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Randolph County (W. Va.)
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In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
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Subject
Fiddle tunes
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![["Every year on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday, the town of Helvetia in Randolph County, West Virginia, hosts its Fasnacht celebration, a pre-Lenten mountain Mardi Gras intended both to reinforce Swiss customs for locals and bring much-needed tourist dollars to the town in the sparse mid-winter months.Though the holiday was originally celebrated only by locals in the towns private homes, in the late 1960s, town matriarch Eleanor Mailloux restored the holiday as a public celebration. Today, Fasnacht attracts attendees from near and far. The event begins with an open music jam at the Helvetia Star Band Hall or a special sampler plate dinner from the Hutte Restaurant. Then everyone gathers in the Star Band Hall in their homemade papier-mache masks for a masked lampion parade to the Community Hall. At the second hall, there is a mask contest for kids, a square dance called by local callers and accompanied by the Helvetia Star Band, and a treat table of traditional doughnuts and Swiss rosettes and hozablatz made by Diane Betler, Eleanor Betler, and other local bakers. All of this takes place under an effigy of Old Man Winter, hanging over the dance floor. At midnight the Old Man is cut from the rafters and burned on the bonfire outside, as the crowd sings a rousing a capella rendition of Country Roads. Learn more in Emily Hilliard's Bitter Southerner piece on Helvetia's seasonal celebrations, including Fasnacht: https://bittersoutherner.com/my-year-in-helvetia-west-virginiaAnd her piece on Fasnachts foodways traditions on NPRs The Salt: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/17/386970143/swiss-village-west-virginia-mardi-gras-feast-fasnacht Also see the Helvetia Foodways Oral History Project conducted by the West Virginia Folklife Program in partnership with the Southern Foodways Alliance: https://www.southernfoodways.org/oral-history/helvetia-west-virginia/"]](/thumb/4224HelvetiaFasnachtPhoto0122616 "Fiddler Jesse Milnes plays in the music jam at the Helvetia Star Band Hall")
![["Doug Van Gundy of Elkins led an apprenticeship in old-time fiddle of the Greenbrier Valley with Annie Stroud of Charleston as part of the 2018 West Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Doug Van Gundy is an eighth-generation West Virginian who learned old-time fiddle from Greenbrier County fiddler Mose Coffman through the 1993 Augusta Heritage Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program. See our feature on Van Gundys apprenticeship with Stroud here: https://wvfolklife.org/2019/01/23/2018-master-artist-apprentice-feature-doug-van-gundy-annie-stroud-old-time-fiddling-of-the-greenbrier-valley/"]](/thumb/4224VanGundyDougArtistProfile11918 "Artist profile of Doug Van Gundy")