RATTLESNAKE STORIES
(excerpts from posts)
(If you want to retell any of the stories listed below, be sure to obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain)

1) Newlywed Rattlesnake, a poem, is told by Charlotte Ross on a video tape called Mountain Tales with Charlotte Ross, Dianne Hackworth & Orville Hicks. She does say (on the tape) that it was written in just a few paragraphs in a book in 1968, The Land Breakers by John Ehle. (Amazon says 1964) She collected stories in 259 Appalachian counties. All but three had some small fragment of the story. Then she moved to Boone, N.C. in 1968-69 and spent 11 years researching this story in Burke, Avery, Mitchell, and Yatze counties. She has versions from 15 families that she has put together to form her version.

According to Charlotte, the "first recorded instance of that story in America was on the Western North Carolina frontier in the year 1805." Charlotte spent eleven years researching different versions of this story, one of which was from her own family. She took her collection and put together her story.

The poem title is Mountain Bride and the author is Robert Morgan. Some anthologies with the poem are: Generation of 2000; Contemporary American Poets, William Heyen, editor; Morrow Anthology of Younger American poets, Dave Smith & David Bottoms, editors; Music of What Happens; Poems That Tell Stories, Paul B. Janecczko, compiler.

(This web page updated 8/10/03)