Appalachian History

ONE TIME away back years ago there was a boy named Jack. He and his folks lived off in the mountains somewhere and they were awful poor, just didn’t have a thing. Jack had two brothers, Will and Tom, and they are in some of the Jack Tales, but this one I’m fixin’ to tell [...]

“Which of you shall we say doth love us most?” asks King Lear of his three daughters at the opening of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Shakespeare often re-interpreted well known tales & legends in his plays—the Lear story is a very old European folk motif that turns up in literally hundreds of variants of the “Cinderella” tale. [...]