THE WOLFPEN RUSTIES: Appalachian Riddles and Gee-Haw Whimmy-Diddles

Sass-patch wit from Wolfpen Creek, Kentucky, where ""one-eyed Pricilla (sic) has a high temper and is awful prickly but Jonathan No-arms can master her right handily"" is just another way of saying ""needle and thimble"" . . . where even the oldies every kid knows have a rightly different accent: ""How many dead folk in the Bald Point graveyard? All of them"" . . . where some powerfully shaggy dog stories get built around Old Jonce Goodenough's skill at ""thunderation"" (loud talk) and a hint of female infanticide (!) is the basis for a funny verse which ends ""Hell's bangers! It's a boy."" We're not quite sure why this last--with lines like ""A coffin-box be ready/ For hap it be a gift-child/ Young Sid will be to bury""--was deemed entertaining though it's surely educational, lake Way Down Yonder on Troublesome Creek (1974) this sampler is decorated with spruce-looking, folksy woodcuts and affords a precious glimpse of isolated high-hollow culture. Both more authentically backwoods and more esoteric than the popular Schwartz/Rounds and Emrich collections.