DOG TALES

Notes: THE DOG AND THE BUZZARD was adapted from Foxfire Book, ed. By Eliot Wigginton, 1972, pp 228-229, Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1972 as told by Bill Lamb.

Notes: A COLD TRAIL was collected from J. P. Fraley of Boyd County, Kentucky in 1979. I met Mr. Fraley at a May Day festival at Hindman Settlement Schjool on the banks of the Troublesome Creek where Mr. Fraley was a guest fiddler.  He was a well travelled mining consultant but grew up in eastern Kentucky which has a strong folk culture.

Also heard from Marcella Morgan of Leslie County, Kentucky who was told the tale by her father, James Baker.

Notes: WHEELCHAIR CASE was collected from Karla Thomas of Ashland, Kentucky in 1980. She learned the tale from Albert York who learned it from his father, George York.

Notes: WHEELCHAIR CASE was collected from Brenda Russell of Lexington, Kentucky in 1979. Brenda got the story from her father, Clayton Russell who got it from his uncle Clarence Lakes in 1976. Her story identified the boy as a “colored boy.”

Curt Begley, a Berea College bus driver and native of Berea, gave another version: A dog would tree coons and climb the tree to fetch them down. He had gotten three coons and was packing the fourth off the limb when he fell off a limb out over a cliff and broke his back. The man took him out in a wheelbarrow but the dog tried to tree three more times on the way to the vet.

An engaging version from “Deacon” Hembree of Galena, Missouri was presented in the December 1977 issue of The Ozark Mountaineer.

Notes: THE ACCORDION DOG was collected from a Berea College student in 1976 and has since been heard in Strasburg, Virginia and a couple of other places. My source did not liken the dog to an accordion—that is my invention. Two friends told me a “dirty” version, one from his childhood in Cherokee County, North Carolina in which the dog is in a car which wrecks and both dog and its owner end up in the hospital. The owner, when he comes to, sees the dog on the rug next to his bed and asks the doctor if that is his dog. The doctor answers in the affirmative to which the man says, “What’s that collar thing around his neck?” Is this the original tale?

See also Botkin, A Treasury of American Folklore, rev. ed., New York, Crown Publishers, 1975; “Fay Hubbard’s Dog” pp 511-512 from Idaho, A Guide in Word and Picture, Federal Writers’ Project, 1937.

Also, Fireman’s Fast Lane Hound, Crown Publishers, 1944, Chicago Dentist Folklore by Jack Conroy, Manuscript for WPA Federal Writers’ Project.

Notes: THE SPIRAL CHASE source is unidentified. However, H. K. (Bud) Rayfield, my wife’s cousin’s husband of St. Charles Missouri, told me this same tale but without the spiral portion. He probably heard it from Chester Cooper on the electrical crew in Lincoln County, Missouri.

Notes: COOKIE was collected from Bobby Fields of Hyden, Kentucky. This is a true story.  

The use of the word trotline is available on Wikipedia. Some dictionaries suggest a French origin. Could there have been a connection with French trappers in pioneer times? Or is trotline related to a trot-rope used to exercise horses in which each end of the line is tied to a tree and the bridle is attached to a ring?

Notes: ON A SATURDAY ONE SPRING was collected from Tommy Anderson of Brasstown, NC in 1967 (see also episode 1.  THE SKINBOARD). I have not heard this tale from other sources.

Notes: THE SKINBOARD was collected from Tommy Anderson of Brasstown, NC in 1967. It was The Skinboard and On a Saturday One Spring of this collection which started this compiler on a search for additional dog tales. Tommy was raised in Green Cove not far from Dog Branch where the local saying is “There are more Greens on Dog Branch than dogs in Green Cove.”

I have subsequently heard The Skinboard tale many times in North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and West Virginia. The epilogue about finding the dog in Kentucky was made up on the spot by Bill Sparks of Paint Lick, Kentucky about 1976 as we swapped tales in route to a country dance engagement in Cincinnati, Ohio.