School 



Performance 



For a group of 

 students at Cooper 

 Elementary School in 

 Clayton, Golden dressed 

 like an Elizabethan sailor in 

 a white belted shirt, olive 

 green breeches and tan 

 moccasins. 



"I am a minstrel 

 bringing news from 400 

 years ago from Queen 

 Elizabeth's court," he says. 



"Queen Elizabeth 

 never married, and men 

 were coming to her court to 

 impress her," says Golden. 

 "She was the most 

 powerful woman in the 

 world and had a great 

 armada of ships." 



Golden asks the 

 students to sing "Froggy 

 Went A-Courting" with 

 him. Later, he engages the 

 students with bean games 

 and more tales about Sir 

 Walter Raleigh's voyage to the New World. 



At the end of the performance, Golden strums his guitar while 

 singing "Virginia Dare." 



"I wrote these words to tell the sad story of the mysterious fate of 

 the little girl to go along with the beautiful melody composed by my 

 songwriting partner, Rob Nathanson," he says. 



Ann White, fourth grade teacher, says that the historical tale was 

 perfect for her students who are learning North Carolina history. 



"They have heard the legend of 'Virginia Dare the White Doe,' " 

 says White. "This is a good culminating activity. For the fifth graders, 

 it reinforces what they have learned. It gives the third graders a good 

 introduction to our state's history." 



For younger students, Golden relates less serious subjects like 

 animal tales. "I tailor my stories to the audience," says Golden. 



Sound Country Stories 



When spinning yarns about the coastal plains, Chapel Hill author 

 and musician Bland Simpson draws on his roots in Pasquotank 

 County. 



"I learned stories from my father who was a lawyer and a good 

 yarn spinner and also in the Merchant Marine and Navy," says 



ABOVE: Rodney Kemp joins David Yeomans as he croons "The Booze Yacht." Yeomans often spins stories 

 for tourists who stop at his cottage on Cape Lookout National Seashore. 



Simpson, a member of the Red Clay Ramblers. 



In the book Into the Sound Country: A Carolinian 's Coastal 

 Plain, Simpson relates childhood memories, including that of his 

 father "coming home at breakfast time with a brace of ducks from his 

 first-light Currituck hunts." 



His stories and songs also draw inspiration from North 

 Carolinian John Harden's The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other 

 North Carolina Mystery Stories and Nell Wise Wechter's Taffy of 

 Torpedo Junction. 



These books were Simpson's and his schoolmates' "first literary 

 inklings that real and noteworthy things of history — and mystery — 

 had occurred right in the small towns and country crossroads where 

 we lived, and that the telling and retelling of these stories in class- 

 rooms and living room were no small part of what bound us together 

 as Tar Heels, as Southerners, and as Americans." Simpson wrote in 

 the foreward to the 1996 reissue of Taffy. B 



Want to hear more coastal tales? Rodney Kemp and Sonny 

 Williamson will perform together on Oct. 4 at noon at the 17th 

 Annual N. C. Seafood Festival in Morehead City. For more informa- 

 tion, visit the Web: www.ncseafoodfestival.org. 



COASTWATCH 11 



