![]() ![]() ![]() Songs lightened the burden of poverty for the Ritchies and brought them joy and solace. Each song evokes a memory for Jean-hoeing corn, stirring off molasses, telling ghost stories, singing a dying baby to its eternal rest. ![]() Forty-two of the family's beloved songs are woven through Jean Ritchie's narrative, complete with words and often musical scores. Even in a region noted for its wealth of folksongs, the Ritchies' inheritance was exceptional. In the deceptively simple but picturesque language of rural Kentucky, Jean Ritchie tells of a way of life now nearly vanished and of a gentle, upright people shielded from the outside world by forbidding mountain ranges, preserving the traditions of their forebears.įoremost among those traditions were the British folksongs brought from England by James Ritchie in 1768. Singing Family of the Cumberlands is both an appealing account of family life and a treasury of American folklore and folksong. All the Ritchies sang-when they worked, when they prayed, when they rejoiced, even when tragedy struck. Jean, the youngest of the clan, grew up to be a world renowned folksinger. The "singing family" of which Jean Ritchie writes is that of her parents, Balis and Abigail Ritchie, and their fourteen children, all born and reared in Viper, Kentucky, deep in the Cumberland Mountains. ![]()
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