Category Archives: Southern Culture

Beowulf, Celtic culture, Southern Culture

The shock of the old

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irish-statue

In the introduction to his translation of Beowulf, Irish poet Seamus Heaney recalls his surprise when he learned the odd-looking Anglo-Saxon word þole (pronounced “thole”) wasn’t really alien:

I gradually realized that it was not strange at all, for it was the word that older and less educated people would have used in the country where I grew up. “They’ll just have to learn to thole,” my aunt would say about some family who had suffered an unforeseen bereavement. And now suddenly here was “thole” in the official textual world, mediated through the apparatus of a scholarly editon, a little bleeper to remind me that my aunt’s language was not just a self-enclosed family possession but an historical heritage, one that involved the journey þolian had made north into Scotland and then across into Ulster with the planters and then across from the planters to the locals who had originally spoken Irish and then farther across again when the Scots Irish emigrated to the American South in the eighteenth century. When I read in John Crowe Ransom the line “Sweet ladies, long may ye bloom, and toughly I hope ye may thole,” my heart lifted again, the world widened, something was furthered.

Learning and reading definitely widen and further one’s contact with the world. Literature, by making the strange familiar and the familiar strange, challenges us to see the world with new eyes. Recognizing an active past in our present world gives us a new dimension of life desperately needed in a live-for-the-moment consumerist society. And seeing one’s culture blossom in distant parts of the globe makes those faraway places seem a bit closer.

For more on the defining influence the Celts exerted on the South, check out Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways In The Old South.

Southern Culture, Writing

Best Fiction and Writing Blogs

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Ron Rash

The best fiction and writing blog posts from around the ‘net, all guaranteed to make you a [insert adjective for your region] Shakespeare. Inspired by ron.

Joanne Jeffries and Julian Yanover – Poets University Infographic
Erin Beth Liles – Creating Lifelike Fictional Characters
Distance Landaverde – A Love Affair with Organic form
Miguel Olmedo Morell – Three representations of the fall in Lovecraft’s dream cycle
Penstricken – Ten Writing Commandments
J. B. Henry – Interview With Tom Abrahams
Ron Rash – How I Write

Southern Culture, Writing

Quote of the day

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Faulkner

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling ‘Kilroy was here’ on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.” – William Faulkner

Southern Culture, Writing

Quote of the day

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Matthew Neil Null

“If you look at social media, you see this leveling of American culture. Everyone has the same photo of the same beach, the same blue water, same wedding party, same slang, same songs, same movies. We have one lingua franca. We curate ourselves for mass consumption. But real speech, in the moment, in groups of two or three, tears at the veil. What we say that is not recorded. Drunken confession. Botched jokes. The rejected advance. Campfire at a deer camp. The novel as village gossip. The writer must rescue the whispered and the regrettable. I’m from a place totally shaped by talk, by verbal facility. All that silence, space, and privation gave people that gift, like the Irish, like Southerners.” – Matthew Neill Null

Celtic culture, Fantasy Fiction, Southern Culture

Witch Flambé

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Witch Flambe

The latest edition of Aurora Wolf features my short story “Witch Flambé.” Set in and around modern-day High Point, North Carolina (my home town), it’s about two old friends now in vastly different circles who team up to clear a young lady who’s accused of setting fires at her employer’s “guerilla dinners.” Someone’s casting spells on the “underground dining” events, and our protagonists must seek out the help of a Scots-Irish granny witch.

Appalachian Granny Magic is one of those old Southern ways that have recently enjoyed renewed interest:

The tradition is a very old one, dating all the way back to the first settlers of the magical Appalachian Mountains who came over from Scotland and Ireland in the 1700’s. They brought along their even older Irish and Scottish Magical Traditions with them. Those two ‘old world’ Traditions were then blended with a dash of the local tradition of the Tsalagi (Now, called the Cherokee Indians.)

Because of the rural and secluded nature of the Appalachian community, the old customs, wisdom, and practices were not as often lost, forgotten, or ‘modernized’ as the ‘old world’ traditions that came over to other, more urban areas of the ‘new world.’ Therefore, one will often find that ancient Irish or Scottish songs, rhymes, dances, recipes, crafts, and ‘The Craft,’ are more accurately preserved in Appalachia than even in Ireland or Scotland.

This story was a blast to write. It has just about everything I love: good food and drink, old friends, the surprisingly enduring power of the past, nature’s astonishing ability to rejuvenate — all topped off with a delightfully scary confrontation at the end. I hope you enjoy it.

Celtic culture, Southern Culture

The Scots-Irish Rascals Who Made America

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DavyCrockett

Here’s my review of Karen McCarthy’s The Other Irish, one of the books I read while researching my latest book. Who are “The Other Irish”? As McCarthy writes:

“They settled the frontier, intermarried with other migrants, imbued the national character with their own nature and values, and, arguably, became the most patriotic of all Americans. They provided American icons like Davy Crockett, literary giants from Mark Twain to Stephen King, American warriors from Sam Houston to George Patton. They invented NASCAR — the biggest spectator sport in America — and provided more than twenty presidents.”

My review is featured today at the Abbeville Institute.

Music, Southern Culture

David Holt’s State of Music

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DHSOM pitch for Indiegogo campaign from Will & Deni Films on Vimeo.

From David Holt’s State of Music:

David Holt’s State of Music is a one-hour special program that premiered on North Carolina public television in January. David introduces viewers to some friends who are taking traditional music to a new level. Featured performers are Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, traditional ballad singer Josh Goforth, virtuoso fiddler Bruce Molsky, guitar phenom Bryan Sutton, the Branchettes gospel duo and the powerhouse bluegrass band Balsam Range. The program showcases these great performers doing what they do best on location in the very landscapes that nurtured them and their music.

The premiere of the show was a big success, and now UNC-TV has invited us to make it into a series for national distribution! We are excited to have the opportunity to do that, because there are so many wonderful musicians that we couldn’t fit into one hour—and so many viewers who haven’t seen the show.