About the Book
The stores of Mildred Haun, collected here for the first time, are unique in the annals of American literature. Set in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee and covering a span of family history from the Civil War to 1940, these tales achieve the forceful, intractable simplicity of the traditional ballads. But one also finds in these twenty-three stories an overview of the forces of nature, the paradoxes inherent in the human condition, and a full acceptance of the real world and the supernatural.
Born to the milieu about which she wrote, Mildred Haun recorded a world which combined stark natural phenomena and passionate supernatural forces. And because the supernatural is woven into the dramatic fabric of the stories, it contributes, paradoxically, to the final credibility of events.
Few writers in the twentieth century have set down so rich and complex a rendering of folk tradition and such a comprehensive treatment of superstition in the southern Appalachians. In these tales we meet a talking apple tree, a boy with the "hant bleach" of doom upon his brow, a bleeding ghost, a child's winding sheet wet with tears, and God's revelation in a blue bird.
No other dialect collection from the South has been as close to the oral tradition or has achieved the same distinctive flavor and natural tonal qualities. The speech strikes the ear directly from the printed page. The language is simple and strong. A sparse, direct economy prevails. The total impact is explosive.
Although Miss Haun dramatized themes of cruelty, revenge, and the loss of personal dignity in a harsh world, the comic tales in this volume call to mind the Native American humor of the Old Southwest and demonstrate that a female humorist, without coyness or bawdry, can hold her own alongside Davy Crockett, Sut Lovingood, and the nameless spinners of tall tales.
About the Author:
MILDRED HAUN was born in Hamblen County, Tennessee in 1911. She grew up in Haun Hollow, Hoot Owl District, Cocke County, in a big family of hardy, independent mountain kin, most of them hillside farmers.
She grew up hearing the proverbs and rich lore of the mountains; she was early taught to read the signs that nature provides the wary and discerning eye.
She began writing fiction as an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University. After a distinguished career at the Department of Agriculture, she died in 1966.
HERSCHEL GOWER, the editor of the volume, was a friend of the late Mildred Haun. Name as her literary executor, he is Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University where he teaches courses in the ballad, the lyric, and American literature.
A native of Nashville, Professor Gower was graduated from Cumberland University and received the master's degree and the doctorate from Vanderbilt University. He spent 1954-56 in Scotland doing postgraduate study at the University of Edinburgh and has recently returned from a sabbatical year spent at the School of Scottish Studies.
The winner of an Award of Merit from the American Association for the State and Local History for Pen and Sword: The Life and Journals of Randal W. McGavock, Professor Gower is co-editor of The Sense of Fiction, and a contributor to Reality and Myth. His articles and poems have appeared in several journals.
