Love and Lore: An Appalachian Courtship Guide
Harlow Sweazy | February 11, 2025
Are you stuck on someone on campus? Perhaps you've been he-ing and she-ing and you're wanting to take it to the next level this Valentine’s Day. Much like all of Appalachia, romance and courtship customs have unique and beautiful stories with deep cultural ties. Hopefully, this will be a push in the right direction to ensure you and your love will be sparkin’ in no time.
Brought to Appalachia by Welsh and Irish immigrants, love spoons were a symbolic gesture of love and dedication. Love spoons were intricately carved spoons with detailed knots, hearts, and designs carved into them. As money and resources were sparse, men would spend hours upon hours carving, hoping their detailed carvings would prove his love to the woman he wished to court.
Dulcimers have been a staple in Appalachian music over the last few centuries, truly earning their place as a staple of American culture. Known mostly in eastern Kentucky customs, the courting dulcimer includes a large body with two parallel fret boards allowing you and your sweetheart to play simultaneously. As the story goes, prospective couples were only allowed to be alone together in the same room as long as their families could hear both melodies playing as a sign that they weren't getting up to no good.
Legend has it that quilts could predict the next newlywed. Women would grab the corners of a quilt, place a cat on top and bounce it. Whoever the cat ran closest to was said to be next up at the chapel. It was common for families in the region to not be able to afford wedding rings made of precious materials. Instead, the newlywed wife would often give her husband a quilt sewn with patterns of interlocking rings. This way when the couple slept at night they would have their rings and the promises they made to each other.
Wives tales play an important part in many folk traditions. One tale is that if a woman is to sleep in a new bed and she names each bedpost a boy's name, whichever she wakes up and looks at first will be the boy she weds.
Some Appalachian courtship slang:
courting/sparking = dating
sweet/struck on = liking someone
he-ing and she-ing = hugging and kissing
courts like a stick of wood = a person who is awkward
when courtinggoing steady = serious dating