Gerald Milnes has set out to provide a much-needed corrective to studies of Appalachian folklore. He proposes to document the deep and abiding (Pennsylvania) German influence on the traditional culture of Appalachia, a study area much in need of updating.
Most studies of Pennsylvania German (or Pennsylvania Dutch) traditional culture do mention that the culture area of German influence stretches well out of the geographical boundaries of Pennsylvania, and south along the Great Valley of Virginia and from there up into the Appalachian Mountains. But beyond a few rather dated studies, Germans have been “left out” of early twentieth-century accounts of Appalachia. Milnes, Folk Arts Coordinator of the Augusta Heritage Center at Davis and Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia, is ideally situated to study the German-based traditions of the region, and his book is a heroic attempt to bring this rich heritage to the attention of all of us (and in particular to Appalachian specialists). His focus is on beliefs—particularly occult beliefs about witchcraft, healing, and astrology—and his claim is that these widespread beliefs are based not in Anglo folk belief, but squarely in German folk culture. It’s a good premise; however, his supporting evidence is sparse and his causal chains somewhat wobbly.
His information is based on many years of fieldwork in Pendleton County, West Virginia, where more than thirty percent of the population claim German heritage, and his lively profiles of the women and men he talked with over the years are the best parts of his book. He addresses wonderful topics in his interviews with them—planting by the signs (astrology), doctoring and curing with both prayers and charms (called “trying” or “powwowing” in German Pennsylvania), herbal medicine, witchcraft belief, and two undeniably central European/German practices, occult charm and cure books, and belsnickling (Christmas mumming). He also briefly mentions material culture, folk arts, and music.
So what’s the problem? In his intense desire to set the record straight, he overdoes it with broad, spottily supported claims of relationships. It’s as if he is stuck in an old-fashioned search for origins and survivals, rather than trying to consider the strands of ideas and practices that have grown and changed over time. As a result he is apt to make claims for improbable series of events. He opens with a marvelous description of a group of German Pietist pilgrims, apparently from the Ephrata Cloister community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, dressed in white robes as they walked into the Valley of Virginia singing German hymns. He then seems to posit a direct line from the tiny, eccentric religious community at Ephrata (once loosely affiliated with the Anabaptist German Baptist Brethren, today called the Church of the Brethren) to the German beliefs of contemporary Pendleton County (I checked—there are nineteen churches in the county, no Anabaptist churches at all, and only two, one Lutheran and one Evangelical United Methodist, that might be German churches). If we are expected to do a dot-to-dot tracery from 1740 Pennsylvania to 1990 West Virginia, we need a good many more dots.
Another example is his claim that the “hermetic mysticism” that permeates Appalachian folk occult practices is solely of German origin. Certainly some of it was, but there are also plenty of other sources—English, Italian—for those practices as well, and it is hardly possible to tell from which source any particular Appalachian practice might derive without a great deal more work. Just because some very early almanacs and hymnals were printed by the German language press at the Ephrata Cloisters does not mean that all beliefs about planting by the signs or the origin of shape note singing inevitably lies there. Ben Franklin was publishing English language almanacs the about the same time. Milnes presents wonderful ideas, but falls short on producing the evidence to connect them.
One more example: he ties the Christmas practice of belsnickling to the “old Teutonic concept of the wild hunt” and describes the belsnickle as a “Germanic midwinter elf,” all the time glossing over (or just not citing) well-documented parallel traditions from most of the rest of Europe and North America.
Milnes, in his zeal to connect things culturally German to Appalachian folk practices--a connection that is absolutely, undeniably there--just gets carried away and permits a few examples to stand in for proof.
Moreover, the scholarship Milnes uses to support his arguments is not always apparent. The bibliography is full of really solid works by respected scholars, yet some of the claims in the book seem to suggest he did not take these works seriously. Ronald Hutton’s history of witchcraft belief in England is there, yet Milnes seems to claim that occult traditions in Appalachia must have come from Germany because there wasn’t a strong presence of them in England or Scotland. Some of Don Yoder’s works on just about every aspect of Pennsylvania German folk culture are in the bibliography, but not much is referenced in the text. It would have helped. I confess that I was disappointed that my own work on witchcraft beliefs in West Virginia and German Pennsylvania did not appear in the bibliography, and I’ve tried to be cool with that—they were in folklore journals that have since ceased publication, and it was kind of a long time ago.
In short, though the book is a really great idea, it falls short in its focus on outdated concerns about origins and survivals and in its disappointing lack of theoretical concerns and support. In all fairness, it does fulfill one of its aims: it does force the reader to reconsider the intense focus on the Anglo connections of all things Appalachian.
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[Review length: 945 words • Review posted on February 23, 2009]