Dark Corners: The Appalachian Murder Ballad

IF 0.4 4区历史学 Q1 HISTORY

SOUTHERN CULTURES Pub Date : 2024-01-20 DOI:10.1353/scu.2023.a917567

Julyan Davis

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Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Dark CornersThe Appalachian Murder Ballad
Julyan Davis (bio)

Click for larger view
View full resolution

Cold Fall the Drops of Rain, by Julyan Davis, 2016. Oil on canvas, 46 x 38 in.

[End Page 76]

I grew up listening to the folk songs of my ancestors along the Scottish Borders. When I left London for America, I discovered the songs again, preserved intact in the Appalachian South. Even as a child, I was drawn to the pathos and melancholy of these old ballads. They are weighted with what the historian David Hackett Fisher described as "nescient fatalism." Such a fatalism—a kind of stoic acceptance existing without specific foreknowledge—is common among societies with a history of violence. So also is the culture of honor that I found similarly transported to parts of America from its traumatic birthplace in the now-gentle Scottish Borders.¹

Finding evidence of such a culture (and such a fatalism) inspired me to set my paintings of these ancient songs in the contemporary South. I was not illustrating the ballad but rather the mood the ballad provoked in me. Many of the paintings are murder ballads, and most of the subjects are women; women trapped in a world where they are a commodity. Even if the women are prized, as several ballads tell, being attributed such power in a culture of honor often proves fatal.

This painting was inspired by the seventeenth-century ballad "The Dowie Dens of Yarrow," in which a young woman loses her suitor when he is ambushed and killed by nine others. Here she waits and watches from an abandoned farmhouse I discovered in Madison County, North Carolina, the same part of the world that keeps the old songs intact and continues to inspire my art. [End Page 77]

Julyan Davis

julyan davis is a British-American painter and novelist who has made the American South his subject since 1988. His art focuses on documenting both the vanishing landscape and the lost histories and folklore of the region. His traveling museum exhibits include collaborations with poets, musicians, historians, and actors.

notes

1. David Hackett Fisher, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 697.

查看原文本刊更多论文

黑暗角落阿巴拉契亚谋杀歌谣

以下是内容的简要摘录，以代替摘要：黑暗角落的阿巴拉契亚谋杀歌谣》（Dark CornersThe Appalachian Murder Ballad Julyan Davis）（简历）点击查看大图查看完整分辨率《冷落的雨滴》（Cold Fall the Drops of Rain），朱利安-戴维斯（Julyan Davis）创作，2016 年。布面油画，46 x 38 英寸 [尾页 76] 我是听着祖先在苏格兰边界一带的民歌长大的。当我离开伦敦前往美国时，我再次发现了这些在阿巴拉契亚南部保存完好的歌曲。甚至在孩提时代，我就被这些古老民谣的悲怆和忧郁所吸引。它们充满了历史学家戴维-哈克特-费舍尔（David Hackett Fisher）所描述的 "无知的宿命论"。这种宿命论--一种没有具体预知的委曲求全，在有暴力历史的社会中很常见。荣誉文化也是如此，我发现这种文化也同样从其饱受创伤的发源地--如今温和的苏格兰边境地区--传到了美国的部分地区1 。我画的不是民谣，而是民谣在我心中激起的情绪。许多画作都是谋杀民谣，大部分主题都是女性；女性被困在一个她们是商品的世界里。正如几首民谣所描述的那样，即使这些女性被视为珍品，但在一个崇尚荣誉的文化中，被赋予这种权力往往是致命的。这幅画的灵感来自十七世纪的民谣《雅罗的多维巢穴》，在这首民谣中，一位年轻女子失去了她的求婚者，因为他被其他九个人伏击并杀害。我在北卡罗来纳州麦迪逊县发现了一座废弃的农舍，她就在这里等待和守望，正是这片土地让古老的歌谣得以保留，并不断激发我的艺术灵感。[朱利安-戴维斯（Julyan Davis），英裔美国画家和小说家，自 1988 年以来一直以美国南部为创作主题。他的艺术专注于记录该地区正在消失的景观以及失落的历史和民间传说。他的巡回博物馆展览包括与诗人、音乐家、历史学家和演员的合作。David Hackett Fisher, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 697.版权所有 © 2024 美国南方研究中心 ...

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来源期刊

SOUTHERN CULTURES HISTORY-

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0.30

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期刊介绍： In the foreword to the first issue of the The Southern Literary Journal, published in November 1968, founding editors Louis D. Rubin, Jr. and C. Hugh Holman outlined the journal"s objectives: "To study the significant body of southern writing, to try to understand its relationship to the South, to attempt through it to understand an interesting and often vexing region of the American Union, and to do this, as far as possible, with good humor, critical tact, and objectivity--these are the perhaps impossible goals to which The Southern Literary Journal is committed." Since then The Southern Literary Journal has published hundreds of essays by scholars of southern literature examining the works of southern writers and the ongoing development of southern culture.

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