Kentucky Folktales

by Mary Hamilton

  When I read about the mama turtle retrieving the turtle shell boat, my mind immediately went to Beowulf, and I thought: “Whoa! This is just like Grendel’s mother coming for revenge!” And I knew the “shell into boat with mother turtle retrieving it” was an idea I had to incorporate.

  As mentioned earlier, I also liked the pelt board story, but how to connect it with the segments from the big turtle story? I had been aware of the split dog story for years.9 I’d heard and read many versions of it, and I could verify that it had also been collected in Kentucky.10 In most versions the dog runs fast and can bark from both ends. For a long time I resisted incorporating the split dog tale. Eventually I realized I could tie the two traditional tales I liked together if I would just allow myself to insert the split dog story in the middle. Yet, I was determined to come up with something different to say from what I’d read and heard in the past. After all, I knew the storytellers in my audiences would see the split dog segment coming from miles away, and I wanted them to have some payoff for not abandoning me during that segment. Somehow, the idea of an unusual pet contest hit me, and I was off and running with the three traditional tales woven together.

  What about the rest of the “Some Dog” development? I really do have four brothers, and they act pretty much true to the personalities depicted in the story. In fact, I called each one up and told them the story as I worked on it to be sure they were okay with how they were being portrayed. During the phone call with my brother Steve (and yes, he is smart), he came up with the idea of Some Dog going after pumpkins, confused by holiday symbols on a giant wall calendar. I tried it; it worked, so I kept it. My brother David really was a veterinarian when the story was in development. He has since become an obstetrician. The setting is the farm I grew up on, so it is also real, complete with a tobacco barn and kerosene. Pets were never allowed in the house, only weak calves or runt pigs. And yes, some folks really do abandon their pets on farmers’ driveways. So many of the story details are true—in keeping with the tall tale telling tradition of lies laced with just enough truth to keep listeners coming along.

  There really is a Meade County Fair,11 with a Fair Board, but no unusual pet contest or pet parade. I remember having to stop the story once and explain that there really was no such thing as either event. Why? I had an audience of school children from Meade County in front of me, and they started whispering to one another, very concerned that they had never heard of these events even though they’d been attending the Meade County Fair all their lives. After I stopped talking, acknowledged their sharp observation skills, then reminded them that the story was a tall tale, so I was supposed to lie, the telling could continue. From a teller’s standpoint, it was truly fascinating to see almost an entire audience leave the world of the story because it came a bit too close to real life!

  Some Dog really got his name one night when I was driving home from another Tale Talk gathering where I had told another work in progress version of the tale. While driving I thought: “Wonder how Jeff kept that dog quiet at night? I know. He could read to it. And wouldn’t it be something if the dog liked books about dogs? Oh, and what if he cried when Jeff read Old Yeller? That would be some dog. That’s it—Some Dog is the dog’s name!”

  Of course, once the idea of the dog understanding books entered the story, it was just too good to use only once. More books to call him off the hunt and Lassie Come-Home to finish out the story seemed natural fits and provided a thread to help pull the segments together.

  As for Pavlov? I don’t recall the circumstances that generated the Pavlov section; however, the people I grew up around value common sense just as (if not more) highly as book learning. While I know Pavlov’s salivating dogs were actually part of an experiment he conducted that supported his observations about conditioned reflexes, it struck me that any country person worthy of claiming that title would surely see Pavlov’s work as somewhat wasted because dogs possess a natural inclination to slobber! I mean, if Pavlov’s work resulted in dogs being conditioned to do something, why not something much more worthwhile, like hunting independently?

  Although I had not considered it during the story’s development, the insertion of Pavlov has paid off again and again in school performances. When telling “Some Dog” to upper elementary and middle school audiences, I can say something like, “While I know most of you have never heard about Pavlov, I can assure you all your teachers have. In fact, they don’t let folks become teachers without making them learn about Pavlov.” Usually some, if not all, of the teachers are nodding at this point. The students notice their teacher’s acknowledgment of Pavlov as real, so they accept that he is indeed “world-wide famous.” The teachers generally shake their heads and laugh over my brother’s interpretation of Pavlov too. So, Pavlov became one of those points in a story where it works well to somewhat step out of the tale narrative and talk even more directly with the audience before stepping back in to continue the telling of the story.12

  So “Some Dog” developed the way many of the stories I tell have. It began with a desire to add a tale to my repertoire. I identified folktales I wanted to use. Feedback from my brothers and from other storytellers helped me develop my retelling. Then ongoing feedback from audiences over the years keeps feeding into the story, helping me keep the telling fresh time after time.

  Sometimes an audience can even come to a teller’s aid. In 2000, I was in Nevada telling stories for the By the Light of the Moon Storytelling Festival, sponsored by the Las Vegas–Clark County Library District, and I almost completely lost my voice. I could speak, barely. Barking was beyond my ability, yet I had been asked to tell “Some Dog.” The audience, made up of all ages of listeners, quickly caught on to my difficulty, so I asked them to bark. They did, eagerly! I soon learned all I had to do was hold up my “paws” (both side by side, or one up and one down, depending on the portion of the story) and they would bark. When a bit of suggestion for the tone of the bark was needed, all I had to insert was a single word (ex. “Some Dog was amazed” [paws gesture] and the audience provided a bark of amazement). While I felt stressed telling with little voice, the audience participation made that telling of “Some Dog” one I will always remember.

  When I am teaching about the art of storytelling, “Some Dog” has also proven a good example of the need to match story with audience. I’ve learned I can tell “Some Dog” successfully to a mixed-age audience, as long as only a very few preschoolers are in the mix. The story also works well for all-adult audiences. For other homogenous age group audiences, other factors come into play—especially experience with rural life. Multiple tellings have taught me that rural audiences as young as third and fourth grade readily enjoy “Some Dog” because they pick up on the humor early. The more removed that school-aged groups are from rural life, the older I find they have to be—sometimes up to tenth grade—before really grasping that the gigantic turtles are humor, not a real-life Kentucky farm report! This is not a sign of intelligence or lack thereof on the part of different audiences, but instead relates to one of the questions tellers have to be aware of when matching stories with audiences—what must my audience know in order to understand this story? So, why does it work with mixed ages and not with homogenous groups? Because in those mixed-age audiences, the children will look to their adults for guidance on what is and is not funny during the telling and the children also know they can always ask the adults questions later for clarification.

  “Some Dog” is also one of those stories that adapts well to different time segments. I can shorten the turtle recipes, leave out the excessive begging and pleading (which developed from eye-rolling feedback I received from high school students in Tennessee, so I kept it up until they were nearly squirming, then added the comment about it working on some parents—they reacted with nods and laughter, so this became another keeper), leave out the pumpkins segment, and shorten other descriptions when I have only a short time to tell.

  Once in a while it can even gr
ow. Some audiences have heard about people who have told me about how much they like my brother David—relating how they recall his saving their dog when they were little, then how much they appreciated his recent work in helping deliver their first child. An audience or two have heard about ballet classes being conducted using our combine as a mirror because the surface is so shiny from all the Turtle Wax. Responses have been mixed (some laughter; some no reaction at all), so those additions have not become keepers, but once in a while they will still crop up in a telling.

  Much to my delight, I’ve even met folks who report that after hearing the story they named their very next dog Some Dog. So, while I never once had a dog by that name, I love knowing Some Dog really lives!

  MORE KENTUCKY FOLKTALES

  Here are some Kentucky folktales that don’t exactly fit the earlier categories of tall tales and lies or haunting, frightening, and creepy tales. So, now that you know what they are not, let me tell you what they are. In this section you will find:

  • a formula tale, a story with a very repetitive, highly predictable plot—so it is also going to be exceedingly easy to recall and retell, should you have a mind to.

  • a tale with a catch or trick—enough said, or I’ll be giving away the trick!

  • a couple of folktales of the realistic sort—stories that in all likelihood never ever happened, but are set in a world such as ours with events possible in our world, so perhaps they could have happened after all.

  • a fairy tale, a type of story also called a wonder tale or by the German word märchen. Lindahl writes, “The märchen is an invitation to imagine the impossible.”1 I heartily agree. But wait, you may be thinking, the tall tales in the previous section contained impossible events. Yes, they did, but tall tales take place in our real world. A fairy tale invites you into an imaginary world, even when the characters and their emotions may be oh so very human. Like most fairy tales, there are no fairies in this fairy tale, but there are magical creatures with amazing powers.

  I’ll leave it to you to decide just which tale is which!

  THE ENORMOUS BEAR

  Once upon a time, a grandma, a grandpa, a little girl, and a little boy all lived together in a small house. Next to the house a squirrel lived in a tree. The squirrel enjoyed watching the people and even thought of them as his family.

  One day the grandma said to the little boy, “We are all out of bread and milk, so I need you to go down to the store and come back with bread and milk.”

  The little boy headed for the store, singing to himself,

  Bread and milk, bread and milk

  Going to the store for bread and milk

  Bread and milk, bread and milk

  Going to the store for bread and milk

  Bread and milk, bread and milk

  Going to the store for bread a—

  Up ahead he saw a bear. The little boy thought: “That bear’s big. Nope, that bear’s huge. Nope, that bear is enormous!” He called out, “Hey, Bear, how’d you get so fat?”

  The bear walked toward the little boy, and growled,

  “I ate five pounds of meat, and an ice cream treat.

  “And I’m gonna eat you!” Chomp. Gulp!

  The bear swallowed the little boy.

  Meanwhile back at the house, Grandma grew tired of waiting on the little boy, so she said to the little girl, “Sugar, go on down to the store. Find that brother of yours, and the two of you come on home with some bread and milk.”

  The little girl said, “Yes, ma’am, Grandma!” She headed for the store and she, too, was singing:

  Bread and milk, bread and milk

  Going to the store for bread and milk.

  Bread and milk, bread and milk

  Going to the store for bread and milk

  Bread and mi—

  She met the bear. “Oh,” thought the little girl, “that bear’s big. No, that bear’s huge. No, that bear is enormous!”

  She called out, “Hey, Bear, how’d you get so fat?”

  The bear walked toward that little girl, growling:

  “I ate five pounds of meat, and an ice cream treat,

  “A little boy,

  “And I’m gonna eat you!” Chomp. Gulp!

  The bear swallowed the little girl.

  Meanwhile, back at the house, Grandma grew tired of waiting again, so she said to her husband, “Honey, please go down to the store and get some bread and milk. And look for those grandkids. Bring them home with you too.”

  Now Grandpa had been out doing his chores. He had just come in and sat down in his favorite chair. He didn’t want to move, but when he saw how tired and worried Grandma looked, he knew he had to go. So, without saying a word, he pushed himself up out of his chair, made his way over to the door, lifted his hat off the hook, set it on his head, and then he stepped outside. As he walked toward the store, he was grumbling:

  Bread and milk, bread and milk

  Going to the store for bread and milk.

  Bread and milk, bread and mi—

  He met the bear. Grandpa thought: “Now that bear’s big. No, that’s not right—that bear’s huge. No, that’s not right either—that bear is enormous!”

  And Grandpa called, “Hey, Bear, how’d you get so fat?”

  The bear walked toward Grandpa, growling:

  “I ate five pounds of meat, and an ice cream treat,

  “A little boy, a little girl,

  “And I’m gonna eat you!” Chomp. Gulp!

  Meanwhile, back at the house, Grandma was still waiting on the bread and milk, and she was getting rather annoyed with the rest of her family. “Hmpf!” she said, “Can’t anybody in this family find their way home!”

  So Grandma headed for the store, singing:

  Bread and milk, bread and milk

  Going to the store for bread and milk.

  Bread and mi—

  She met the bear.

  “My goodness,” Grandma thought, “that bear’s big. No, that bear’s huge. No, that bear is enormous!”

  Grandma called out, “Hey, Bear, how’d you get so fat?”

  The bear walked toward Grandma, growling:

  “I ate five pounds of meat, and an ice cream treat,

  “A little boy, a little girl, an old man,

  “And I’m gonna eat you!” Chomp. Gulp!

  Meanwhile, back at the house, the little squirrel had watched all of his people leave their house. And when they didn’t come back he went to look for them. Now, he had heard the song they were singing, so he sang it too:

  Bread and milk, bread and milk

  Going to the store for bread and mi— Uh-oh!

  The squirrel saw the bear and thought, “That bear’s big, Uh-uh, that bear’s huge. Uh-uh, that bear is enormous!”

  The squirrel called out, “Hey, Bear, how’d you get so fat?”

  The bear walked toward the squirrel, growling:

  “I ate five pounds of meat, and an ice cream treat,

  “A little boy, a little girl, an old man, an old woman,

  “And I’m gonna eat you!”

  The bear lunged for the squirrel, but the squirrel ran up a tree. The bear looked up that tree and said, “Huh, if your little feet can take you up that tree, my big feet can take me up that tree.” So the bear climbed up the tree. The squirrel ran way out on a teeny-tiny limb and jumped over to another tree. The bear watched, “Huh! If your teeny-tiny feet can take you all the way out that teeny-tiny limb and over to another tree, my great big feet can take me out that teeny-tiny limb and over to another tree.” So the bear started walking out the teeny-tiny limb. The limb broke. The bear crashed to the ground. And when he hit, he split wide open.

  Out jumped Grandma saying, “Whoop-de-doo! I’m out.”

  Out jumped Grandpa, “Whoop-de-doo! I’m out.”

  Out jumped the little girl, “Whoop-de-doo! I’m out!”

  And the little boy, “Whoop-de-doo! I’m out!”

  The little squirrel looked at all his peo
ple, and he said, “Well, whoop-de-doo! I’m out too, and I was never in!”

  COMMENTARY

  ATU Tale Type 2028 The Devouring Animal

  That Was Cut Open

  For many years, I told “Sody Sallaraytus,”1 a variant of this folktale. Although I had read the Kentucky-collected variants published by Leonard Roberts (“Cheese and Crackers,”2 “The Bad Bear,”3 “The Greedy Fat Man,”4 and “Fat Man, Fat Man”5), they simply were not as appealing to me as the “Sody Sallaraytus” story. Audiences enjoyed “Sody Sallaraytus” and I had fun telling it, so I did not add a Kentucky-collected variant of the tale to my repertoire.

  Then I was awarded an Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship from Berea College. During the fellowship, I listened to sound recordings of over three hundred stories Leonard Roberts collected from people ranging in age from young children to the very elderly. At first I was tempted to skip the variants of “Sody Sallaraytus.” After all, I had already read several and knew I had no interest in adding a different version of the story to my telling repertoire. But then I reminded myself that one reason I had applied for the fellowship was to see what I could learn from hearing the stories instead of reading them, so I made myself listen to variations on this tale. The more times I heard different tellers tell it, the more I looked forward to the next opportunity. Over the course of the fellowship I listened to versions from eight different tellers, and I fell in love with the story.6 Table 2 shows some details from the stories I heard.