Tall Tales from Old Smoky

It was another time, another place, but the people Hodge Mathes wrote about were real. As noted by Mildred Mathes Dalton, her father was visiting and writing about the Elizabethan culture in the Southern Appalachians long before it became academically fashionable to record and preserve the folklore of such ethnic groups.Attracted to the untamed wilderness of the Great Smoky Mountains, he and his colleagues spent many hours exploring the region. The people of the mountains became his friends, and he wrote with sensitive understanding of their loves, their hates, their adventures and their problems. These stories by Dr. Mathes were originally published in various magazines from 1923 to 1936.The passing of time changed forever the people and land of Appalachia. Fortunately this collection has been preserved, so that we can share and enjoy the author’s stories of those hardy souls who lived there in independent isolation during the early decades of this century.