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TO come from the turmoil of city life to these mountains is like taking a journey back into the history of the past. Notwithstanding the changes begun by the recent intrusion of the outside world, life here in many ways is yet primitive. One breathes fresh air and gets down to elemental things.
"Stoves?" said an old man; "I ain't never owned a stove and I don't never aim to. I don't see no use in stoves noway. I would n't have one in the house. You can't bake bread in a stove. I don't want nar' thing but meal and water mixed together and baked in the fire. I don't want salt in the bread. I was raised on that bread and it is the best in the world." Imagine a condition where one's physical wants are reduced to corn-meal and water!
Because the people are so obviously untutored, the chance visitor is prone to imagine the whole mountain a favorable missionary field, but finds it a field that contains many disconcerting surprises. A favorite grievance of the average good Samaritan is the "ingratitude" of the people. They take what you do for them as a matter of course, if they take it at all, and do not often say "thank you." What the donors do not understand is, that it takes a good deal of social training to enable any one to say "thank you" gracefully, or to say it at all. "Why do you give me this?" asked a woman, turning the little trinket over in her hand with a pleased and puzzled expression. " Nobody ever made me a present before. I have heard of presents, but I never had one." How could any one with such a narrow range of experience say "thank you"?
Frequently well-meant efforts to help the people are proudly resented.
"Why won't you wear the aprons I gave you?" a Northern lady asked the young mountain girl who was living with her, and with whom she had tried her best to make friends.
The girl refused to answer for some time, then said:
" Well, if you really want to know, I will tell you. I can't afford to buy aprons such as that."
" But I don't want you to buy them; I want to give them to you."
"Well, that's just it. I have n't got anything to give you, and I don't want to take where I can't give."
Another stranger fed a mountain woman, who, having come to town to "trade," stopped at the door tired and hungry, to sell her butter. Next day the woman came back with a chicken.
" Why, no! " said the lady, " I cannot take your chicken. I gave you the dinner."
"Say you did?"
" Yes."
Say you gave me the dinner?"
" Yes."
"Well, if you can give me a dinner, why can't I give you a chicken?"
The unsanitary condition of the poorer homes which so excites the genteel visitor, although bad enough, is less important than it seems to those accustomed to sewer-drained cities; for natural causes here - the hot sun, the free winds, the wide spaces, and the scattered population - prevent the consequences that follow similar habits in crowded and shut-in places. The people are fairly healthy, though, as a rule with exceptions, not long-lived, and while they are young their mode of life is not felt by them as a hardship, the burden of it falling upon the sick and aged.
The most frequent disorder among them is dyspepsia, for which the pale-green, or saffron-- yellow, brown-spotted, ring-streaked and speckled luxury known as "soda biscuits" undoubtedly bears a heavy burden of blame. These wonders of the culinary art are freely eaten by all who can afford to buy white flour, and their odorous presence is often discernible from afar as you approach a house at mealtime. Typhoid fever is another frequent visitant, though the "mountain fever," as it is here called, appears in a light form that seldom results fatally.
When looking at the average highlander with his bent back, his narrow shoulders and lean frame, one suspects that back of everything the people are starving - not so much physically as mentally and spiritually. For it seems to be just as necessary to escape from primitive life as it is necessary to go back to it occasionally for rejuvenation. The unfed mind reacts upon the body. The pretty girls too often become old women at the age of thirty, with a "hurtin' in the breast," that no doctor's stuff can assuage. One suspects the "hurtin"' of being really in the heart. They are generally grandmothers at an age when a New England matron is still discussing the psychological development of her infants at the mothers' club.
The slender lads with their gentle manners and friendly eyes become bent old men when men out in the world are in the prime of life. The forest is filled with divine fragrance. The mountains are dreams of beauty, but the man who looks out has no future. Often he cannot even read. He knows nothing but how to be kind. But he does not know that anything is wanting. He laughs and takes life as he finds it, thinking his lot the common lot of man. Having no conception of a world different from his own, a city to his imagination is a mountain village with a few more houses. A native of the Grandfather region, proudly showing his spring of cold water to a Northern visitor, not long since, said politely, " I reckon you-all have got good springs in Boston, too"; but his tone of voice indicated clearly enough which land he believed to be most highly blessed in its springs.
The mountain home is generally well filled with children, and the grandmother, who is about the age her daughter looks to be, is vastly proud of her numerous descendants, though she sometimes has difficulty in remembering their full names, or even their numbers, and one of them, trying to count up her grandchildren, once said, "It seems like there are fifteen, but I will have to study jest how many."
The children take care of themselves, and where there are so many a few more or less makes no difference, hence orphans are received into an already overflowing home with a cordiality that might put to shame the exclusiveness practiced in some other, and richer, parts of the world. Also illegitimate children are cared for with an affection equal to that bestowed upon their better credentialed brothers and sisters. When a young girl presents her parents with an unaccountable grandchild, the neighbors politely refer to it as an accident. The number of those among the poorer people who have "met up with an accident" is not inconsiderable, which perhaps accounts for the fact that so little importance is attached to it. The girl generally marries later, when her first-born takes his or her place in the family circle on the same footing as the rest, though, of course, among the better class of people, morality is esteemed the same here as elsewhere.
The children share the responsibility and work of the home from the start, and in the remoter and poorer districts are as wild as rabbits. Sometimes halfgrown children are unable to pronounce their own names so as to be understood. As a result names have actually been changed, an instance of which is the Metccalf family. You naturally inquire into the behavior of a family with such a name, and failing to find anything to justify it in those immediately under observation, you go back a generation, and finally, through much inquiry, find that the name was undoubtedly corrupted from Metcalf, and that Johnny Metcalf is not a wild young blade nor in any way to blame for his name. But it must not be supposed that all the Metcalfs have been thus metamorphosed; only those poorer owners of the name who have gone deep into the wilderness, and there lost themselves.
The little children, like flowers in the forest, often have the prettiest and most unusual names. Of course there are John and Mary and. Tom, but there are also Mossy Bell, Luna Geneva, Vallerie May, Luranie Carriebel, Pearlamina Alethy Ivadee, and a thousand others like them. Oftentimes the poorer the family the more fanciful the children's names, as though, this being the only inheritance, the parents wished to make it as rich as possible. One wonders where these names come from until one discovers that certain women of the mountains, gifted in this matter, collect the pretty names they hear, or think of, or read in the story papers that fall into their hands, drawing on their stock in behalf of their friends. And is it patriotism or poetry that invest the female members of one family with the charming names of Texas, Missouri, and Indiana? Sometimes a child will have half a dozen of these ornamental names bestowed upon him - or more generally her, as the greatest play of fancy is exercised in the selection of names for the little girls. It is one of the pleasant memories of the mountains, these little human flowers with poetical names, that one finds everywhere in the woods.
The principal recreation of the country people is visiting. They go long distances for the purpose, and the smallest cabin is never too small to welcome home the married sons and daughters who have come with their families to stay awhile with "Mammy" and " Pappy." Nor is the poorest home too poor to welcome with open arms half a dozen or more people appearing quite unannounced from some distant region to stay a few days. The only pig is slaughtered, the bean-pot is filled, and everybody has a delightful time, hosts as well as guests, although the days of "visiting" may consume the provisions for half the winter.
In the villages there are the ordinary amusements of young people: parties, dancing, picnics, "box suppers," where the girls fill the boxes with fried chicken, bread, and cake, and the boys buy them; and of course there is music, the violin and guitar being the most popular instruments. In the remoter districts there are fewer diversions. "Huskin's" are common everywhere, and in some sections there is a form of entertainment known as" candy-breaking," where the boys buy the candy, and everybody eats it.
The country music is oftenest heard in the cool of the evening, when the day's work is done and all sit about the blazing legs of the big fireplace. How pleasantly comes back to memory one such scene! The only light comes from the fireplace, and dark shadows steal about the room as the fire flickers. In the glare of the burning logs sits a youth with his violin, rendering with zest the compositions of a local celebrity, "Sourwood Mountain," "Cotton-eyed Joe," "The Huckleberry Bush," "The Blue-eyed Girl," " Old Uncle Joe," ".`Aunt Sally Good'in, A pot full of pie, And an oven full of puddin'." With what enthusiasm he plays them, one after the other! And as he plays, coal-black Jim sits in front of him, knee to knee, and "beats straws." The youth cannot keep time without this unique assistance, which is rendered by means of a piece of broom-straw held between the fingers of the right hand and struck against one string at the neck of the violin, while the musician plays. Black Jim also manages to beat time with his feet without disturbing the rhythmical tang, tang of the straw, or distracting the player. "Beating straws" seems to be confined to a section on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge, where, however, it is in common use. After the violin solo, black Jim dances the "stag dance" for us, first retiring to put on his shoes, for though he says he can dance better without them, the splinters of civilization have to be considered, a dirt floor being the original and proper foundation for the dance. He dances very solemnly, oppressed no doubt by the presence of strangers, and in the heat of the fire his face presently shines like polished ebony.
Since the family get up with the sun, or considerably before that, all soon go to rest - the visitors in the parlor where stands the best bed. There is a carpet on the floor, and a round table in the middle of the room holds a lamp and, as ornaments, a dozen oyster shells.
One's ablutions are supposed to be performed in a tin basin standing on a bench on the porch, the family taking turns, but when, unused to the customs of the country, one begs for some water in one's own room, a basinful of it is promptly brought in and set down on the hearth. In the morning the kind hostess appears with a large wooden pail of water, fresh and icy from the spring, a long-handled gourd dipper floating on its sparkling surface. A cold bath with a vengeance!
The women have one consolation which the stranger visiting their beautiful mountains conscientiously deplores, forgetting how short a time it is since his own ancestors of both sexes comforted themselves with snuff, even if kings and queens happened to be numbered among them. In the pocket of many a mountain woman and pretty young girl to-day hides the snuff-box. It is not a silver ornament beautifully chased or set with jewels, however, but the little tin box in which the snuff is bought. Nor is snuff taken after the manner of former generations of snufftakers. Here the people "dip," that is to say, a stick chewed into a brush at one end and kept for the purpose is dipped into the snuff and rubbed over the gums and teeth. It is not a pretty practice, but it seems to afford peculiar satisfaction, enormous quantities of snuff being consumed in this manner When a mountain woman refers to her "toothbrush'" the snuff-stick is what she means. She says that to dip snuff preserves the teeth and strengthens the constitution. A young girl scarcely grown out of childhood gravely told how thin and sickly she had been until her father brought her some snuff and ordered her to use it. The child had not wanted to take it, having a natural repugnance to the habit, but her father insisted, and she had no sooner begun its use, so she said, than she began to improve until she finally became strong and plump like the rest of the girls!
The men do not use snuff as a rule, nor do many of them smoke, though they sometimes chew. Tobacco is not raised to any extent in the mountains, and the snuff habit is the one extravagance of the people, who back in the mountains are not ashamed of it, but near the villages they are getting sensitive and hide the snuffstick when they see you coming. The first step, no doubt, in the passing of the snuffbox. That the habit is not a polite one is recognized even out in the country where you are informed it is the "illest manners" to dip snuff in company. In the villages, although the people may not have "all the modern improvements" in their houses, neither do they, to the same extent, use the snuff-stick, nor follow the more homely manners and habits of the country people, although they closely resemble them in one respect - they show the same spirit of kindliness to each other and to the harmless stranger.
PERHAPS the first thing a stranger notices upon meeting the people is their quaint speech, fort although they speak "English," one cannot talk with them five minutes without hearing something new and strange, their language besides other peculiarities containing many an odd phrase and word that returns us to the language of Shakespeare's day, or even to that of the "Canterbury Tales." Not that these people have remained incarcerated in the mountains from Chaucer's time, but they came across the seas a century and a half or more ago from country places in England, Scotland, and Ireland where the old words were yet strongly intrenched, though nowhere else in this new world has the language of the past survived to the same extent as in the Southern mountains and the adjoining foothills.
Since the mountain people were as a rule separated from contact with the negro, their speech differs, therefore, from that of the Southern lowlanders, and while it is true that the people of the whole mountain region, as well as those of the foothills, have many idioms in common, yet the dialect of the natives of the North Carolina mountains differs from that of the people of the Virginia and Kentucky mountains, and other sections of the high lands, as indeed slight variations occur even in valleys separated by rough mountains, or among people living on opposite sides of the same mountain, so little communication has there been between those thus separated.
Of course, like all who live in the backwoods, the mountaineer is untrammeled by the rules of the grammarian, although he adheres strictly to a few rules of his own, and to-day his is the most purely "American" of any language in the United States, it having grown from its English source, untouched by contact with a motley world.
"Farwel, for I ne may no longer dwelle," says Chaucer in the " Knight's Tale." " He don't never say farwell if he can holpen it," says the North Carolina mountaineer, using Chaucer's double negative and Chaucer's "farwell" and "holpen" in the same breath.
That "yonder" is in common use you know when you hear a baby lisp out, "yonda comes a cow," another pointing out the interesting fact that "yonda's a hen with a gang of little chickens," and "yon" has not been relegated to the realm of poetry where the child tells you that his cousin lives "yon side the mountain."
In some places the people still go to the "milking gap" to milk the cows. "Least" as a diminutive, and "nary" are in such common use that one soon ceases to notice them. " I've made a kiverlid for each of my daughters but the least one, and I ain't made her nar'," says a woman you know. " I've suffered three years in that house," another who is moving her household goods will tell you, but in your sympathetic inquiries as the cause of her misery you learn that she had simply been waiting there until her own house was built. "Some people seem to have a sleight at it and can chop good," says a woman discoursing upon the subject of firewood, while animals "use" certain places when they frequent them or live in them, as you learn when told that "there's a rat using in that hole," or "a bear uses on that mountain."
A universal anachronism is the use of the personal pronoun "hit," instead of "it." The baby, for instance, is "hit," from one end of the mountains to the other. Shall one ever forget the dissertation on infants given by a young person of four to the visitor who suddenly dropped into her home one day! She sat on the edge of the bed swinging her legs, her round black eyes shining with excitement as she described the advent of her baby brother. "Hit was the b-l-ack-est, me-an-est lookin' little thing you ever see, and," with unutterable scorn, "hit was a boy! And," with, if possible, yet deeper disapproval, "hit is a boy yet I " "Hit" is sometimes used until the child is several years old, particularly if there is no newcomer to usurp the title and " Babe," applied as a temporary provision pending the finding of a suitable name, often clings to the youngest son for life.
It is not necessary to go into the remoter fastnesses of the mountains to hear quaint expressions. The speech of a people is the last thing to yield to new customs, and in all the villages, even in Asheville, one constantly hears unfamiliar and interesting words and phrases. If you do not know what is meant when a mountaineer selling you peaches asks for a "poke" to put them in, the fault is in the times. Your English ancestors, several generations back, would have known and at once produced not a "paper poke" in those days, but a sack of some sort.
"Peart" is a survivor from bygone times when its use was perfectly proper, and "tolerable" in the form of "tollable" almost usurps the place of "fairly" or "rather" as an adverb. "She's tollable peart," you are told when inquiring after the health of an absent member of the family. It is seldom that any one admits to being"stout," "jest tollable" being the polite limit of health. "Tollable by grace" is sometimes heard, and when a woman tells you she is "poorly, thank God," you feel that piety can go no farther.
" Ill," retains the old meaning that survives with us only in the proverb of the ill wind, and it is compared, some snakes being iller than others and the king snake the illest of all. We have "moonshiny nights" in the mountains just as they had in England in Addison's time, and as they doubtless have in the country there to-day. Relatives are "kin" here, those closely related being "nigh kin," "nigh " as a rule everywhere taking the place of "near" or "nearly." When the ground is slippery it is "slick." A calf frisking along the roadside you hear referred to as an "antic calf." "It is big enough to hold quite a content," one is told of a parcel concerning which the speaker is speculating. "Yes, I've a nice chance of flowers," a woman modestly admits when you admire her little garden. Here we "aim" to do a thing, and "claim" that we have done it.
When you hear one of your friends spoken of by a highlander as being "common" you are puzzled, to say the least, until you learn that the word is the most complimentary possible, retaining its original meaning as understood when we speak of the "common people," the "common good." The "commoner," you are, that is, the more you treat the people as though you were one of them, the better they like you. And to be called "homely" is also a fine compliment, in a land where the expression means that the homely one makes people feel at home, takes good care of the home, is, in short, what old-fashioned people of the outside world sometimes call "a home body."
Children "favor" their parents, though a peculiar form of the word appears when you are told that a certain young girl is " the likliest favored person that ever came down from the North." But "favor" in this sense is often replaced by the modern and more graphic "imitate"; to be told that a child "imitates" his father meaning that he resembles him in appearance.
" We laid my pappy away yesterday, he was bedfast six weeks," a young girl tells you.
One often hears the cow or mule referred to as a "beastie," though the cow is also known as a "brute," and sometimes as a "cow-brute"; while we are told of a certain cat that it was "afraid of a manperson." Bread that does not rise is "sad," while an old or ill-kept horse is "sorry." "That's good enough for a hireling," the woman says of the coat she gives the hired boy. And one frequently hears the expression, " I'm no hireling." When you ask a man who is driving a stake in the ground what he is doing, he may tell you that he is "jest pounding in a stob," and one looking for a boundary line was heard to say, "There ought to be a little old stob somewhere here." The old plural form of words ending in st yet survives in the mountains, where the people speak of the "nestes" of the hens, the "postes" of the fence, the "waistes" of the dresses, pronouncing the words in two syllables. It may be said in passing that the word "waist" is generally replaced by "body," while the skirt of the dress is the " tail" - and one can imagine the agitated feelings of the newly arrived New England lady to whom a mountain man came, asking if she could not sell him a "body" for his wife, as she already had a "tail," and wanted to go to church. But this is a diversion, and returning to the more serious subject of antiquated speech one finds that "done" expressing past action, as a supplement to the auxiliary "have," is universally used. " He's done gone," " he's done hooked up the horse [to the wagon]," " he's done filled the water-bucket," "she's done baked the bread"; one hears it all the time, and upon occasion one is informed, of a completed action, that " he's done done it."
One could go on indefinitely gathering together old words and phrases that bind us to the past. But there are other peculiarities of speech equally interesting which have been acquired and crystallized in the speech of the people during their sojourn in the New World, and one is delighted to meet a well known proverb in the following guise, "You kin carry a mule to the branch, but you can't make him drink." "Branch" means any stream of water smaller than a river, and when a stream or a road forks, the two divisions are "prongs." To be advised to take the right-hand prong of a road is amusing at first, but when you think of it, it is at least consistent.
The mountaineer's rules of grammar are few but rigid. Whatever ends in s is plural, hence one finds such words as " molasses " preceded by a plural particle, but when the singular is used, as it sometimes is, the grammatical plural termination is discarded and the word consistently and deliciously becomes "molass." In course of time one gets used to " them molasses " and the assertion that " they make a good many molasses"; as one also does to the word "several" applied to quantity. To be told that a man has raised, or, as he says, made, "several potatoes," soon goes without notice, though it always comes with a pleasant kind of shock to be informed that he has "made several molasses." The mountaineer, it may be said in passing, sells his molasses by the bushel. Since a noun ending in the sound of s is naturally regarded as plural, we have "fuse," to the people a new word introduced with blasting, supplied with the convenient singular" fu." "Oxen" is singular, and the plural of course is "oxes." The men still wear "galluses" - as they did in New England a generation ago.
The efforts of the people to comprehend the subtleties of grammar is well illustrated by one of them who, anxious to speak correctly, asked whether, when a piece of work was all finished, it was better to say it was "done done" or "plumb done"; and another, in an effort to be exact, explained, of something that you thought ought to be, " Oh, it's ben a bein' a long time."
The usual illiterate transformations have taken place in the use of verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. "Reckon you'll have wood enough to do you until tomorrow?" the boy inquires. "John, did you give me out?" a woman asks her husband whom she has kept waiting. People here do not "carry," they "tote"; and they "reckon" instead of "think," though when they think hard, they "study." Instead of saying you must do a thing, you say you are "obliged" to do it. "I'm obliged to go home and get the dinner," the woman with whom you have been talking says apologetically as she leaves you. That the "moon fulls to-night" is an interesting fact, for soon, that is, on the "dark of the moon," you can plant your corn. "A Gwine " in some places takes the place of "go," and you freely hear such expressions as "gwine to gwine," "done gwine," and even "done done gwine," although this is not common in the higher mountains. "Mighty," "powerful," and "plumb" universally take the place of "very." When you find the road all but impassable, you may be informed that the recent rains "undermined it mightily." " I can't hear mighty good," one woman says, while another, whose little chickens you are admiring, informs you that the hawks catch them "powerfully." Again you are told that "you-all will have a powerful hunt to find any blackberries now," while one neighbor says of another that he is "a reg'lar wash-foot Babdist, the powerfulest you ever saw in the world." "Now the truth's the truth," says a woman apologetically of her worn calico dress. "This is all I've got but what's so hot it plumb swelters me to death."
Without the various forms of "mighty," "powerful," and "plumb," the speech of the mountaineer would be "powerful" weak, and illy could be spared the convenient "smart" and "right smart" that so freely adorns his remarks. "He holp her a right smart," some one says, joining the discarded form of yesterday to the invention of to-day. "Is it far?" you ask. " Yes, a right smart," is the reply. The variety of uses to which "right smart" can be put is both bewildering and wonderful.
"Trick" is also of general application. "That's a right smart of a trick," a mountain woman says admiringly of your opera-glass. "They've got a plumb cute little trick over yonder," a woman tells you of a neighbor's baby. But perhaps the best thing we ever heard about a mountain baby, or any other, was told us by a woman of her sister's child, " You never did see a prettier big baby in your life - hit's as pleasant as the flowers are made."
"He has a very glib team," we are told of one whose horses have made a hard journey in a short time. And of a neighbor suddenly fallen ill one is informed as the cause that "he has taken on too many apples." "It's not doin' much good noway," a disappointed farmer says of his corn crop, or again you will be informed that the land is so good that two or three acres of it will "eat a family," which does not mean what it says.
There are no "stones" in the mountains, - only "rocks." The boys "rock" each other when they get angry, they "rock" the cows, and we found a little girl "rocking" a hen that persisted in sitting on some round "rocks." "Air ye lookin' fer rocks, stranger?" is a common question in the regions of valuable minerals. Neither are there "hives" in the mountains, only "bee-gums," which the bees fill with "right smart of honey."
Perhaps the most immediately noticeable peculiarity of speech is the universal use of "you-all" in the singular. "How are you-all to-day?" by no means applies to the health of the family. " We-all " and " they-all " are good form, though not so often heard. One imagines the genesis of "you-all" to have been in those early days when people lived so far apart that meeting with one member of the family necessitated inquiring concerning the health and welfare of all, and when an invitation for the same reason necessarily included every member of the family.
"Howdy" is the usual form of salutation, and the people have the friendly habit, in common with the rustic communities of all civilized countries, of courteously greeting the stranger they may meet. You must make your bow and say your "howdy" to every man, woman, and child you pass, a custom that links people together and removes the instinctive fear the city-bred traveler has of meeting a stranger on a lonely road. Even in the larger villages the stranger receives a polite bow from any native citizen whose eye he meets.
The voices of the people are low and pleasant, expressing the kindly nature of the speakers, and also one imagines the friendly quality of the landscape and the climate. And their speech, although quaint and archaic, is not coarse or rude: one never hears offensive talk or low epithets, slang is unknown, and profanity in most parts of the North Carolina mountains is looked upon as a grave offense.