Jane Hicks Gentry by Smith Betty N.;

Author:Smith, Betty N.; [Smith, Betty N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Riddles and Rhymes

Had I but words to say how these tunes are bound with the life of the singer, knit with his earliest sense-impressions, and therefore dearer than any other music could ever be—impossible to forget as the sound of his mother’s voice.

—Emma Bell Miles, The Spirit of the Mountains

There was great respect and love among Jane and Newt Gentry and their children. Although they worked hard and much was expected of them, the children felt fortunate to have them for parents and said as much. There was laughter and fun in the Gentry home. At a family reunion in 1980, Lalla said to those gathered: “I tell you that was one of the happiest homes and there’s nothing in the world that makes a happier home than a bunch of kids.”

When Maud recorded for the Library of Congress she went into some detail about life in the Gentry home:

Mother sang practically all the time as she went about her work. There were nine of us children and that saved her having to answer the call of each one, because as she sang we knew where she was. And then in the evening as we would sit around the fire, each child busy with pulling the burrs from the wool or raveling up a piece of worn woolen goods that she might re-card the wool, then she would sing these songs to us and tell us the Jack tales.1

There were so many children in the family we didn’t have to hunt playmates. And on cold winter evenings and in the afternoon, the oldest one of the children who was free from work would often gather the smaller ones of us together to play. And one of the games that we especially liked was called “Travel.” The older one would sit down and the rest of us would bring our little chairs or kneel around her knee, and if there were a number of us playing we only got to put down one finger. But if there were just two or three of us playing we could each put on two fingers—on her knee—and then she would go ’round the circle of fingers, counting:

Intery mintery cutery corn,

Apple seed and apple thorn,

Wire briar limber lock,

Three geese in the flock.

One flew east, one flew west,

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

The clock fell down,

And the mouse ran out,

You old dirty dishrag, you.

And whoever’s finger she ended on with “you,” that was the person who was “It.” And they got to travel.

So they went and stood in a corner and then all the rest of us gathered ’round this older sister and whispered the things we’d like to be. Oh, we could be a horse, or a cow, or a pig, or a sheep, or the skillet, or the coal shovel, or we could be a wagon, or a cloud, or a rainbow—just anything in the world that you wanted to be. But you had to remember what you were and tell her so she could remember it.

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