Foxfire Story: Oral Tradition in Southern Appalachia edited by T. J. Smith

Foxfire is bioluminescence from fungi decaying on wood. Although it has been viewed as a phenomenon most prevalent in the Southern Appalachians and thus a kind of symbol for the region, it occurs world-wide. The oldest written documentation of it was by Aristotle, and it figures in Japanese folklore. The Foxfire Fund is a multi-million-dollar enterprise headquartered in Rabun County, Georgia’s most northeastern county. Eliot Wigginton started developing it when he was teaching at the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School in 1966 and sought a way to get his English students to care about his subject. He hit upon the idea of getting them to interview old people in their area who were living in old-fashioned ways. Fortunately, Aunt Arie and Kenny Runyan and others turned out to be downright charismatic practitioners of the old ways, and in 1967 his students began publishing a magazine they called Foxfire. Students cared about learning English composition when they knew their kinfolks and neighbors w