Appalachian Folkways (review)

Appalachian Folkways is an enjoyable and enlightening excursion through the cultural geography of Southern Appalachia. John Rehder has produced a comprehensive and systematic treatment of material and non-material folk culture that synthesizes an impressive array of scholarship and incorporates insights garnered from years of his own research. The book opens by examining the various ways in which the geographic extent and cultural identity of Appalachia have been defined. Rehder settles on a definition for Southern Appalachia that extends southwards from central Pennsylvania. Thus, the scope of the book includes the area that others might term "Central Appalachia." As for identity, Rehder is emphatic that the "real Appalachia" lies in its folk traditions. As many of these are now relic or rapidly disappearing, the importance of Rehder's work lies in the thoroughness with which they are documented.

Rehder begins the excursion by outlining the physical geography of the region, concentrating on physiography, surface hydrology, and vegetation. Abundant use of place names and place-specific detail lends this chapter a richness that signals the author's intimacy with the region. Chapter 3 discusses migration and settlement of the many culture groups, Native American, Scotch-Irish, German, French Huguenot, and African American, which contributed to the Appalachian melange. Particularly interesting is the extended treatment of a lesser-known group, Melungeons, who are themselves an uncertain melange of European, North African, and Native American. The rest of the book is organized into chapters that treat aspects of folk culture, including house types, livelihoods, food, medicine, religion, music, and language. Rehder's depth of specialization becomes apparent in Chapter 4, on folk architecture, which starts with log construction as the basis for Appalachian folk housing. Rehder weighs the arguments for the origins of the log cabin and notes diffusion routes and variations in corner notching styles before describing log cabin construction, foundation to shingles. He segues into a typology of folk houses and barns, from single pen to box houses and describes the gamut of crib arrangements for barns. Photographs and line drawings aptly illustrate the myriad folk structures.

Subsistence agriculture, planting by the signs, hunting, fishing, root digging, logging, and coal mining are covered in Chapter 5, on livelihoods, as well as less salubrious activities of moonshining and its modern day equivalents, pot growing and meth making. Agriculture is perhaps under-represented given its importance to household subsistence, especially in comparison to the more detailed treatments of extractive industries. Particularly nice are the connections drawn between mining, corporate control, and folk house types that became prevalent in mining camps. This section draws on doctoral research conducted in the early 1970s by Mack Gillenwater, a former student, which, combined with Rehder's more recent reflections on company houses, reveals something about the process through which cultural geographic concepts are formulated and refined.

Chapter 6, on foodways, illustrates what is most refreshing about Appalachian Folkways—its use of discursive narrative to convey folk culture. Two regional specialties, cat head biscuits and sawmill gravy, are introduced through a story of a "teachable moment" during a field excursion for a senior seminar. Recipes are included. Corn, in its many forms, is de rigueur in a treatment of Appalachian food, but the section on hogs focuses more on the slaughter than the resulting foodstuffs. A wonderfully detailed account of hog killing, recently written by a student, illustrates the survival of even those traditions that seem most likely to succumb to modern convenience.

After acknowledging the diversity of Appalachian belief systems in Chapter 7, Rehder concentrates on broadly shared "diagnostic traits," such as outdoor church dinners and the annual cemetery spring cleaning of Decoration Day, and on some of the less well-understood aspects of Appalachian religion, such as snake handling and speaking in tongues. Folk music and the role of folk schools and folk festivals in the twentieth century cultural revival of Appalachia have become favorite topics for scholars of the region. In Chapter 8, Rehder cogently synthesizes research in this...