You'll get
some elements of Elizabethan English turning up virtually anywhere. But trust me, no one here speaks anything near Elizabethan English, unless they're performing a play. Read the section,
They Speak Elizabethan English in Appalachia, from the book,
Word Myths, by David Wilton and Ivan Brunetti.
Such myths of Appalachia come from highly romanticized beliefs, and yet the written articles and reports that keep these notions alive are still common today.
Just a few months back I read an article written by a woman who'd visited the area. It seems that while walking through the backyard of a local she discovered strange round, green colored things on the ground a bit smaller than a baseball. The local quide explained they were walnuts (from a black walnut tree) and he then picked up a brick and cracked one open and offered her the chance to taste a walnut.
Following this "experience" the lady writer apparently did some "Internet research" because she later came to the conclusion in her article how this local was
really practicing an ancient art that could be traced back the Cherokee Indians and probably back to the Mound Builders. The local man wasn't really really using just a brick -- he was using a "nutting tool" just like the ancients had done countless centuries before. And she then went on to explain how much she and others like her from civilization could learn from the
seemingly simple folk of Appalachia who have
somehow managed to keep ancient
secrets such as these alive.
How do they know to crack a nut with a brick? How do they know it's safe to eat? It must be Zen! What else could explain it? Their eyes roll back into their heads and they're channeling the ancients when they crack a walnut. It's Zen I tell you!
