Breaking Down the Dialect That Led to the Mountain Term, Holler
When I was young and still new to Tennessee, I got a job working at a local grocery store. In those days, grocery stores employed three kinds of people. That would be middle-aged adults for whom the grocery business was their career and youngsters for whom the store was likely their first job. And also retirees making a little extra money to supplement their pension.
One of the elders at our store was a very clean-cut, older gentleman. He enjoyed speaking in the older mountain dialect. A paper bag was a “poke,” a Coke or soda was a “dope” and our little Café was a “caf,” to hear him tell it. But there was a limit to how far he went, which makes me think it was a put-on more than an authentic expression. For instance, he didn’t call the windows “winders,” and he certainly never called our tobacco products “backer.” Maybe he was code-switching – changing his dialect to match his audience. But I think he just liked putting on a show. If he grew up in the mountains, he’d been a city guy for quite a while.
IN THIS ARTICLE
But as I lived in the region longer, I met people who’d grown up in the hills and hollers. And they talked like they’d grown up in the hills and hollers. There are a lot of excellent studies that trace the hows and whys of the Appalachian dialects. Part of it may be that Appalachian communities were so isolated that they developed an idiosyncratic speech. But more likely, the people that settled the mountains – many of the Scots Irish – moved to the New World and into the mountains while they still carried speech patterns from the Old World.
What Exactly Is a Holler?
It’s not complicated. It’s just a small, sheltered valley. Something akin to a crevice. It frequently has high walls and some sort of stream cutting through the bottom. In the non-Appalachian parts of the world, they call it a Hollow, as in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But round here, where the mountain folks tend to turn their O sounds to an er, hollow becomes holler.
Traditionally, hollers – with their high edges, access to water and natural cover – were excellent for those in the moonshine trade.
Over the years, holler has become a ubiquitous term, really extending beyond people who speak in heavy dialects. A lot of people I know will comfortably use holler in a sentence just as if it’s the proper term for the valley. It’s a comfortable word that doesn’t carry the stigma of some of the other mountain dialect terms.
What Are Some Famous Hollers?
Well, we mentioned “Sleepy Hollow.” Would the book hit the same if it were The Legend of Sleepy Holler? Doesn’t have quite the same ring.
Probably, the most famous holler is from the Loretta Lynn classic Coal Miner’s Daughter about growing up in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. You get another great Appalachian phrase in the opening lines of that one. “Well, I was borned a coal miner’s daughter, in a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler.”
Are There Any Hollers That Don’t See Much Sunlight?
Certainly, yes. With the defining feature of a holler being the water cutting through, there are certainly high-walled mountain hollers with a thick canopy of vegetation where the sun doesn’t get through very much, at least while leaves are on the trees.
Any holler with a steep, north-facing slope isn’t going to get much sunlight down at the bottom. Don’t forget the sun sets early in the mountains, dropping behind the high slopes much earlier than in the flatlands.
Did you know what a holler is? Let us know in the comments! Are you planning a trip to the Smoky Mountains soon? Make sure to check out our coupons page before your trip!