Gatherings From The Territory

Gatherings From The Territory Among the "gatherings" we have made from time to time have been quotations about the area, statements by or about the people. This "gathering" is a selection from those. Some are meant to be serious, some humorous, obviously. Yet, one may wonder at the short article ("A Forgotten Colony") from the London Times (1920?) with its figure of 17,000 ballads and songs for the "gatherings" of Cecil Sharp during his tour of the Southern Mountains. Quite a few, quite a few, it seems to us! A FORGOTTEN COLONY. ENGUSH FOLK-SONGS IN NORTH AMERICA. Mr. Cecil Sharp lectured, under the auspices of the Peasant Arts Guild yesterday evening, at the University of London Club, on "English Folk Songs Collected in the Appalachian Mountains of North America," with vocal illustrations by Miss Dorothea Webb. For three seasons Mr. Sharp and Miss Karpales visited the forgotten colony, which has dwelt from 250 to 300 years in the Appalachian Mountains. "Right in the midst of the United States of America," said Mr. SHARP, "is the very last place one would think of looking for a primitive people." It was difficult to ascertain how they arrived there. They were, he thought, the descendants of Lowlanders, who had come to the Southern States of America about 250 or 300 years ago, and were surprised to find a slave colony, where their labour was not needed, and where without capital they could do nothing. Having penetrated one or two ranges of mountains, they became lost, no tradition of the outside world reaching them. Their language was Elizabethan English, and the intonation a mixture of cockney and American, which, Mr. Sharp said, was the tradition of Elizabethan speech. Everybody sang. He collected 17,000 ballads and songs. Children of from nine to 10 years sang beautiful ballads, variation on variation of our own old ballads, and the production of their voices was good, though they had never had a lesson. The general standard of music of these people was a far higher average than he had ever collected elsewhere. They never used the word "dance," but called it "play" or "run a set." They had fiddles, which they played with two sticks. —London Times, 1920? 61 Our Highlanders. The mountain people are of fine mental capacity. A man of affairs and a deep student of character once said of them: "They need only an introduction to civilization to prove themselves equal to any men in the world. I regard them as the finest rough material in the world, and one of them modeled into available shape is worth to the world a dozen ordinary people." And yet to-day hundreds of thousands of these patriotic Americans are more ignorant and more destitute of the opportunities which go with education than any other body of Anglo-Saxon people on the face of the earth. —Bishop Wilbur R. Thirkield. The Kentucky, Licking, and Cumberland Rivers have their headwaters among the mountaineers. The bravest of all these four parts [of Kentucky] are the mountaineers, because they are farthest away from the culture and civilization of die province, the Bluegrass, and traders least often come among them, for they carry in those things which tend to weaken the mind; and they (the mountaineers) are nearest to the people of the Bluegrass, who live in the lowlands , with whom they are continually at strife. —Josiah Combs, in All That's Kentucky. Aunt Dalmanutha's Homesickness But it were not till I sot in the railroad cyars ag'in and the level country had crinkled up into hills, and the hills had riz up into mountains, all a-blazin' out majestical' in the joy of the yaller and scarlet and green and crimson, that I raly got my sight and knowed I had it. Yes, the Bluegrass is fine and pretty and smooth and heavenly fair; but the mountains is my nateral and everlastin' element. They gethered round me at my birth; they bowed down their proud heads to listen at my first weak cry; they cradled me on their broad knees; they suckled me at their hard but ginerous breasts. Whether snowkivered , or brown, or green, or...