by Gurney Norman
The Covington-Newport, Kentucky-Cincinnati area has long been an important destination for Appalachian Mountain people who have looked to this urban region as a place of economic and cultural opportunity. Since the end of World War II, mountain folk have settled in great numbers around the confluence of the licking and Ohio Rivers. The first wave of new Appalachian immigrants to this area found work-a-plenty in the late 1940's and 1950's, but their attachment to their old homes and families in the hills remained strong. Many families went home every Friday evening after the workweek ended, to spend the weekend among kinfolk who still lived in the mountains.
Among the cultural artifacts the Appalachian people brought from the mountains to their new homes in the city were their deep music and storytelling traditions. On weekend nights the sounds of guitars, fiddles, mandolins, and banjos could be heard live in the scores of local sidewalk taverns. Storytelling was more private, personal, something that was mostly done at home. Most often it took the form of family stores told and retold around the kitchen table, but in some households the traditional folk tales were occasionally told. The second and third generations of these original immigrants have has less need for these traditional arts, so that, in the 1990's, it is in the schools that we find the most interest in traditional tales such as "Mutsmag" and the various Jack Tales. We should be glad for this continuing interest in this important part of our regional cultural heritage, for this heritage is more important to us in these confused modern times than we might suppose. One thing that folk cultures ina ll parts of the world have always shared in common has been the sustaining power of oral literature. It was through the spoken stories that the older generations handed down their knowledge and their values to the younger generations. Modern forms of these old traditions are, to a remarkable degree, still popular in the Appalachian Mountain region. Indeed, it is fair to speculate that appreciation of the stories about Jack and Mutsmag may be greater now than they have ever been as contemporary urban audiences discover them. Dr. Joseph Campbell's scholarly research has shown us that the themes in the traditional Appalachian tales are universal themes shared by all cultures and all peoples of the world. The stories are "hero" stories in which, typically, a young person must leave home to go on a journey into the world where he or she will meet many challenges, trials and obstacles that must be overcome as a part of the process of coming to a personal maturity. "Hero" figures such as Jack and Mutsmag possess excellent human qualities that all parents hope their children will acquire. They have personal integrity, courage, cleverness, generosity and compassion. They are reliable, resilient and tough-minded, always able to bounce back after a defeat to try again. In many of the stories they are on their own in the cold world, without parents, obliged to be self-sufficient and to live by their wits and their ingenuity. The creators of "Jack in the City" have reached deep into Ohio Valley and Appalachian regional culture for their artistic sources. The handing down of community values through song and story is a form of gift-giving from one generation to another. Such gifts create for people a vital sense of membership in the human community, a much needed effect in these times when so many people feel isolated and excluded from the mainstream of national experience. On the eve of a new millenium, we modernized, urbanized folks still have much to learn from our old-timey mountain ways.