Appalachian Travels: The Diary of Olive Dame Campbell

3. December 1908: Kentucky

85 3 deCember 1908 KenTuCKy Hindman was probably the first mountain school to appreciate fully the native culture of the mountains, to use the old handmade things, and to try to preserve the crafts themselves. They also used native shrubs and “pretties,” such as gourds, hornets’ nests, vines and berries. The “Big House” made a great impression on us, as indeed did the fund of information passed on to us by Miss Pettit and Miss Stone. They were remarkable women with experience and wisdom—Miss Pettit quick and sparkling, Miss Stone balanced and serene. I shall never cease to be grateful to Miss Pettit for opening to me what was to become an absorbing and illuminating interest as the years went on. She asked, that first night, as we sat after supper in the living-room before a huge open fire, if I would like to hear an old ballad. When I politely assented, without too much real enthusiasm, she called on one of the girls— Ada B. Smith, her name was—to sing me “Barbry Allen.” Shall I ever forget it? The blazing fire, the young girl on her low stool before it, the soft strange strumming of the banjo—different from anything I had heard before—and then the song! I had been used to sing “Barbara Allen” as a child, but how far from that gentle tune was this—so strange, so remote, so thrilling. I was lost almost from the first note, and the pleasant room faded from sight; the singer only a voice. I saw again the long road appalachian travels 86 over which we had come, the dark hills, the rocky streams bordered by tall hemlocks and hollies, the lonely cabins distinguishable at night only by the firelight flaring from their chimneys. Then these, too, faded, and I seemed to be borne along into a still more dim and distant past, of which I myself was a part. Of course, I would not rest until I had learned this new, fascinating “Barbara Allen”—quite an undertaking, I found, for the new intervals were subtle. Later I was to learn much about “gapped scales” and “modal tunes” and the special characteristics of these “old-timey song-ballets or lovesongs ,” the ballet or ballad being the words, the “song,” the melody. I was attracted by both words and songs, but it was the melodies that especially intrigued me, and I began at once to pursue them whenever I had an opportunity . The search, continued over the years, has proved one of the most illuminating and rewarding experiences of my life, leading, as it has, into the realms of pure and lasting beauty and opening the way into many related and inexhaustible fields—folk hymns, folk games, folk dances, folk tales, folk arts, folk material in general, here and abroad. At the beginning however, I merely watched for “song-ballets,” learned the tunes and wrote down the words, thus adding a new subject to our expanding and deepening inquiry.1 deCember 1: Had quite a furious talk at breakfast with a Mr.— who believed that the R.R.s were the only salvation of the mountain people—at least in this section. Said the conditions were not paralleled in any section of the U.S.—marriage and intermarriage, degeneracy, lack of ambition etc. Was didactic and severely hopeless. Insinuated that he could prove point if I were not present. Mr. Kelley, another young man present, differed with him. Said he had seen improvement in time he had been there. Men were up on law etc. A lovely sunny day after a pouring night. Had a quiet day sewing, sleeping and reading some new magazines. We took a little stroll up to a coal mine in the december 1908 87 morn, where the young engineer was not enthusiastic over the country. Jackson is not a prepossessing place—and I understand there are places in it not safe to visit in daylight. It is small too—streets fearfully irregular—houses at all angles. No pigs loose but sties are in evidence and sad looking cows trip and lumber along the narrow irregular plank walks or lie dejectedly on the bare damp earth. I don’t see why they range. There is nothing to eat but paper. In the eve Mr. Kelley brought in a Mr. Vaughn—Kentucky Supt. of Sabbath School Society (lives at—but was brought...