Title: Blushing rose
Performer(s): Whitt, Myrth, b. 1902?
Recording Date: 1941-07-28
Description: Place of recording: Crandon, Wisconsin
Heard this song by relatives of her husband in Kentucky. Her first and only sweetheart sang it to her when she was 16. It was never heard anywhere else.
Subjects: Love / Voice
Language: English
-
Wisconsin Folksong Database: Helene Stratman-Thomas Collection
Mills Music Library Special Collections
University of Wisconsin Digital Collections

Unbeknownst to your busy editor prior to all this in-gathering, the wonder-cabinet-analog Fortean Times has a link to a Melungeon-related article in the Morristown, Tennessee Citizen-Tribune up in its current online edition.
How Fortean.
Though it's mostly about "Big Haley" Mullins, and mostly about her obesity.
Mattie Ruth Johnson, below, is related to Big Haley on both sides of her family. I'd guess her coverage of this legendary moonshiner would be more interesting.
A picture on that last link above shows Ms. Mullins to have been a large, stern-looking woman.
-
Wired also had some articles that were somewhat helpful.

Another version of the origin of the Melungeon, this time Africa:

They first settled in Virginia one year before the Pil-grims landed at Plymouth Rock. They were free Americans 150 years before George Washington fought the British.
Some of their descendants are world famous: Abraham Lincoln through his mother Nancy Hanks, actor Tom Hanks, Elvis Presley, Heather Locklear, Ava Gardner, comedian Steve Martin, singer-writer Rich Mullins and many others.
Yet the African-American ancestors of mixed groups like the Melungeons and their brothers, the Lumbees, Red Bones, Brass Ankles, and others are only now beginning to emerge from the dim mists of early American history.

African Origins of the Melungeons
-

The following advertisement was placed in the North Carolina Gazette on April 10, 1778 by Johnson Driggers, a desperate Melungeon father seeking his abducted children.

"On Saturday night, April the 4th, broke into the house of the subscriber at the head of Green's Creek - where I had some small property under the care of Ann Driggers, a free Negro woman - two men in disguise, with marks on their faces and clubs in their hands, beat and wounded her terribly and carried away four of her children, three girls and a boy, the biggest of said girls got off in the dark and made her escape, one of the girls name is Becca, and other is Charita, the boy is named Shadrack..."

This early newspaper notice described a common threat to free blacks and Melungeons in 18th century America. The lucrative American slave market enticed man-stealers to prey on free African and free mulatto communities. Freeborn mulatto Drury Tann of the Melungeon Tann family of North Carolina, applied for his Revolutionary War pension in 1834. In his pension application is an account of his early abduction by man-stealers.

"He (Tann) was stolen from his parents when a small boy by persons unknown to him, who were carrying him to sell him into Slavery, and had gotten with him and other stolen property as far as the mountains on their way...his parents made a complaint to a Mr. Tanner Alford who was then a magistrate in the county of Wake State of North Carolina, to get me back from those who had stolen me and he did pursue the rogues and overtook them at the mountains and took me from them."

On March 12, 1754, John Scott, a "free Negro" of Berkely County, South Carolina with Melungeon ties filed an affidavit notifying authorities in Orange County, North Carolina of a similar abduction.

"Joseph Deevit, Wm. Deevit, and Zachariah Martin entered by force the house of his daughter, Amy Hawley, and carried her off by force with her six children, and he thinks they are taking them north to sell as slaves."

Malungu: The Mbundu-African Origin of the American Melungeons
Tim Hashaw
Gowen Research Foundation

For centuries, they remained almost invisible to the American mainstream. They live hidden away on inaccessible mountain ridges, and a racially segregated society wrote them off as a mixture of white, black and American Indian.

Now, evidence is emerging which suggests that the Melungeons may have been among America's very first settlers, arriving in Appalachia long before the Northern Europeans.
[...]
Sir Francis Drake unloaded hundreds of other Turks after he liberated them from the Spanish in 1587. Blood typing has confirmed close similarities between present day Melungeons and people of the Mediterranean region.
What has now become known as the Kennedy theory is that these people pushed inland and settled down with American Indian women, to begin life as farmers.
With his team of researchers, Dr Kennedy has found hundreds of words in local Indian dialects that have almost the same meaning in Turkish or Arabic.
The Cherokee word for mother for example, is Ana Ta. In Turkish, the word for mother is also Ana-Ta.
Dr Kennedy says the word Melungeon is derived from the Arabic "Melun-Jinn" meaning one who has been abandoned by god - a cursed soul.

Richard Lister
BBC News

By 1670, while colonial Spain no longer figured as an active presence, Spanish recruits and their descendents did. It is also very likely that in settling in the mountains of western North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee, they intermarried, and/ or settled with established Native communities. Thus, they are perhaps some of the ancestors of the modern Melungeons, Lumbees, and other Native and/or Native descent communities of the Southeast. Among Melungeons, names one only finds in Portugal, such as Elvas or Elvis, Navarro or Navarrh, and Canara, are still popular (Kennedy 1994:107). In fact, Elvis Presley, who hails from Tennessee, was most likely of Melungeon descendent. Among Lumbees, the common tribal name Chavis would originally have been pronounced and spelled Chavéz in Spanish, or Chaves in Portuguese. It is this latter spelling that is still in common use by Lumbees today. During the course of 300 years, considerable mixing between these two related, yet distinct communities, along with others, also occurred.

Political History of the Lumbee Indians - Coalescence
Malinda Maynor

The sense of superiority which naturally arises when one group takes control of another's destiny is no new phenomenon. It runs through the history of mankind and this is why this writer considers the Melungeon movement to be so important at this juncture in history as a force resistant to racist rhetoric so that persons who acknowledge the contribution of their multi-ethnic ancestors reflected in their own lives powerfully disprove charges of intellectual inferiority which the bigoted would like to see as inherent in any one people.
On one hand, the South Carolina courts were in essence saying that a mixed race person with property and known association with whites could be deemed white with all the attendant privileges of that status but, on the other hand, a slave, no matter how far he was removed from his African ancestry, could have no such aspirations. In Barbados, the principle was the same, though strongly denied. The closeness that obtained between Barbados and the Carolinas and Virginia in particular with so many persons of the pioneer companies having proceeded from Barbados makes this phenomenon very understandable as the genesis for the need for isolation and the imparting of extreme prejudice to subsequent generations which, in Barbados, gave birth to a visibly white community yet known as Red, their original status.
The Calendar of State Papers for 1657 gives the unique description of the labour policies on Barbados in which the Irish "were derided by the negroes as white slaves" and records that negroes were being employed at trades rather than the the English, Scotch and Irish. Two years before the official report it was recorded that the import of Irish people as labour was being resisted by the English because the Irish were wont to throw in their lot with the escaped slaves yet the written record on Barbados is that the Irish never intermarried with the escapees they joined forces with.
Forbes came to the conclusion that many of the removed Native Americans were engaged in fishing activities. Early Barbados history confirms that the captured natives were being used as fishermen as well as house servants and coincidentally, pockets of white communities with a non-European culture were springing up being termed Red-Legs or Poor Backras marrying among themselves. Early photographs of Red-Legs show a marked resemblance to some of Kennedy's portraits of Native American and Melungeon families.
On Barbados, the Red-Leg community centered on the hilly, isolated areas of Irish Town and the Scotland District which has led historians to believe that they were an unmixed remnant of Scotch-Irish. The eating habits formerly ascribed to them of eating lice, crickets and bonavist, a type of bean, however indicates more than Irish origins. Impoverished through lack of opportunity these communities were referred to as "abandoned people".

Barbados and the Melungeons of Appalachia
L.E. Salazar
The Melungeons.com

Origin of Name "Melungeon"

Portuguese diplomat Louis de Sousa added to Kennedy's research saying, "West Africans used the word Mulango to refer to white people. They would mean people from Portugal, as Portuguese were the first white people they saw."
It was never an approved Portuguese word.The term was used in many nationalities with various spellings, but similar pronunciation. This included the Portuguese, Berber, Arabic, Turkish, West Africa, and among the Spanish/Moors. It developed into meaning shipmates to these disenfranchised people. Some were captured, or of the lower classes sent from their homelands to battle or to colonize other lands. Mulungo is seen in Spanish folk stories according to Eloy Gallegoes, Spanish historian. Dr. James Guills author of the book, "Azores Islands, A History," 1993, told me that, the Portuguese word "Mulungo's for shipmate was used by all the families sent to the Azores. And, to all other places they went to colonize. All the people on board the ships sent to the Azores were Malungos and would identity themselves as such to anyone one they might meet. Or, to anyone they might encounter later in their new location." It was suggested to Kennedy that the sea travel of the Ottoman Turks should be looked at. They certainly conscripted a variety of nationalities into their vast Empire. People moving throughout the world in the 15th-18th centuries would be revisited. He learned from Turkish scholars, the term 'Melun can' among the Turkish Levant Ottoman soldiers was pronounced the same as Melunjun. Meaning lost or cursed soul. Arabic Melun jinn meant cursed spirit. Melungeon, with various spellings and similar sound, was used by the Turks, Moors, Arabs, and Portuguese. Was Melungeon perhaps used by others who considered themselves disenfranchised ethnic mixed peoples of 'fringe' tribes from the Caribbean, West Indies or elsewhere? Perhaps some sent to colonize, to battle, or as marauding lost traders, never to return to their home lands. Mulungo / Melunzhawn / Melun can / Melunjinn / Melungeons were all terms for disenfranchised people.

Evelyn McKinley Orr
Gowen Research Foundation

Robin Hood come again

Lowry is the “robber baron of the period; his stronghold is an island at the center of an almost inaccessible swamp in Robeson County …” He is a “chivalric cut-throat”; his band a “motley crew of Whites and Blacks, runaway slaves … deserted soldiers of both armies, and miscellaneous outlaws of every stamp.”

Editorial deploring Lowry’s recent exploits
New York Times 22 July 1871: P. 4 col. 5.
-
The Lumbee Indians: An Annotated Bibliography Supplement
Glenn Ellen Starr Stilling
Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina.

Henry Berry Lowry
Over a complicated series of accusations and incidents regarding thefts and conscription, the Home Guard shot Henry Berry Lowry's father and brother while he watched from hiding. Henry Berry and a group of supporters promptly stole a large quantity of rifles (purchased for the local militia) from the Lumberton courthouse and began an eight-year war to avenge the deaths. Henry Berry Lowry's tri-racial band also, Robin-Hood-like, robbed plantations, often showing up at dinnertime and dining with their hosts before carrying off the plunder in a mule and wagon. They stole two safes (one from the Sheriff's office and one from a large company), leaving them empty on the main street in Lumberton.
Henry Berry Lowry escaped from jail twice.
He and his band were outlawed in 1868--meaning anyone could kill them for the reward. The reward for Henry Berry Lowry climbed to $12,000, the largest offered in the 19th century except for Jesse James and Jefferson Davis.

Rhoda Strong Lowry: The Swamp Queen of Scuffletown

"Melungeon are an olive complected, dark eyed, dark skinned people living in Appalachia. Their claim of Portuguese descent was largely ignored and they have been historically dismissed as "tri-racial isolates", part African, Indian and White. Ironically, for a people accused of miscegenation, they marry only within their community. Some physical characteristics claimed by those of Melungeon descent are an Anatolian bump, a donut shaped protuberance on the back of the skull; shovel teeth, which are curved across the back rather than straight and end in a ridge at the gum line (also common to Amer-Indians); and Familial Mediterranean Fever, an inherited rheumatic disease ethnically restricted to non-Ashkenzi Jews, Armenians, Arabs and Turks. As racial tensions hardened around the Civil War their status as mulattos deprived them of basic rights such as property ownership and education."

Wayfaring Stranger
The Black Dutch, German Gypsies or Chicanere and their relation to the Melungeon
Linda Griggs
American Roma

What is a Melungeon?

"Suddenly I had too much for a short story. I had also done some research on our families and I knew we were kin to the Melungeons. I found out the people being written about were my relatives and owned a lot of the land all around us, including where we lived at one time. I found out we were right in the middle of a Melungeon colony. I knew by this time up to my fourth generation grandfathers were part of the Melungeon and were owners of a lot of this land. As a child I was told we were kin to the Melungeons.
I started spreading the word for I was so proud of this. Many a time in the beginning I was put down, but endured for I knew these people and most were good-hearted Christian people that would give you the shirt off their backs, or see to it you had food if you did not. That made me want to write about them more.
[...]
People started saying, “Why don’t you write a book?” I thought, “Book? I don’t know anything about writing a book” until one day a doctor friend of mine said to me, “Aw, you can’t write no book.” Then and there I thought to myself, “If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll show you” and so I did."

My Melungeon Heritage from Dogwood Press
Mattie Ruth Johnson
Melungeon Heritage Association
-
My Melungeon Heritage
by Mattie Ruth Johnson, from Dogwood Press

melungeon

Sjøormløpet

Fire Dreaming
Paddy Simms Japaljarri
Coo-ee Aboriginal Art
-
link path bilious young fogey via Barista

Bridge
Emily Bicht
-
link path open-ground via bloggy

Fabulous Ones
twoThis poem is brought to you by the letter C.

...crossing and uncrossing
the long, orange tubes of his legs, discussing

Chomsky, conditional freedom, and Cervantes

with anyone who will listen. He marches
against the war, a thousand people
at his back, chanting...

Jeffrey Thomson
Verse Daily
09.Feb.05

Insects or bugs can also become trapped in the ear. Smaller insects, such as gnats, can become caught in the wax and be unable to fly out. They can often be washed out with warm water. Larger insects or bugs may not be able to turn around in the narrow canal. If the insect or bug is still alive, it can first be killed by filling the ear with mineral oil. This will suffocate the insect. The ear should soon after be evaluated by a doctor to have the pest removed.

Objects or Insects In The Ear
medicinenet

Eros and Psyche
Marble copy of original statue by Antonio Canova, made by Tadovino; Italy, 1834-

statue of Demeter of Knidos c. 350 BCE -

Melpomene, muse of tragedy
Roman copy; said to be from scaenae frons at the theater in Pompeii
-

polychrome mosaic portrait of a woman, Pompeii
-

gold bracelet in the form of a serpent Roman, first century CE
found on arm of woman who had apparently sheltered in a building in Agro Murecine (modern Moregine) near Pompeii; on the inside of the bracelet is carved "from the Master to his slave girl" (DOM[I]NUS ANCILLAE SUAE).
The woman was carrying a quantity of jewelry and several coins.
-

Julius Caesar
-
Barbara McManus
VRoma Project

Lawrence uses a noter which he calls a "chording stick" carved from hickory. A noter carved from mountain laurel was retrieved from one box which originated in Hickman County. The deep playing groove worn in the end and the owner's assurance that the box hadn't been touched in 60 years are evidence of the early noter style of playing. This particular noter was carved in the traditional style of noters common in the Galax area of western Virginia.

Tennessee Music Box
History, Mystery and Revival
-
The Sounds of the Tennessee Music Box
NPR
-
link path gmtplus9