"So Sophie Has Crossed the Sea"*: Tracing Ballads in Madison County

Eighth-generation ballad-singer Donna Ray Norton singing a ballad in the Old Kona Baptist Church in Kona, Mitchell County, North Carolina, November 2023. (Photograph by Leila Weinstein)

This is an article from The Hilltop, the Mars Hill University student newspaper, October 6, 1978, edition 1, p. 1. (Image courtesy of the Southern Appalachian Archives, Mars Hill University)

By Mars Hill University students Grace Mayer, Gisselle, Michua, Nicolas Varner, and Megan Walters

Appalachian music encompasses many traditions: old-time and bluegrass, European, African, and American, folk and professional. Among the most unique and rarest of these is ballad-singing. Originally brought to the mountains by Scots-Irish and English settlers, these sometimes-romantic and sometimes-entertainingly gruesome narrative songs (some of which date back to the Elizabethan period) quickly found a foothold among America’s peaks and hollers. Passed from elders to the next generation as art and as entertainment, the songs and the stories they tell have endured here. In the early 20^th century, English folklorists Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles embarked on a quest to discover the English ballad-singing tradition in the Appalachian Mountains. They found their grail in Madison County, North Carolina.

Located in the western mountains of North Carolina, Madison County is home to one of the richest and most comprehensive traditions of ballad-singing anywhere in the world. That tradition can be directly traced to several families that still live here—Nortons and Chandlers, Sheltons and Wallins. Members of these families (as well as others) have preserved and continue to preserve these songs as a living art form. Today, ballads are also safeguarded by local institutions, such as Mars Hill University’s Southern Appalachian Archives, and events like the Lunsford Festival Ballad Swap, named for the late Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Lunsford was born on the Mars Hill University campus and was an enthusiastic folklorist and collector of Appalachian folk music and traditions (“About Bascom Lamar Lunsford”).

Because they are traditionally learned aurally, ballads have historically existed in the act of performance. Although they were also printed and marketed as broadsides, they largely exist and are taught as they are remembered. Although the word “ballad” comes from a Latin word meaning “dance,” ballads are often performed solo or with a very minimal instrumental accompaniment, sometimes with irregular rhythm, making them generally unsuitable for dancing. Unlike many forms of music that are only formally performed on specific occasions, ballads can be, and often are, performed during other activities, including work in the house, the field, and the factory. For this reason, they became a part of people’s day-to-day lives, memories, and family legacies.

When Sharp and Karpeles journeyed into Appalachia, they were seeking to preserve ballad-singing in writing, both lyrics and melody. Through interviews with local artists—many of whom lived in Madison County, such as Jane Hicks Gentry (a famous local ballad-singer and storyteller originally from Watauga County but who moved to Madison County with her family when she was twelve)—they were able to record almost three-hundred distinct ballads (Smith, 22-23). Their book, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, stands as a testament of how the ballad-singing tradition had endured and changed in Appalachia.

Today, ballad-singing continues in Madison County and throughout Appalachia. Now, Sharp and Karpeles’ work has itself become an influence. In her introduction to a 2012 edition of the work, seventh-generation Madison County ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams reflected on the book’s influence on her childhood, saying that, “When [her] older relatives were singing and made reference to ‘the book,’…this was the only book they considered worth giving a second glance to when discussing the old ‘lovesongs’” (Adams, i) And so, like all of Appalachia’s traditions, ballad-singing continues to thrive and evolve with each new generation.

*From the ballad “Young Beichan”

Works Cited

“About Bascom Lamar Lunsford.” Mars Hill University, https://www.mhu.edu/about/what-to-do-and-see/ramsey-center/lunsford-festival/about/. Accessed 3 Dec. 2023.

Adams, Sheila Kay. “Introduction.” In English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, Vol 1. Written by Cecil J. Sharp, edited by Maud Karpeles, Loomis House Press, 2012, pp. 1-7.

Patterson, Daniel W. A Tree Accurst: Bobby McMillon and Stories of Frankie Silver. The University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Sharp, Cecil J. English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, Vol 1. Edited by Maud Karpeles, Loomis House Press, 2012.

Smith, Betty N. Jane Hicks Gentry: A Singer Among Singers. The University Press of Kentucky, 2021.