Fighting Dragons (Or Witches): W NC Mountain Tradition Bearers of 17th C British Ballads

Ballads continue to confound us. Several names heard in Western North Carolina are synonymous with ballad, song, and storytelling, and these people enlighten us: The Ward, Hicks, Presnell, Rhymer, Norton, Guy, and Harmon families have humbly shared what has been passed down to them in the oral tradition. The ballads about love, murder, and witchcraft, shared traditions alive in the seventeenth century, and, in most cases that pre-date written documentation, are alive and well in Appalachia. In this paper, I discuss ballads printed in seventeenth-century Britain, and how, as the use of ballads and broadsides evolved, so did the cultural impact, particularly in the evolution of the assumed characteristics, identification, and treatment of witches. That impact not only influenced the common folk, but also the well educated. I look at ballads and broadsides about witchcraft, and include several versions of one ballad dating back to the seventeenth century about interaction with a witch, Jobal Hunter (Child 18). Rick Ward, tradition-bearer of the Beech Mountain ballad-singing tradition, often performs the version I will discuss. My methodology for this paper includes looking at primary source facsimiles of broadside ballads, secondary sources about broadside subject matter and transmission from Britain to America, and a primary source interview with Rick Ward, and his mother, Jean Ward