A place and time when a woman's menstrual cycle was equated with power

[theHandpuppet]

2. I suspect some of those traditions came from their Scots-Irish heritage...

...and the old ways they brought with them, even though their immigrant ancestors were Christians. At the turn of the 18th century, when most of them arrived, those Celtic/pagan traditions still reverberated among the people (including the belief in matriarchal power) and were passed down as these descendants settled in the mountains.

There was a terrible witch hunt in Scotland at the same time many Scots and Scots-Irish left for the colonies. Ironically, the old ways the church stamped out in Britain were carried by the people to the "new world", where they continued. The music, dialect and many customs of Appalachia are really nothing more than the early 18th century peasant culture they brought with them.