Clure and Joe Williams

THIS PAPER DEALS with the value of a local ballad in a study of folk culture and with local history in a process of formation. That the ballad of the Williams family did not attain wider circulation is not our present concern, although it will be obvious that the ballad and legend are only subtypes in American balladry and legendry. Our study amply supports Herbert Halpert's contention that the local folksong is often the most important song in a community., We further emphasize that the investigation of the background of a local ballad may be of prime importance to an understanding of a folk culture. But the investigation must be a direct one: of all our collectanea, only one item was volunteered in answer to a request for old songs. The locale of this ballad is south-central Kentucky and north-central Tennessee, on both sides of the Cumberland River, which in the past made of the neighboring counties a culture area. Most of the area lies outside of what is officially classified as Southern Appalachia, but the culture is, in our judgment, predominantly Appalachian. Until recently it was a land of small farms and of restricted communication with urban, industrial culture. Thirty years ago there was scarcely a paved road in the area, and rail lines still reach only to Glasgow, in neighboring Barren County. The lifeline was the Cumberland River, stretching from Burnside in eastern Kentucky to Nashville, Tennessee. Folk memory, or tradition, reaches back to the eighteenth century in tales claiming a local site in Monroe County as the first settlement in Kentucky. There is a tale and alleged proof-though informants are reluctant to furnish all details-that Abraham Lincoln was actually born in Monroe County and in circumstances befitting an epic hero. Some citizens speak as if it were yesterday of Joe Coleman, the only white man hanged in Cumberland County, whose execution in 1847 left in its wake a number of legends and a song.2 This is Cordell Hull country. The career of the late Secretary of State, who was

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