Tales from the Cloud Walking Country - by Marie Campbell (Paperback)

About the Book

Assembled here are seventy-eight stories from six of the "ballad-singingest, tale-tellingest" residents of the eastern Kentucky mountain country. Based on stories rooted in European traditions from German fairy tales to Irish hero stories to Greek myths.

Book Synopsis

Assembled here are seventy-eight stories from six of the "ballad-singingest, tale-tellingest" residents of the eastern Kentucky mountain country. Based on stories rooted in European traditions from German fairy tales to Irish hero stories to Greek myths, the tales had been handed down through generations of telling before Marie Campbell collected them in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Readers will recognize the story of Snow White in "A Stepchild That Was Treated Mighty Bad," while "Three Shirts and a Golden Finger Ring" recalls the fairy tale of the Seven Swans. "The Fellow That Married A Dozen Times" is a lively rendition of "Bluebeard." As the narrators cautioned Marie Campbell again and again, "Tale-telling is nigh about faded out in the mountain country," but Tales from the Cloud Walking Country offers a lasting record of history, cultural heritage, language, and good old-fashioned fun.

Review Quotes

Delightful reading for both specialists and common folk.

--Saturday Review of Literature

One needs to look no further than the titles . . . of many of these stories for a glimmer of the pleasure they provide. [The] tales . . . sparkle with what we might call 'native wisdom.'

--Austin Chronicle

She succeeds in integrating tales, tellers, and audience into a cultural pattern rare in books of this kind. The native background and language, rich in poetic idiom and imagery of mountain speech uncluttered by dialect spelling--add a whole new dimension and a local or modern twist to the Old World originals. . . . Books like [this] will be the chief repositories of the old ways and the olden, golden, and silver tales that once made the 'main figure of the pattern.'

--New York Times Book Review

About the Author

MARIE CAMPBELL was a teacher and folklorist who, between 1926 and 1934, lived, worked, and traveled the eastern Kentucky mountains. She is also the author of Folks Do Get Born.