Goodrich wanted old weaving patterns revived, attention to technical detail, a standardized and marketable product. She introduced the Scandinavian style looms then in use at Berea College, a much better tool for production weaving. "She not only provided the tools, the market, and the money, but she made the decisions." The preceding paragraph is a pretty accurate description of how craft production centers in Appalachia have succeeded , from Berea College's...