English:
Chuck Davis takes a respite from the John Kunner reenactment at Somerset Homecoming in 1988. His costume was patterned after a description of Somerset "John Kunnering" by Dr. Edward Warren that fitted the "ragman" in strips of colorful cloth and a headdress of raccoon skin and ox horns

Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_5 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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"Just like John Kunner is not a pure African tradition — first of all, Christmas isn't an African holiday — (Old Christmas) draws on the Euro- pean and the African," he says. "All over the British Isles, people practice mumming at Christmastime, that is, people putting on costumes and going door to door." It was through a conversation with now-deceased Emma Chadwick that Luster recovered many precious strands about 20th century John Kunner in Beaufort. The rest was woven from the boyhood memories of some of the Menhaden Chanteymen — a group of African-American menhaden fishermen whose folk songs preserve their oceanborne heritage. Jack Chadwick, the hapless John Kunner who collided with the car of that 1937 newspaper article, probably had the additional misfortune of arriving at the hospital in playful attire. Luster speculates that he was wearing makeup and a dress and carrying a purse at the time of his injury because that was his traditional role in the John Kunner pageant. Through the Chanteymen's recollections, a scene was conjured up for Luster of "six-foot-three-inch Willie Fulford, who wore a white spike-tailed coat and carried a walking cane." Buster Branche dressed like a clown, Pete Hyman pounded the bass drum, Charley Taylor rapped the snare. And there was an air of the gospel according to John Kunner. "When they arrived at the next house, the drums would stop and Walter Joyner would step forward in some approximation of a preacher's garb, clutching a catalog or other large book to serve as his mock Bible," Luster wrote. "He would intone in preacherly cadences, 'I'm taking my text from chapter two-twotie-two, 'Dry Bones in the Valley, Biscuits in the Oven and Molasses on the Table,' and deliver his comic sermon to the congregational shouts of 'That's right. Tell it, Brother.'" Sometimes the John Kunners and their entourage ventured beyond Beaufort, marching across the bridge to Morehead City or out to North River, a 17-mile trip there and back. The Kunner faithful, which consisted mostly of menhaden fishermen, carried on the tradition through the latter years of the 1940s, until a marching band at the all-black Queen Street School debuted in 1948, perhaps stealing the thunder of the John Kunners and allowing the aging revelers a welcome retirement. The last of the gang passed away in 1989. □ Chuck Davis takes a respite from the John Kunner re-enactment at Somerset Homecoming in 1988. His costume was patterned after a description of Somerset "John Kunnering" by Dr. Edward Warren that fitted the "ragman" in strips of colorful cloth and a headdress of raccoon skin and ox horns. With a roar like a Nofeaster, fiery nostrils and magnificent great horns, Old Buck emerged from the pine forests of Cape Hatteras each Old Christmas to inquire about misbehaved children,
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COASTWATCH 17

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