For more than 100 years, Ozark folklore has proved fertile ground for authors, artists and musicians. Accompanying them have been researchers who dug deeper into the original source materials.
After finishing "A History of the Ozarks: The Ozarkers," Brooks Blevins' magisterial history of the region, I decided to read some of the work of the late Otto Ernest Rayburn. As luck would have it, a new edition of Rayburn's 1941 book "Ozark Country" was released last year by the University of Arkansas Press, complete with an introduction by Blevins.