ABSTRACT
Jack Tales is a label applied to various overlapping types of stories in English-language tradition. For some, Jack Tales refers generally to traditional narratives, principally märchen, told throughout the English-speaking world. For others, the term refers more particularly to a series of North Carolina mountain tales told by the Harmon-Hicks family of the Southern Appalachians and made famous by Richard Chase's published collection, The Jack Tales (1943). Still others define Jack Tales as a body of narrative particularly representative of American folk values. Jack Tales are probably most significant as a means of bringing traditional narrators and revivalist storytellers in contact with one another.
