South from Hell-fer-Sartin, a short creek flowing into the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River, lies one of the of the most isolated regions in Kentucky. There, on the north slope of the Pine Mountain range in Leslie and Perry counties -- probably the last stronghold of white, English-language folk tales in North America -- Leonard W. Roberts recorded this rich collection more than three decades ago.

To a people who, at that time, watched dancing hearth fires more often than television, the adventures of Jack in the land of witches and giants, monsters and beautiful princesses,...

Along the isolated headwaters of the Kentucky River -- Cutshin and Greasy creeks -- folklorist Leonard Roberts found the Couches, a remarkable mountain family of gifted memory and imagination. For half a century they had preserved the traditional ways of their forebears -- the farming methods, the household arts, and the games, ballads, dances, and tales that were their chief entertainment.

In Up Cutshin and Down Greasy, brothers Dave and Jim Couch, born about the turn of the century, recall clearly their childhood days on Sang Branch of Greasy and Clover Fork of Big...