On a wintry night in 1831, a man named Charlie Silver was murdered
with an axe and his body burned in a cabin in the mountains of
North Carolina. His young wife, Frankie Silver, was tried and
hanged for the crime. In later years people claimed that a tree
growing near the ruins of the old cabin was cursed--that anyone who
climbed into it would be unable to get out. Daniel Patterson uses
this ""accurst"" tree as a metaphor for the grip the story of the
murder has had on the imaginations of the local community, the
wider world, and the noted Appalachian traditional singer and
storyteller Bobby McMillon. For nearly 170 years, the memory of
Frankie Silver has been kept alive by a ballad and local legends
and by the news accounts, fiction, plays, and other works they
inspired. Weaving Bobby McMillon's personal story--how and why he
became a taleteller and what this story means to him--into an
investigation of the Silver murder, Patterson explores the genesis
and uses of folklore and the interplay between folklore, social and
personal history, law, and narrative as people and communities try
to understand human character and fate. Bobby McMillon is a
furniture and hospital worker in Lenoir, North Carolina, with deep
roots in Appalachia and a lifelong passion for learning and
performing traditional songs and tales. He has received a North
Carolina Folk Heritage Award from the state's Arts Council and also
the North Carolina Folklore Society's Brown-Hudson Folklore Award.
|In the 1830s, young Frankie Silver was tried and hung for killing
her husband with an axe and burning the body in their home in the
N.C. mountains. Now, 170 years later, the story still has a grip on
the community and in the wider world, where it has been kept alive
by a ballad, local legends, fiction, drama, and news accounts.
Using the Silver case, this book examines the interplay between
folklore and history.
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