Welcome to the Jack tales.

Jack did a great many things other than climb a bean stalk.

And he met many other giants.

Killed most of them too.

These notes are ancillary to the in-class presentation and telling of a Jack Tale for Meredith Eliassen's History of Children's Literature seminar. August 2003.

The Tales:

There are a host of tales from the oral tradition of the Appalachian region. These tales were sometimes just called "the old stories" and many were about a boy named Jack, and his brothers Will and Tom. And even among the "Jack and Will and Tom tales," these were mostly just about Jack, and collectively these tales are known as the Jack tales. The majority of the Jack tales we know today, we know because they were collected by Richard Chase in the book, The Jack Tales, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1943. There are a host of other "old stories" in this tradition which don't involve Jack at all, and a number of these were collected by Mr. Chase into a subsequent volume, Grandfather Tales.

These folk tales have been passed down in the oral tradition, and some have roots in English, Scot, or Celtic tales. But the Jack tales as we know them now are distinctly American. It was also the nature of these tales never to be written down, and each tale was never told the same way twice, not even by the same teller. The Appalachian folk tales were set in familiar settings amongst farms, mountains, woods, and small towns of the country. But elements of the old world remained, and the stories occasionally featured ingredients such as witches, "Englishmen," and Kings. And Giants. Love the giants. (One of my personal favorite stories is Jack and the Giants' New Ground.)

Keep in mind that in this time, the United States as a nation was only several generations old. I have known folks who referred to the Civil War as "The War of Northern Aggression," or more politely, "The Recent Unpleasantness." The reader should be aware that in the time of these tales, American culture as something uniquely American and not Anglo-American, was still developing.

One cannot talk about the Jack tales without a mention of Appalachian folk tales in general. The Appalachian region, perhaps more than any other early or enduring American sub-culture is rich in the oral traditions of the American South. (And a note here to pronunciation: Appalachia is a proper noun referring to the region; Appalachian is an adjective of or pertaining to the region—both have a soft a). This area, and particularly the area of these tales, includes portions of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. The Jack Tales, as collected by Richard Chase, are largely attributable to Mrs. Jane Gentry of Hot Springs, Marshall Ward, R.M. Ward (Uncle Mon-Roe) and especially Counce Harmon of Beech Creek (near Beech Mountain) North Carolina. Others originate from Wise County, Virginia, and variations of many tales have been found in different parts, and in some cases, could be traced back a generation or two to the same teller.

Tales from the oral tradition such as the Jack tales are often referred to in terms of a "cycle," as they were told and retold across time and space. You can see variations of the Jack tales collected by Richard Chase in other publications. Notably Jack and the Fire Dragon, more accurately Jack and the Old Fire Dragaman, Jack and the Giants' New Ground, or a tale without Jack, Whickety Whack Into My Sack (these books are available for perusal in class).

Entertaining as they always were to kid and kin alike, there was often a very practical aspect to the story-telling. This helped keep the younger children to task while they worked on communal projects such as stringing beans (in preparation for canning) or threading beans to make the dried pod leather britches. As Mrs. R.M. Ward put it to Mr. Chase, "We would all get down around a sheet full of dry beans and start in to shelling 'em. Mon-roe would tell the kids one of them tales and they'd work for life!" (vii)

If it weren't for the work of Mr. Chase, we might not have these tales around today-- or at least, not nearly as many people would have been able to enjoy them. Today there are many books with variations on the Jack tales, and there are children's plays and plays for children of The Jack Tales, and simple Jack Tales children's books.

How we come to know the tales today:

During and after the first World War (around 1910-1920), there was a renewed enthusiasm for Anglo-American folk music. Cecil Sharp is considered one of the great, if not the great English folklorist. He founded The English Folk Dance and Song Society in England, and its American counterpart, the Country Dance Society in the United States. With the revived attention to Anglo-American folk music and dance, Cecil Sharp visited Mrs. Jane Gentry in Hot Springs, NC, and recorded 60 English folks songs from her. If Cecil were alive today he would likely turn off the radio if the music stopped and the DJ started talking. Because even though he sat and listened (and recorded) her folk tunes, he didn't sit and listen to her stories. Later, Mrs. Isobel Gordon Cater visited Mrs. Gentry and did the first collecting of the Jack tales as known to Mrs. Gentry. According to Mr. Chase (as mentioned in the introduction to The Jack Tales), these tales were published as told in the March 1927 Journal of American Folk-Lore.

(N.B.: sources use the word "recorded," but that is hardly the same concept as we think of songs being recorded today. Edison did not invent the phonograph until the 1880s, and successful commercial phonographs were not in production until 1905. However, the products improved and were suitable for dictation by 1910, and became more popular after WWI and into the 1920s. Mr. Chase does not indicate how these tales were recorded, and cites that these tales were published as told in the March 1927 Journal of American Folk-Lore. However, looking through that issue and those of near dates in the JSTOR collection, I could not find the original material. Although I have not been able to find the original journal article, there are enough references to lead me to believe these were 'live' audio recordings and not merely transcriptions.)

Mr. Chase came to hear the tales via Marshall Ward in the spring of 1935. Marshall Ward originated from western North Carolina, and approached Mr. Chase (himself living in Proffit, Virginia) after one of his talks about folk songs. From that discussion, and revelation that Jack did other things besides climb the bean tree (as it is told in these parts), began Richard Chase's passion for these folks tales, and then his investigation of these tales and their tellers, and the collection and correlation of their myriad manifestations. Eventually the bulk of the Jack Tales were collected and edited and combined into coherent narratives, and published as The Jack Tales in 1943. This was followed by Grandfather Tales in 1948, which featured the other stories not concerning Jack.

There is an irony to this preservation. If they had not been transcribed, some might have been lost forever. But in their preservation, they have lost much as well. Much of the living energy is lost, and only because I can hear in my mind my father's voice, or that of countless other story-tellers I have had the privilege to hear, can I feel the spirit of the stories when I read them. And, truth be told, when I do read these to myself, I try to squirrel myself away from others because I tend to read them aloud. Tom Hunt, one of Mr. Chases sources for these tales, said it plainly: "No, it'll not do just to read the old tales out of a book. You've got to tell 'em to make 'em go right."

My personal experience

I was very fortunate to grow up in the tradition of the southern folk tale. My father, and my godfather, are story-tellers of renown. I remember with full breath the camp-outs or country trips when we got to sit by an open fire, in the woods, and hear Dad (aka Papa John) or Big Rob (aka Uncle Rob, aka Albuquerque Bob-- but that's another story) tell a tale. My favorites were the Jack Tales like Jack and the Giants' New Ground, or Hardy Hard-Head; and Wicked John and the Devil (the last of which did not feature Jack at all). In these tales, Jack is often joined by his older brothers Will and Tom. And as the youngest of three boys myself, I always had a particular ethusiasm for Jack.

Papa John, telling stories at a day camp, with granddaughter Ellen, holding the tongs used in Wicked John and the Devil.

This is how I grew up. One time my brother made the mistake of asking my father how mobile phones worked. This is not necessarily a silly question, but he asked it while we were on a car trip to Florida, and the answer lasted approximately from Murfreesboro, Tennessee to Macon, Georgia.

But it also meant that my Dad could tell a tale. And he is still asked to tell his tales to campers and kiddies and grown-ups alike. And I have found myself telling a tale or two here and there as well. But I would never presume to be so skilled as Papa John. Maybe I need a set of overalls and a better hat.

A few words about Jack

While true to its English roots, Jack and the beanstalk is one of my least favorite tales, and I choose not to consider that a Jack tale at all. My Jack is an American boy. And even though his actions and objects of "theft" from up the bean tree baffle me, Jack of the Jack Tales is close to my heart, history, and heritage. By the way, Jack didn't consider what he took from the Giant's house up the bean tree to be stealing exactly, as it was his bean tree in the first place and anything on it was rightly his. He took objects which would have been attractive to a mountain boy: a skinning knife, a hunting rifle, and, oddly, a bedspread quilt with many bells sewn along the edges.

Jack is an All-American Boy differing from the Jack of English lore in that Jack tends to get into and out of mischief by his own wits. There may be magic folk in these tales, but they are not as common as in the English tales. And magic is rarely what gets Jack out of trouble. When there is the archetypal character of the benevolent old man with a magical gift (the donor character) it is a rare device. In some tales, this role is played by Saint Peter.

Jack's personality and character is decidedly American. These tales are retold and adjusted constantly within the mountain farming idiom, and it is through "this natural oral process," asserts Chase, "that our Appalachian giant-killer has acquired the easy-going, unpretentious rural American manners that make him so different from his English cousin, the cocksure, dashing young hero of the 'fairy' tale" (ix). Chase continues to assert Jack as an uniquely American folk tale hero. "Folk prosody rarely has presented so well-rounded a figure as Jack. Reynard is a one-sided rogue, the heroes of European collections of tales are many; other central characters are supermen or gods. Br'er Rabbit seems to be the only one who shows many facets of character in a connected series of stories. Jack, however, is thoroughly human, the unassuming representative of a very large part of the American people" (xii).

In his introduction to Jack in Two Worlds: Contemporary North American Tales and Their Tellers, Carl Lindahl expounds on the nature of the American Jack of Richard Chase versus the Old-World Jack of the fairy tales. As mentioned earlier, the use of magic in the tales is decidedly different. The American Jack is creative and adventurously self-sufficient. Lindahl writes, "In British tales, most magical elements provide help for the hero--for example, an animal that Jack has saved gives him a magic weapon. In American tales, however, the most common fantasy elements comprise magic used against the hero. By far the most common supernormal element is the giant, Jack's special enemy for at least three centuries, who is the villain in nearly one-third of the American stories. In nearly all of these Jack has no magic help against his monstrous foe. ... There is no gap between Jack's resources and his needs--an idea consonant with the 'folk idea' of unlimited opportunity found so prominently in American lore" (xxvii). The absence of magic is an important trait in these stories, as they reflect the American belief that we are in control of our own destinies.

I strongly encourage you to visit a story-telling festival if at all possible, and seek out tellers of the Jack Tales. Then buy the books. If you can’t hear it when you read it, how can you expect to tell it to the youngin’s right?