47 chapters
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47 chapters
The Land
The Land
High mountain walls and bridgeless streams marooned the people of the Blue Ridge for centuries, shut them off from the outside world so that they lost step with the onward march of civilization. A forgotten people until yesterday, unlettered, content to wrest a meager living from the grudging soil, they built for themselves a nation within a nation. By their very isolation, they have preserved much of the best that is America. They have held safe and unchanged the simple beauty of the song of th
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The People
The People
The men and women who came to settle this region were a stalwart race, the men usually six feet in height, the women gaunt and prolific. They were descendants of English, Scotch, and Scotch-Irish who landed along the Atlantic coast at the close of the sixteenth century—around 1635, when the oppression of rulers drove them from England, Scotland, and Ireland. Some were impelled by love of religious freedom, while others sought political liberty in the new world. Their migration to America really
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Blazing the Trail
Blazing the Trail
Sometimes a single explorer went ahead of the rest with a few friendly Indians to accompany him. If not he went alone, tramping into the forest, living in a rough shack, suffering untold hardship through bitter winter months. For weeks when he had neither meal nor flour he lived on meat alone—deer and bear. It was the stories of valuable furs and the vast quantities of them which trickled back to the settlements that lured others to follow. Hunters and trappers came bringing their families. The
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The Mountaineer
The Mountaineer
Difficulties of communication are enough to explain the isolation of mountaineers. For long years, even until yesterday, the only roads were the beds of tortuous and rockstrewn watercourses that were dry when you started at sunup and were suddenly transformed by a downpour to swollen, turbulent streams, perilous even to ford. But for all that, in 1803 there were a million settlers in the southern highlands. Hardships of life there might have shaken a man’s faith but not his love of the country.
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Hatfields and Mccoys
Hatfields and Mccoys
When Dr. Walker, the Englishman, the first white man in Cumberland Gap, followed the course of Russell Fork out of Virginia into Kentucky back in 1750, he came upon a wooded point of land shaped like a triangle which was skirted by two forks of tepid water. The one to the left, as he faced westward, this English explorer called Levisa after the wife of the Duke of Cumberland. Generations later a lovely mountain girl wore the name he had given the stream and she became the wife of the leader of a
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Peacemaker
Peacemaker
Autumn had painted the wooded hillside bright scarlet, golden brown, vivid orange, and yellow that shone in the late September sunlight like a giant canvas beyond the rambling farmhouse at the head of Garrett’s Fork of Big Creek where dwelt the Good Shepherd of the Hills, William Dyke Garrett and his gentle wife. Here in Logan County in the heart of the rugged West Virginia country, Uncle Dyke and Aunt Sallie lived in the selfsame place for all of seventy years. Sallie Smith, she was, of Crawley
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Taking Sides
Taking Sides
Some took sides in the feuds that have been carried on throughout the Blue Ridge Country and thereby got themselves enthralled, while others, more tactful, managed to keep aloof and remain friends with the belligerents. There’s Uncle Chunk Craft on Millstone Creek in Letcher County. Enoch is his real name. There’s nothing he likes better than to tell of the days when he was one of Morgan’s raiders. Then, when he was only twenty-two, that was in 1864, Uncle Chunk slept in a cornfield near Greenvi
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Martin-Tolliver Troubles
Martin-Tolliver Troubles
Troubles brewed around elections and courts. Some years previously when the Talliaferro families changed their abode from Old Virginia to settle in Morgan County, Kentucky, it wasn’t long until their name also was changed. Their neighbors found the name Talliaferro difficult to speak and they began to shorten the syllables to something that sounded like Tolliver. So Tolliver it was from then on. Craig Tolliver’s father became a prosperous farmer but with his prosperity came quarrels with a neigh
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Family Honor
Family Honor
Looking down on a clear day from a bald on Dug Down Mountain you can see the valley far below. The bald is sometimes called the sods—where the trees can’t grow because of high winds. This particular spot is called Foley Sods after the Foleys who have lived here in the Dug Down Mountains for generations. Looking closer from the high, green bald you can see far below in the edge of a dilapidated orchard a lorn grave. Overrun with ivy and thorns it is enclosed with a wire fence, sagging and rusty a
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Timber
Timber
The individualism of the mountaineer has not made of him a scientific inventor, but this marked trait of character has developed his self-reliance and resourcefulness. He may not know, or care to know, in figures the degree of the angle at which the mountain slopes. Probably he has never heard of the clinometer by which geological surveyors arrive at such information. Yet the untrained mountain man seeing a stream gushing down a steep escarpment knows how to divert it to his own best use. Someti
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Woman’s Work
Woman’s Work
The woman of the mountains has always been as resourceful in her way as the man. She made the sweetening for the family’s use from a sugar tree and as often used sorghum from cane for the same purposes, even pouring the thick molasses into coffee if they were fortunate enough to have coffee. She made her own dyes from barks and herbs. And though she may have had a dozen children of her own she was ready and eager to help a neighbor in time of sickness. Doctors were scarce, so she of necessity tu
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Philomel Whiffet’s Singing School
Philomel Whiffet’s Singing School
Philomel Whiffet was dim of eye and sparse of beard. A little white fringe framed his wrinkled face and numbered indeed were the hairs of his foretop. Trudging up the snow-covered mountain, he caught sight of the glowing stove through the window of Bethel church house whither he was bound this winter night to conduct singing school. He chuckled to himself, drawing the knitted muffler closer about his thin throat and making fast the earflaps of his coonskin cap. “Yes, they’re getting the place he
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Riddles and Fortunes
Riddles and Fortunes
Telling riddles is no lost art in the Blue Ridge Country and their text and answers are much the same whether you turn to the Carolinas, Tennessee, or Virginia. There is little difference among those who tell them. It is usually the older women who cling to the tradition which goes hand-in-hand with trying fortunes. Aunt Lindie Reffitt in Laurel Cove would rather have a bevy of young folks around her anytime than to sit with women of her own age. “It’s more satisfaction to let a body’s knowing f
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The Infare Wedding
The Infare Wedding
Even when the dulcimer, that primitive three-stringed instrument, could not be had, mountain folk in the raggeds of Old Virginia were not at a loss for music with which to make merry at the infare wedding. They stepped the tune to the singing of a ballad, nor did they tire though the infare wedding lasted all of three days and nights. It began right after the wedding ceremony itself had been spoken—at the bride’s home, you may be sure. How happy the young couple were as they stood before the eld
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Funeralizing
Funeralizing
To the outsider far removed, or even to people in the nearby lowlands, mountain people may seem stoic. A mountain woman whose husband is being tried for his life may sit like a figure of stone not for lack of feeling, but because she’d rather die than let the other side know her anguish. A little boy who loses his father will steal off to cliff or wood and suffer in silence. No one shall see or know his grief. “He’s got a-bound to act like a man, now.” The burden of the family is upon his young
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Old Christmas
Old Christmas
Though in some isolated sections of the Blue Ridge, say in parts of the Unakas, the Cumberlands, the Dug Down Mountains of Georgia, there are people who may never have heard of the Gregorian or Julian calendar, yet in keeping Old Christmas as they do on January 6th, they cling unwittingly to the Julian calendar of 46 B.C. , introduced in this country in the earliest years. To them December 25th is New Christmas, according to the Gregorian calendar adopted in 1752. They celebrate the two occasion
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Foot-washing
Foot-washing
He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. “It is writ in the Good Book,” said Brother Jonathan solemnly, “in the thirteen chapter of St. John, the fourth and the fifth verses.” With hands meekly clasped in front of him Brother Jonathan stood—not behind a pulpit—but beside a small table. Nor did he hold the Book.
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New Light
New Light
SNAKE BITE IS FATAL. RELIGIOUS ADHERENT DIES FROM BITE AFTER REFUSING MEDICAL AID The death of 48-year-old Robert Cordle, who refused medical aid after being bitten by a rattlesnake during church services, brought 1,500 curious persons today to a funeral home to see his body. While the throngs passed the bier of the Doran resident, the Richlands council passed an ordinance outlawing the use of snakes in religious services and sent officers to the New Light church to destroy the reptiles there. C
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Big Sandy River
Big Sandy River
There once prevailed a superstition among timbermen in the Big Sandy country which dated back to the Indian. The mountain men knew and loved their own Big Sandy River. They rode their rafts fearlessly, leaping daringly from log to log to make fast a dog chain, even jumping from one slippery, water-soaked raft to another to capture with spike pole or grappling hook a log that had broken loose. They had not the slightest fear when a raft buckled or broke away from the rest and was swept by swift c
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Water Witch
Water Witch
If anyone wanted to dig a well in Pizen Gulch he wouldn’t think of doing it without first sending for Noah Buckley, the water witch. He lived at the head of Tumbling Creek. Noah wore a belt of rattlesnake skin to keep off rheumatism. “That belt’s got power,” Noah boasted. And young boys in the neighborhood admitted it. More than one who had eaten too many green apples and lay groveling under the tree, drawn in a knot with pain, screamed in his misery for Noah. If Noah was within hearing he went
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Marrying on Horseback
Marrying on Horseback
Millie Eckers, with her arms around his waist, rode behind Robert Burns toward the county seat one spring morning to get married. But before they got there along came Joe Fultz, a justice of the peace, to whom they told their intent. Joe said the middle of the road on horseback was as good a place as any for a pair to be spliced, so then and there he had them join right hands. When they were pronounced man and wife Robert handed Joe a frayed greenback in exchange for the signed certificate of ma
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Death Crown
Death Crown
Once you evidence even the slightest respect of a superstition in the Blue Ridge Country there is ever a firm believer eager to show proof of the like beyond all doubt. It was so with Widow Plater as we sat by the flickering light of the little oil lamp in her timeworn cabin that looked down on the Shenandoah Valley. “I want to show you Josephus’s crown,” she said in a hushed voice. Going to the bureau she opened the top drawer, bringing out what appeared to be a plate wrapped in muslin. She pla
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A White Feather
A White Feather
Rhodie Polhemus who lived on Bear Fork of Puncheon Creek was one who believed in signs. It had started long years ago when Alamander, her husband, had met an untimely fate. That morning after he had gone out hunting Rhodie was sweeping the floor when she saw a white feather fluttering about the brush of her broom. It hovered strangely in midair, then sank slowly to the puncheon floor near the door. “The angel of death is nigh. There’ll be a corpse under this roof this day.” Rhodie trembled with
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Crockett’s Hollow
Crockett’s Hollow
When Jasper Tipton married Talithie Burwell and settled on Tipton’s Fork in Crockett’s Hollow, folks said no one could ask for a better start. The Tiptons had given the couple their house seat, a bedstead, a table. Jasper had a team of mules he had swapped for a yoke of oxen, and he had a cookstove that he had bought with his own savings. A step stove it was, two caps below and two higher up. The Burwells had seen to it that their daughter did not go empty-handed to her man. She had a flock tick
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The Silver Tomahawk
The Silver Tomahawk
In Carter County, Kentucky, there is a legend which had its beginning long ago when Indian princesses roamed the Blue Ridge, and pioneers’ hopes were high of finding a lost silver mine said to be in caves close by. Morg Tompert loved to tell the story. As long as he lived the old fellow could be found on a warm spring day sitting in the doorway of his little shack nearly hidden by a clump of dogwoods. A shack of rough planks that clung tenaciously to the mountain side facing Saltpeter, or as it
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Black Cat
Black Cat
From where old Pol Gentry lived on Rocky Fork of Webb’s Creek she could see far down into the valley of Pigeon River and across the ridge on all sides. Her house stood at the very top of Hawks Nest, the highest peak in all the country around. Pol didn’t have a tight house like several down near the sawmill. She said it wasn’t healthy. Even when the owner of the portable mill offered her leftover planks to cover her log house where the daubin had fallen out, Pol refused. “The holes let the wind i
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The Deer Woman and the Fawn
The Deer Woman and the Fawn
Amos Tingley, a bachelor, and a miser as well, lived in Laurel Hollow. Nearby was a salt lick for deer. Often he saw them come there a few at a time, lick the salt, and scamper away. There were two he noticed in particular, a mother and its fawn. They had come nearer than the salt lick—into his garden—more than once and trampled what they did not like, or nibbled to the very ground things that suited their taste, vegetables that Amos had toiled to plant and grow. He didn’t want to harm the anima
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Ghost of Devil Anse
Ghost of Devil Anse
Near the village of Omar, Logan County, in the hills of West Virginia there is a little burying ground that looks down on Main Island Creek. It is a family burying ground, you soon discover when you climb the narrow path leading to the sagging gate in the rickety fence that encloses it. There are a number of graves, some with head stones, some without. But one grave catches the eye, for above it towers a white marble statue. The statue of a mountain man, you know at once by the imposing height,
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The Winking Corpse
The Winking Corpse
On the night of June 22, 1887, the bodies of four dead men lay wrapped in sheets on cooling boards in the musty sitting room of an old boarding house in Morehead, Rowan County, Kentucky. Only the bullet-shattered faces, besmeared with blood, were exposed. Their coffins had not yet arrived from the Blue Grass. No friend or kinsman watched beside the bier that sultry summer night; they had prudently kept to their homes, for excitement ran high over the battle that had been fought that day in front
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The House with the Green Gables
The House with the Green Gables
About halfway between the thriving, up-to-date, electrically lighted City of Ashland, Boyd County, Kentucky, with its million-dollar steel mills, and Grayson, the county seat of Carter County, Kentucky, there stands on the hillside a few rods from the modern highway U. S. 60, a little white cottage with green gables. Within a mile or so of the place unusual road signs catch your eye. White posts, each surmounted by a white open scroll. There are ten of them, put there, no doubt, by some devoted
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8. Singing on the Mountain Side
8. Singing on the Mountain Side
Though there were and are people in the Blue Ridge Country who, like Jilson Setters, the Singin’ Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow, can neither read nor write, such obstacles have meant no bar to their poetic bent. They sing with joy and sorrow, with pride and pleasure, of the scene about them, matching their skill with that of old or young who boast of book learning....
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Of Land and River
Of Land and River
APPALACHIA Clothed in her many hues of green, Far Appalachia rises high And takes a robe of different hue To match the seasons passing by. Her summits crowned by nature’s hand, With grass-grown balds for all to see, Her towering rocks and naked cliffs Hid by some overhanging tree. In early spring the Maple dons Her bright red mantle overnight; The Beech is clad in dainty tan, The Sarvis in a robe of white. The Red Bud in profusion blooms And rules the hills a few short days, And Dogwoods with
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Feud
Feud
THE LOVE OF ROSANNA McCOY Come and listen to my story Of fair Rosanna McCoy. She loved young Jonse Hatfield, Old Devil Anse’s boy. But the McCoys and Hatfields Had long engaged in strife, And never the son of a Hatfield Should take a McCoy to wife. But when they met each other, On Blackberry Creek, they say, She was riding behind her brother, When Jonse came along that way. “Who is that handsome fellow?” She asked young Tolbert McCoy. Said he, “Turn your head, sister. That’s Devil Anse’s boy.”
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Legend
Legend
THE ROBIN’S RED BREAST Through the southern mountains the Robin is often called the “Christ Bird” because of this legend. It is also called “Love Bird.” The Savior hung upon the cross, His body racked with mortal pain; The blood flowed from His precious wounds And sweat dropped from His brow like rain. A crown of thorns was on His head, The bitter cup He meekly sips; His life is ebbing fast away, A prayer upon His blessed lips. No mercy found He anywhere, He said, “My Father knoweth best.” A l
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Tragedy
Tragedy
THE ASHLAND TRAGEDY One Christmas morn in eighty-one, Ashland, that quiet burg, Was startled—the day had not yet dawned— When the cry of fire was heard. For well they knew two fair ladies Had there retired to bed. The startled crowd broke in, alas, To find the girls both dead. And from the hissing, seething flames Three bodies did rescue; Poor Emma’s and poor Fannie’s both, And likewise Bobby’s too. And then like Rachel cried of old The bravest hearts gave vent, And all that blessed holiday To
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Patriot
Patriot
IT’S GREAT TO BE AN AMERICAN For long years the members of the Hamm family in Rowan County, Kentucky, both old and young, have gathered on a Sunday in the month of August for their mountain Eisteddfod. Upon this occasion there is friendly rivalry as to whose ballad or poem is best, who speaks his composition best. And the prize, you may be sure, is not silver but a book of poems. This composition of Nannie Hamm Carter was read at their mountain Eisteddfod in August, 1940. It’s great to be an A
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Vanishing Feudist
Vanishing Feudist
There are people all over the United States to whom the mere mention of the word mountaineer evokes a fantastic picture—a whiskey-soaked ruffian with bloodshot eyes and tobacco-stained beard, wide-brimmed felt cocked over a half-cynical eye, finger on the trigger of a long-barreled squirrel rifle. He is guarding his moonshine still. Or he may be lying in wait behind bush or tree to waylay his deadly enemy of the other side in a long-fought blood-feud. Though there may be a semblance of truth in
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Silver Moon Tavern
Silver Moon Tavern
Over on Main Island Creek in Logan County, West Virginia, where Devil Anse Hatfield held forth in his day, another picture greets the eye today. Coal-mining camps are strung along from one end of the creek to the other. Omar, near where Devil Anse is buried, is quite a thriving town. It was here that Jonse, the eldest son who loved Rosanna McCoy, spent his last days as a night watchman for a power plant. Jonse’s nerves were so shattered he jumped almost at the falling of a leaf and the company,
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Blooming Stills
Blooming Stills
A visit today to a United States District Court in most any section of the Blue Ridge Country where makers of illicit whiskey are being tried shows that the name moonshine no longer applies to the beverage. It got its name from being made at night. Now operations in the making are conducted by day, while only the transportation of the liquor is carried on after nightfall. Trucks and even dilapidated Fords with the windows smeared with soap to conceal the load are pressed into service. The driver
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Learning
Learning
What with good roads, the radio, and better schools and more of them the scene is rapidly changing in the Blue Ridge Country. The little one-room log school is almost a thing of the past. Only in remote sections can it be found. No longer is the mountain child retarded by the bridgeless stream, for good roads have come to the mountains and with them the catwalk—an improvised bridge of barrel hoops strung together with cables—spanning the creek has passed. The mountain mother’s warning is heard n
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Mountain Men
Mountain Men
Old Virginia had its Patrick Henry, the Blue Grass its Clays and Breckinridges, but the Big Sandy produced from its most rugged quarter as fine and noble timber as could be found throughout the breadth and width of the Blue Ridge Country. Early in his youth Hugh Harkins came from Pennsylvania to settle in Floyd County in the heart of the Big Sandy. That was far back in the 1830’s. He knew the saddlery trade but the young man preferred the profession of law. So acquiring a couple volumes on pract
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Coal
Coal
It is often said, “Old mother nature must have laughed heartily at the pioneer, who in his mad rush to go west hurried down through the wide troughs between the mountains, hurrying on through the valleys, passing unheeded the wealth in forests on either side, the wealth in minerals under his very feet.” But there came a time when the mountain men discovered the treasure. Over in Johnson County, adjoining Floyd, where Walter Scott Harkins had an eye for timber, his young friend was being twitted
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Public Works
Public Works
Only in recent years has the mountaineer begun to forsake his cove, however unproductive the earth may be, for the valley and public works. Indeed mountain folk long looked down on their own who sought employment at public works, mines, lumber camps, steel mills. They decried any employment away from the hillside farm, because it meant to them being an underling. No mountaineer ever wanted to be company-owned. Leastwise none of the Wellfords of Laurel Creek. But Clate, youngest of Mark Wellford’
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Back to the Farm
Back to the Farm
For those who do not have a hankering for work in the foothills and industrial centers there is today a greater incentive to go back to the farm or to stay there than ever before in the history of our country. For the young mountaineer there is the Future Farmer Association which not only trains him in soil conservation, guides him in what is best for his type of farm, or what stock he can best produce, but also holds out the spur of reward. It is a fine plan for promoting friendly rivalry and s
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Valley of Parks
Valley of Parks
If Dr. Walker, the English explorer, should return to the earth today and visit the Big Sandy country near the point where he first entered the state of Kentucky, he’d be amazed at the sight which would greet his eyes. Cities have sprung up where once was wilderness. Yet one natural beauty of the country remains unchanged: the great gorge made by Russell Fork of Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy, breaking through the mountain at an elevation of 2800 feet—The Breaks of Big Sandy. Here in the days of t
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When Singing Comes in, Fighting Goes Out
When Singing Comes in, Fighting Goes Out
Mountain folk, especially those who have had the misfortune of being mixed in troubles (feuds to the outside world) believe earnestly that “when singing comes in, fighting goes out.” “Look at the Hatfields and McCoys,” they say. “They make music together now at the home of one side and now at the home of them on t’other side. They sit side-by-side on the bench at the Singing Gathering down on the Mayo Trail come the second Sunday in June every year. Off yonder nigh the mouth of Big Sandy, across
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Vanishing Trail
Vanishing Trail
Perhaps it is merely the result of evolutionary process, economic rather than intentional, that man has wiped out many reminders of the past; that the forest primeval has passed to make room for blue grass, tasseled corn, and tobacco; that forts and blockhouses gave way to the settler’s log house encircled by a garden patch; that the windowless cabin has gone to make room for the weather-boarded frame of many rooms and glass windows; that the village has vanished for the town—the industrial cent
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