Mountain Speak in My Stories

I’m exploring the world of a new book I’m diving into. It’s the same world I’ve explored several times already as I head back to the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky to bring some new characters to life. I like going to the mountains for stories. The new one that I’m dreaming up right now will be my fifth book with a mountain setting. That includes my most recent release, The Song of Sourwood Mountain. This story might be a little different, but then that’s what I always say when I start thinking up a new story.

So what am I thinking might be different this time? I don’t think I’ll have any or not many “brought-in” or “fotched-in” characters. I think that will be great and perhaps challenging. It’s a good thing I know country talking. I sound like a country person when I’m talking because that waht I am. A country woman. I don’t sound like an English teacher. That will help me write a mountain story where my characters don’t sound like English teachers. That is, unless they are teachers and then even if they are mountain characters, they might sound a little like an English teacher.

One of the things I have loved about writing Appalachian stories is being able to use the wonderful sound of mountain speak. I enjoy inserting some of the unique expressions you might have heard in the mountain area back in the 1800s and earl 1900s. You might still hear some of them, but those who live in the hills of Kentucky aren’t as isolated as they used to be. Television and movies have stolen some of our regional talk, even my country talk here in my area of Kentucky. But we told on to some of it. I love hearing it.

Perhaps because my recent release is set in my fictional little mountain community of Sourwood, I’ve talked more about my other books set in the Appalachian area when I’ve been at book events. When I was at Back 2 Back Books a week ago, I kept telling interested readers about my other Appalachian books too. I suppose I hoped that reading one would encourage them to read another.

Then I did a phone visit with a book club in Arkansas last week. They had read The Song of Sourwood Mountain. We talked about that story for sure, but I also brought up my Frontier Nursing stories, These Healing Hills and An Appalachian Summer. I did manage to mention Along a Storied Trail too.

They were nice enough to send me a picture after our phone call. Love their smiles.

I told them what I’m telling you – that I like being able to include the gems of Appalachian speak in my stories. I said how I loved how the people said they needed to get a “soon start” in the morning which meant they needed to leave early.  Then I tried to remember about the evening and couldn’t come up with it. Of course, that was “the edge of dark.”

I hunted up this from an old blog post about a book club that read These Healing Hills a few years ago. The lady, Estelle, presenting my book to her Florida book club had filled out some index cards with quotes she’d taken from the story. Then the book club members took turns reading the cards.

One of her cards was MOUNTAIN TALK. These are the quotes she’d pulled out of the story.

She smiled up at him. ‘The edge of dark. I love the way you say things here.’
‘It’s just talk to folks up here.’
‘I suppose so, but to my ears it sounds poetic.’

I’ll just head on shanks’ mare and see if I remember the trail home. (I’ve put shank’s mare in all my Appalachian books. It means having to walk since you don’t have a horse.)

“I knew that girl lost her notching stick.”
“Notching stick?”
“What she used to count up the months.” 

(While I thought this fit in my midwife story, the saying actually was one I heard my mother-in-law say about a mother-to-be who looked farther along or not as far along as she said.)

Then Estelle added these extra bits of information about the story.

Midwives: called brought-in girls by the local people
The children were told that “Babies were brought in the nurses’ saddlebags.”
Birth: She was punishing real bad. (Punishing was their word for labor.)
Midwives were there to catch babies.

If you want to read the entire post about this book club’s unique meeting, here’s the link.

And now I’m heading back up those mountain trails to share some of this mountain talk again. I can’t wait to have this or that phrase pop into my story at just the right times.

Do you know some unique ways to say something in that poetic or country way?

If you share it with me, who knows? It just might end up in my story.