Mountain Music and Folklore

Swiss alpenhorns (photo by Alton Byers)

Alpine herders first began yodeling to stay in touch with one another across the distant mountaintops. A good yodeler can sing quite loud! It is great way to feel less lonely when you are by yourself on a mountainside, with only your cows or goats for friends. If you follow the sound of yodeling, you will often find alpenhorns. Alpenhorns are large wooden horns, as long as 3 or 4 meters. They make a deep, shivery sound that echoes through the mountains.

In the Appalachian Mountains, folk music came over with immigrants from Ireland and Scotland about two hundred years ago. This music took on the wild harmonies and rhythms of the wilderness, and became lively “old-time” fiddle and banjo music. Appalachian dancing, called “flatfooting”, also has its roots in Irish and Scottish highland dances. Mountain people around the world make many, many different kinds of music. What kind of music do you enjoy?

Appalachian fiddler (photo by Alton Byers)

Folklore

Mountains are full of stories. Some of them are ancient stories that have been passed down from grandparents to grandchildren for thousands of years. Others are new stories that capture the excitement, mystery, or beauty of mountain life.

How Coyote Stole Fire (a Native American tale)

(photo by USFWS)

Long ago, when people had newly come into the world, they lived happily in the warm weather, but shivered with cold when the winter snows lay on the ground. Coyote felt sorry for the people, who had no warm fur to protect them from the ice and snow as he had. One day, he heard some women crying, “If only we could have a small piece of the sun in our teepees during the winter, then our children would not die from the cold."

Coyote decided on a daring plan to help the people. He knew of a faraway mountaintop where the three Fire-sisters lived. These fierce Fire-sisters kept fire to themselves, guarding it jealously against all intruders. Coyote gathered his friends Squirrel, Chipmunk, Frog, and Tree together, and they devised a plan to steal fire from the selfish Fire-sisters. Each of them would need great speed, boldness, or courage to carry it the plan.

(photo by Joe Martin, USFWS)

(photo by R. Tuck, USFWS)

Coyote climbed the mountain and watched the three Fire-sisters patiently from his hiding place. Their eyes glinted like bloodstones, and their hands were clawed like the talons of the great black vulture. Finally, after waiting for days, Coyote saw his chance. When they were not looking, he grabbed a piece of the hot fire in his mouth! He ran down the mountain, not daring to look back, even when one of the Fire-sisters grabbed his tail and turned the tip of it white. Squirrel met Coyote just as he was tiring, and took the fire onto her back. The fire scorched so painfully that her tail curled up over her back. Then, as they approached the foot of the mountain, the exhausted Squirrel tossed the fire to Chipmunk.

Little Chipmunk froze with fear at the sight of the terrible Fire-beings, and in that moment one of the Fire-beings raked its claws across Chipmunk’s back, leaving three black scorched lines. At this Chipmunk leaped up into the treetops with the fire and raced away.

Soon Frog appeared and took the fire, but one of the Fire-sisters caught him by the tail! Frog gave a mighty leap and tore himself free, leaving his tail behind. As the Fire-sisters came after him again, Frog flung the fire to Tree. And Tree swallowed it. The Fire-sisters gathered round, but they did not know how to get the fire out of Tree. They promised it gifts, sang to it and shouted at it. They twisted it and struck it and tore it with their knives. But Tree did not give up the fire. In the end, the Fire-sisters went back to their mountaintop, defeated. But Coyote knew how to get fire out of Tree. He went to the people’s village and showed them how. He showed them the trick of spinning a sharpened stick in a hole made in another piece of wood until the fire escaped. From then on people were warm and safe through the cold of winter.

Bow Drill (photo by Edward S. Curtis, Library of Congress)

Would you like to listen to mountain music or read more folktales? Try these links:

Swiss yodeling
Hear a recorded Swiss yodel from The Missing Link, Inc.

Alphorn
Listen to an Alphorn WAV file (Grindelwald Tourist Office, Switzerland).

Old-time Appalachian Mountain music
Video sampler from old-time week at the Augusta Heritage Center.

El Condor Pasa
A traditional song of the Indians of the Peruvian Andes, which cries out for freedom. It was arranged in 1913 by Daniel Alomia Robles, and may be heard on the web courtesy of “boleadora.com”

Mountain Folktales:

Read mountain folktales from around the world

Explore mountain motifs in myths, legends and folktales

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