Paul Green’s Wordbook (two vols.), by Paul Green.
Boone: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1990.
$85 - 1,245 pages.

Oh, John Hardy was a mean and desperate man,
he toted two guns every day.
He killed him a man in a West Virginia town.
And now, he’s gonna hang today, today
Lord, he’s gonna hang today.
- “Oh, John Hardy”

This is an astonishing accomplishment. In fact, these two volumes are so totally unique in concept, there is little in this reviewer’s experience that serves as a basis for comparison. Some sections of this collection reminded me of Robert Burton’s 17th century classic, The Anatomy of Melancholy, which is actually a curious compilation of classical lore, arcane facts and fascinating scholarly research. (Burton claimed that the distraction of reading could actually “cure melancholia”). Green’s subtitle, “An Alphabet of Reminiscence,” suggests a similar definition of his work. Green invites his readers to remember and ponder the fading voices of our own tradition, be it vain, foolish, sentimental or noble. In essence, these are the things that tell us (remind us) who we are.

Forty years in completion, the author simply recorded every fragment of information that he felt was relevant, or worthy of preserving, including the words of old church hymns, superstitions, folklore, regional history and nonsense. It is all here, neatly alphabetized and edited from “Aaron’s beard” to “zull,” (meaning “to sull or sulk”). Green’s primary geographic focus (North Carolina coastal region and the rural piedmont) contains a generous amount of material that is familiar to me — this kind of lore has a way of spreading.

For example, there may have been tales of “the Belled Buzzard” in Harnett County, but that same supernatural bird showed up in Appalachia (his appearances were frequently published in the Asheville Citizen a century ago!) so there is much here that is equally familiar to people living in western North Carolina (or eastern Tennessee, north Georgia and the Ozarks!). Certainly, there are historic sites and persons, legendary and actual, that are unique to Green’s coastal valley, but the traditions and customs (superstitions, lullabies, quaint expressions, etc.) are ubiquitous to the region from “Murphy to Manteo”  and elsewhere.

Still, it is difficult to classify this collection since it seems to resist definition. There are a number of famous works that are similar to Paul Green’s Wordbook. John Rhys spent his life compiling a monumental Celtic work that included songs, riddles, myths and legends in Welsh and Manx country; W.C. Hazlitt compiled an impressive Dictionary of Faith and Folklore that focused on the customs and traditions of rural life in Europe; and Vance Randolph spent his life collecting Ozark fables, songs and superstitions. Closer to home, the noted Appalachian author James Still kept hundreds of little notebooks carefully arranged in shoe-boxes that contained riddles, songs, childhood games and humorous sayings in rural Kentucky. Cratis Williams did the same for the areas around Watauga, Avery and Wilkes counties — a collection that has become invaluable to Appalachian folklorists. However, Paul Green’s collection is, in many ways, larger in scope than any of the aforementioned works.

Any reader who is old enough to be stirred by a restored memory, a lost song or a childhood game will value this work. Do you remember “snipe hunting”? How about Dr. Blosser’s Catarrh Cigarettes? (When I was 10 years old, I used to steal them from my grandfather’s medicine cabinet and stand in front of the Ritz theatre, puffing medicinal smoke and sneering like James Cagney.) How about quilt patterns like “The Double Irish Chain” or “Turkey Tracks”? How about the words to the song, “Seeing Nellie Home?” Or the meaning of “G.T.T.” painted on the door of an abandoned farm-house? (It stood for “Gone to Texas”) Or the expression, “Light a shuck for home”? Did you ever play the children’s game “Pretty Girl Station”? Well, here is a complete description of the game and its rules.

I also found the complete lyrics to “Oh, John Hardy” and “Ruben, Ruben, I’ve Been Thinking,” and a recipe (like my grandmother’s) on how to make a curative tea out of mullein or Jimson Weed, as well as an incantation for curing “the thrash,” or “drawing fire” from a burn. Paul Green’s Wordbook literally contains hundreds of recipes, obscure plants (spice bush), obsolete creations (gourd fiddles), vanquished creatures (puff adders) and superstitions (Emma balls conjure balls).

Of course, Paul Green, a consummate storyteller, can’t resist the opportunity to provide hundreds of anecdotes, regional legends and local parables that illustrate or define his listings. Certainly, the author takes ample opportunity to expound on his personal beliefs and prejudices. Freud and psychiatry receive scathing ridicule as do most conventional religions.

Green’s life-long contempt for racism, the K.K.K. and the social pretensions of southern aristocracy are repeatedly skewered — and rightly so, since the subject matter of these two volumes concerns the worst and the best of our North Carolina heritage.

In the “Editor’s Preface,” Rhoda Wynn, the executive director of the Paul Green Foundation, notes that a significant amount of the author’s collected material eventually found its way into the seven-volume Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Indeed, North Carolina folklorists will be praising Paul Green’s contribution to the preservation of our folklife for many years.

In conclusion, it seems appropriate to comment on the genesis of Paul Green’s Wordbook. The author came into national prominence when he published In Abraham’s Bosom, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. A decade later, he launched, The Lost Colony, a symphonic drama which has now been running for more than 50 years. Green is acknowledged to be the originator of the outdoor drama movement which swept America from 1935-1955.

However, the seed of all of Green’s creativity, including numerous films, novels and plays, was nurtured by his involvement in the North Carolina Folk Plays Movement which was fostered by Dr. Frederick Koch at the University of North Carolina in the 1920s. It was here that the author became obsessed with North Carolina’s folklore.

Green’s early plays, such as “The Last of the Lowries,” contain the authentic dialect, the superstitions and the customs of his subject, the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina. Each successive work demonstrated the same painstaking details regarding ethnic culture. In every instance, the songs, the speech, the customs and the dress are lifted from first-hand observance of the people around him — Native Americans, Scots-Irish settlers and African-Americans.

It is no surprise to learn that Paul Green kept thousands of index cards on which he recorded the material that comprises this collection. He always knew it was a strange, sprawling miscellany, and he privately asked the people close to him — his wife, his faithful secretary and the author John Ehle to help him shape it into a respectable and publishable format. In the last week of his life, in April of 1981, he wrote to Ehle requesting assistance in getting the collection published. Ehle did more than that. He acquired a publishing contract, and he insisted that the work not be abridged.

So, this posthumously published work by the Paul Green Foundation and the Appalachian Consortium Press exists as a tribute to the author, to the folklore of our region and to the creative genius of Paul Green.

(Gary Carden is a writer and storyteller who lives in Sylva. His book, Mason Jars in the Flood, won this year’s Appalachian Writers Association Book of Year honor. He can be reached at gcarden498@aol.com)

 

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