By Mike Templeton

The storyteller is a central figure in Appalachian folklife, one that remains alive to this day. There are a few people within the orbit of the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition who are storytellers in the old sense of the term, which is to say a person whose primary gift is to preserve and pass on the folk tales and stories of our people and our history. I will name at least two of these folks below. The storyteller has always relied on their personal repertoire of stories. Some are skilled at telling tales that pertain to history. Others are more attuned to the fantastic and those stories that captivate us because they are enchanting, or even scary. One of the main fixtures of Appalachian storytelling is Jack. Jack turns up everywhere, and there is little that Jack cannot do.

The AppalShop Archive recently highlighted a short film from 1974 called “Fixin’ to Tell about Jack.” The film focuses primarily on Ray Hicks, a storyteller from Beech Mountain, North Carolina who plays the harmonica and tells mountain Jack Tales. He also explains the origins of the tales, at least as he came to know them, and the role of the Jack Tales and other folk tales in mountain life. Before television, before radio, before electricity ever came to the Appalachian mountains, people told stories to pass time, help make boring work more bearable, quiet the young’uns, and to pass along the lore of the people. At the center of the folk tales and stories of Appalachian culture is a mysterious but universal figure simply named Jack.

There are few characters in mountain folklore more familiar than Jack. Nearly everyone knows about Jack and the beanstalk. There are more versions of this story than almost any other folktale. It surpasses almost any of the fairy tales assembled by the Grimm Brothers, and is known in countless places and cultures. But what many do not know is there are hundreds of Jack Tales. What is more, Jack himself is something of a world traveler. We can find Jack Tales in Scotland and Ireland in almost the precise same form and content as if the stories were broadcast across the ocean. Yet, this precedes the miracles of the internet by many centuries. Jack crossed the ocean with early settlers and remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years. I have found Jack Tales on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, being passed along by a storyteller who tells the tales in the old Scottish Gaelic. H. Tyler Blethen writes that the presence of Jack Tales in the Appalachians serves as evidence of a massive presence of Scottish settlers in the region, many of which were originally Gaelic-speaking highlanders. Appalachian Jack Tales are nearly identical to Scottish and Irish Jack Tales, and they serve as living testimony to the influx of Scottish, Irish, and Scots-Irish people to the Appalachian region from the earliest days of American colonization.

The Appalachian migration brought Jack up from the southern mountains, and he has remained at the fore of the story collections of folklorists and storytellers associated with UACC. Barb and Russ Childers have been bringing Appalachian culture and folklore to schools for more than 40 years. As educators and ambassadors of the folk culture of Appalachia, they have made Jack one of the key characters in everything they have done over these decades. Barb Childers explained that they “used Jack Tales in our school, library, and museum programs. Our Appalachian culture presentations have always been a mixture of traditional music on fiddle, banjo, and dulcimer, singing, dancing, storytelling, skits, and anything we feel inspired to include that relates to the culture. Sometimes the topic was Jack exclusively; sometimes Jack was just one of the many pieces.” Jack is such a central figure it can often be difficult to remove him from other topics. In any case, Barb and Russ explain in their presentations that Jack made his way from the British Isles, and that Jack can be known by other names. As Barb Childers told me, “Jack has many ‘relatives’ around the world: Juan Bobo of Puerto Rico, Hans of Germany, Ivan of Russia, Espen of Norway are but a few of the many Jack-esque characters whose folk stories are so similar they could be relatives with Jack!” The heroic stature of Jack spans cultures and nations, even as he remains the same trickster and trouble maker to everyone.

Of course, core member Omopé Carter Daboiku is, according to Barb and Russ, “the Queen of Jack Tales.” Omopé has been bringing Jack to life for a great many years. Visitors to the Appalachian Festival at Old Coney have heard of Jack’s exploits from Omopé who brings Jack to the contemporary world not as a remnant of old Appalachia, but as living spark of Appalachian folk life in the present day. Jack lives among us, and a storyteller such as Omopé makes certain this remains the case.

Anyone who has listened to an old-time Appalachian storyteller has heard about Jack. He is arguably the greatest hero of Appalachian folk tales, and he is endlessly enchanting and endearing. Even if all you have ever known about Jack is his most famous exploit with the beanstalk, then you have still encountered Jack. The Urban Appalachian Community Coalition is fortunate to have more than a few people in our company who are experienced and talented storytellers. We would venture to say that there are generations of urban Appalachians who know Jack exclusively because of Omopé Carter-Daboiku and Barb and Russ Childers. Storytellers are revered figures in Appalachian folklife, as they are in many cultures around the world. There is value in the folk tale that cannot be precisely pinned down but which we all intuitively understand. This is why we value our storytellers, and this is why we are always excited to encounter Jack whenever we get an opportunity.

If you would like to watch the AppalShop film the features Ray Hicks, “Fixin’ to Tell About Jack,” it be found at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esBBZBlrKgg.

You can explore a Ray Hicks Bibliography at this link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40934979?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.

Omopé Carter Daboiku and Barb and Russ Childers (as Bear Foot) can be found in UACC’s Cultural Directory.

A wonderful illustrate children’s’ book that features Jack is Mountain Jack Tales by Gail E. Haley. Published by Dutton Books.

The book that features the Cape Breton Storyteller is called Tales Until Dawn/ Sgeul gu Latha: The World of a Cape Breton Gaelic Story-Teller. The Stories of Joe Neil MacNeil. Translated and Edited by John Shaw and published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

I referenced the following essay for part of this article: Blethen, H. Tyler. “The Transmission of Scottish Culture to the Southern Back Country.” Journal of the Appalachian Studies Association, vol. 6, 1994, pp. 59–72.

Michael Templeton is a writer, and independent scholar. He is the author of The Chief of Birds: A Memoir published with Erratum Press and Impossible to Believe, published by Iff Books. He is also the author of Collected Apoems, forthcoming from LJMcD Communications and the awaiting of awaiting: a novella, with Nut Hole Publishing. Check out his profile in UACC’s Cultural Directory. He has published numerous articles and essays on contemporary culture and works of creative non-fiction as well as experimental works and poetry. He lives in West Milton, Ohio with his wife who is an artist.