This painting is about an adolescent boy named Jack, a folk tale character whom many of you may be familiar with. Stories of varied people and events have been handed down from family to family during the years of settlement and growth in the southern mountains, but Jack has remained a consistent and popular character in Appalachian storytelling. Particularly, these stories were handed down by families settling and remaining in Wise County, VA, upper east Tennessee, and western North Carolina. It turns out, however, that Jack really originated in Europe. Many years before America was settled, stories of Jack were told in European families, and characteristically, in Scotland, he lived in a fishing community by the sea.
Our Jack, the Appalachian Jack, has been known as a character who is kind of laid-back, a little bit lazy, doesn't have a lot of money, doesn't have fame nor fortune, but he has his wits about him. He's quick-witted, honest, and good-natured. So he gets, in the end, what he needs, and he conquers life's challenges.
Well, it's the same scenario for the Scottish Jack. This person, too, has humble beginnings, but comes up against challenges, in the magical sense, of giants and monsters, and mermaids that change into old hags when they're wrongly plucked from the sea. But the Scottish Jack, again like his Appalachian counterpart, knows how to outwit the evil forces; knows how to, in the end, use his sense of fairness and his plain common sense to overcome the odds. On both sides of the Atlantic, the Jack tales are stories of morality.
So I've painted the imagery of Jack's adventures in sort of a swirl around the kettle, because the kettle is the place where the Traveling People of Scotland have met over the years to eat their meals, and to teach their children through story telling. You can see our Appalachian Jack on the left below several characters who attempt, always unsuccessfully, to get the best of him; and on the right, his Scottish ancestor, who ultimately reigns, in a spiritual sense, (according to Scottish storyteller Stanley Robertson), over a Land of No Death. This painting is owned by Mary Lawson.
Ellen Elmes
PO Box SVCC
Richlands, VA 24641-1101
email: ellen.elmes@sw.edu
phone: 276.964.7205
fax: 276.964.7720