Blue Ridge Folklife

4. Customary Folklife

C H A P T E R Customary Folklife The term customary folklife refers to traditional behaviors which generally possess both nonverbal and verbal (andsometimes material) components. The Native American presence in the region produced some fascinating customary traditions, all of which are now absent from the Blue Ridge (though some of the customary traditions of the Cherokee still survive in the Qualla Boundary, the tribe's landholdings in the nearby Great Smoky Mountains). For three centuries, the Blue Ridge has harbored different yet equally interesting European-American customary traditions; some of these died out in the wake of modernization, some linger tenuously in the region's more remote areas, and some are still widelypracticed today. This chapter discusses the most characteristic of these customary traditions, including religious rituals and ceremonies, folk beliefs, social customs (for rites of passage including birth, courtship, marriage, and death), holiday celebrations, festivals, dances, and games. Footwashing and Full-Immersion Baptism Many of the region's customary traditions reflect the central importance of religious experience in the lives of the Blue Ridge people. One traditional religious ritual in the region, footwashing, was associated with an important rite of passage: the sacramental communion of the individual Christian with God.By participating in footwashing the sinful individual might be initiated into the community of believers. Historically practiced in the Blue Ridge by various Baptist sects and Holiness groups during communion services and at the end of church meetings, footwashingtook literally Christ's biblical edict, as conveyed in John 13: 14-15: "If I then, 104 4 Customary Folklife 105 The ritual of footwashing being administered at Stoney Creek PrimitiveBaptist Church, near Elizabethton, Carter County, Tennessee. (Photo by Howard Dorgan) your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done unto you." A religious rite widespread in the South during the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries (a period often called the Great Awakeningfor its climate of religious fervor), footwashing was employed during revival meetings by preachers, for the efficient conversion of large numbers of people. By the middle of the nineteenth century, though, with the rise of organized religious councils in the South (most notably, the Southern Baptist Convention), footwashingfell out of favor in the lowland South—many Baptists there began to view the ceremony as primitive, a remnant of a less civilized era. Many Blue Ridge congregations, however, continued to practice footwashing well into the twentieth century , and some still make it a regular part of their services. The survival of footwashing in the region is the result of specific historical circumstances. Early Blue Ridge settlers—specifically, anti-institutional German Anabaptists (Mennonites and Dunkards) and independentminded Scots-Irish—set the region's mold for noncompliance toward es- io6 Blue Ridge Folklife tablishment Christianity. In the nineteenth century, many regional Baptist congregations refused to affiliate themselves with organized religious councils , which these congregations saw as irrelevant for their communities' needs. Spared from having to conform to centralized by-laws, they were free to design their own worship services. Some Blue Ridge congregations chose to retain footwashing in their services, as well as another old-time Christian communion ceremony, full-immersion baptism. Conducted in Blue Ridge streams and rivers since the eighteenth century and still observed today among the region's more fundamentalist Baptist sects (including the Freewill, Missionary, and Old Regular Baptists), fullimmersion baptism ceremonies have served as metaphorical re-creations of Christ's baptism in the River Jordan. A person requesting baptism would submit him- or herself for a total dunking in the cold water of a mountain tributary; in so doing, that person's soul would be metaphorically washed clean of his or her sins, purified by water which had been declared holy by the preacher presiding over the event. Full-immersion baptism ceremonies would most often take place in the summer, on special Sundays after the A Separate Baptist baptism in the cool waters of the North Fork of the New River, near Warrensville, North Carolina. (Photo by Howard Dorgan) Customary Folklife 107 morning worship service. On such an occasion a congregation would gather by a stream or river, at a spot deep enough to allow for full immersion and accessible enough so that all age groups could participate. Since the ceremony was always a central event in the...