PA Fireside Tales — Volume 4

“Why does he want to do that?” someone once asked my wife, after she told them I was collecting and writing about the folktales and legends of Pennsylvania.  At first it seemed like an odd query, but as I thought more about it I realized it’s a question that deserves an answer, especially for anyone who had not grown up in the Pennsylvania hills of fifty-five or more years ago.

Times have changed so much and so fast since that period that it’s somewhat unpleasant to look at the way things are now and compare them to even what it was like when I was just a teenager.  Back then the landscape seemed to me to be composed only of rolling fields, peaceful farms, and small country hamlets surrounded by towering mountain peaks and dense woodlands.  Those who lived in this high country of windy knolls and serene mountains were mainly the descendants of the state’s original settlers, and when, in 1970, I started to talk to them about local legends and folktales, there were still many older people alive who were not that many decades removed from the time when their ancestors came here and claimed the mountains as their own.