“Have you seen the ghost of Tam? All white bones and the rest is go-o-o-ooone!” I love that Halloween song. The shivery words and minor key get me every time. I always cry. Poor Tam, a ghost and a skeleton on top of it. And the one about the “old woman, all skin and bones, woo-oo-oo-oo!” who lived down by the old graveyard made me sniffle, too. I’m a sucker for a monster in pain.

Way back in the olden days my grammar school had a wonderful music teacher who spent her days gritting her teeth and trying to force a little culture and music theory on a bunch of heathen children. Most of the time, I was as rotten as the rest of the tweens in the room. But every Halloween I sat rapt, shushing the other kids, while we watched a film strip.

Camille Saint-Saens wrote an amazing piece of music called “Dance Macabre”, and the film strip was set to his music. I watched as the sun set over a graveyard and one by one, the ghosts and skeletons and grim reapers came out to play. The music told the story of their party, and even without the visual accompaniment, it was obvious what was going on. They danced and played fiddles and chased one another and used ribcages as xylophones.

Oh, how I wanted to go to their party! I’d understand, and not be afraid, and we could all run through the night together, scaring little old ladies and solving crime.

But then, the cock crowed, and all the ghoulies hopped back into their graves with a “Snap! Snap! Snap!” All but one. A lone cloaked skeleton sat on a gravestone and played the most haunting, sweet and sad passage I’d ever heard, on his fiddle. He didn’t want to go back into the cold, cold ground. Every year, no matter how well prepared I was, I was reduced to a quivering mess when that sad, elegant and hopeless skeleton played his pain for me.

“Dance Macabre” is still my favorite piece of classical music, and I still cry when I hear the last part. Thirty-five years later, I think fondly of that teacher at Halloween.

Many of the folk songs Mama introduced me to have been recorded by various artists over the years. I’ve discovered that some were written in the 1950’s or 1960’s, but many more list “Traditional” as the writer. What they have in common is the tear-jerking quality of their melodies. My ancestors loved a good party and a good cry, and when Mama raised her voice in song, she called the North Carolina mountains and our Scots-Irish history to her. I could almost see plaid and wee folk in the air when Mama sang a folk song.

The song that was my favorite when I was a little girl tells the sad and eerie story of a man falsely accused of murder. He went to his death on the gallows rather than expose his lover, who was his best friend’s wife. She watched without a tear as he breathed his last, and now, wracked with guilt, she “walks these hills, in a long black veil” and weeps over his grave when the cold wind howls.

“Long Black Veil” was written in 1959 by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin, and has been recorded by everyone from Bob Dylan to Johnny Cash, but the classic version belongs to Lefty Frizzell. Mama’s rendition, the one that caused me to blubber tearfully, “Sing it again, Mama!”, was my favorite, and never failed to make me cry.

I remember the first time she ever sang “Long Black Veil” to me. It was dark and cold. We were in the car and I was sitting in Mama’s lap, steering. I must’ve been four or five years old. I fell into the song, seeing the poor innocent man there on the gallows, looking at his own true love, who was already someone else’s own not-quite-true love. In my little easily warped mind, I donned the veil, and a dress that looked suspiciously like the one Morticia Addams wore, and roamed those hills when the cold wind howled. Mama hesitated when I immediately begged her to sing it again, because I seemed so upset. But she did sing it, and I “drove” home wiping my eyes and practicing my forlorn veiled walk in my creepy little brain.

“Woo-oo-ooooo!” Sniffle, sniffle.