North Carolina’s own Sheila Kay Adams, a traditional ballad singer from Madison County, has won every major award offered to a traditional artist, including the National Endowment for the Arts 2013 Heritage Fellowship, the 2016 North Carolina Heritage Award, and South Arts’ 2019 Folk & Traditional Arts Master Artist Fellowship. 

Sheila knows her family has passed down ballad traditions for at least nine generations, from the 1700s to her grandchildren’s generation of the 2010s. Sheila grew up in the community of Sodom in Madison County, surrounded by elder relatives from the Wallin, Ray, Norton and Chandler families. She can trace her heritage back to James Shelton of Essex County, England, whose son James settled in Virginia in the 1700s. He is a common ancestor for both her mother and her father. 

Ballads are songs that tell a story, and many of the ballads of the British Isles accompanied immigrants from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland to America and other British colonies. Many of the ballad lyrics sung by Sheila’s family refer to Great Britain’s royalty and upper classes, and to towns and landscapes from the Middle Ages. Other ballads are older still, sharing a heritage with European and Middle Eastern song traditions. The 1916 visit of British folk song scholar Cecil Sharp to Madison County and other Appalachian communities sparked an interest in the vernacular culture of mountain communities, where descendants of the original Scots-Irish and English families still reside. Sharp concluded that in many Appalachian communities such as Sodom, the traditions of the British Isles were more vibrant and enduring than in early 20th century Britain. 

As we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day we give a nod to Adams and the ballads that tie our hearts and our communities from across the sea.