Dr. John Burrison, professor of English at Georgia State University, estimates there are dozens of stories involving preachers and chicken, but he selected the best of the bunch for his book Storytellers: Folktales & Legends from the South. This story was told by Don Buchanan of Decatur, who heard it from his father, a Baptist minister:

Once there was this preacher who loved fried chicken, as all preachers are supposed to love fried chicken. And he was invited to eat at the house of one of his parishioners one Sunday. After church he made his way through the country to this house, and it so happened, as he was crossing this particular creek, right in the middle of the bridge he stumbled and he lost his false teeth, and they fell in the creek.

Well, ‘course he couldn’t eat, but he couldn’t turn down this invitation either, so he went on to the house. And, as they ate dinner, he ate what he could eat—mash potatoes an’ things that weren’t so hard to chew—but he didn’t touch the fried chicken. Well, he had a great reputation for eating fried chicken, and so, of course, everybody at the table was amazed and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t eating any fried chicken. So finally they asked him. And he said, “Well, I just have to tell you the truth. I lost my teeth goin’ across the creek down here, an’ I just can’t eat any.”

Well, he no sooner got the words out of his mouth than a little boy ‘bout twelve years old jumped up from the table, grabbed a chicken leg from off the platter, got him a piece of string, and went out the door.

‘Bout half an hour later he came back in, and he had the teeth in his hand. An’ the preacher said, “How in the world did you get those teeth out of the creek?”

He said, “Well, I just took this chicken leg and tied the string on it and dipped it down in the water, and those teeth bit right on it!”

John Burrison’s academic interest in folklore evolved during his undergraduate years at Pennsylvania State University, where he published and edited Folkways magazine. He came to Georgia State University in 1966 to develop the folklore curriculum in the Department of English, where he teaches such courses as American Folklore, Georgia Folklife, British Folk Culture, and Irish Folk Culture. He serves as curator of the Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia at Sautee Nacoochee Center near Helen.

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