![\"\"](\"http:\/\/staging.pinemountainsettlement.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/floral_IV_030_mod-1024x784.jpg\")
Uncle William Creech. [floral_IV_030_mod.jpg]<\/p><\/div>\n
TRANSCRIPTION:\u00a0“THE PINE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL – A SKETCH FROM THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS” by Ethel de Long<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n I JOURNEYED for forty-eight hours the other day with a\u00a0little mountain girl who was riding on the train for the first\u00a0time. Unlike an old friend of mine, who, after her first ride\u00a0on the train, said, \u201chit\u2019s mighty fine, but \u2018pears like, if I had\u00a0a right smart journey to go, I\u2019d ruther go by nag,\u201d this ten-year-old was delighted with the \u201ciron horse\u201d and commented joyfully\u00a0on the second day, \u201c \u2018Why, we hain\u2019t been off the railroad once\u00a0since we started.\u201d Hers is a world so remote from this modern\u00a0one as to be almost inconceivable to those who have never crowded\u00a0their \u201cplunder<\/span>\u201d into a meal poke, flung it across a\u00a0nag\u2019s back, and followed the trail into the wilderness. Tales\u00a0<\/span>had reached this<\/span> little maid of the world outside. She was eager\u00a0to get to a place where you \u201cmash into the wall and hit gets\u00a0light, and then you mash somethin\u2019 else\u00a0and hit\u00a0gets dark,\u201d\u00a0and she had heard of automobiles. She described herself as\u00a0being ten years old \u201cthe fust day of corn-fodderin\u2019 time.\u201d Her\u00a0first encounter with the world was self-possessed and dignified,\u00a0as indeed is the way of her people always, for she was a child\u00a0from<\/span>\u00a0the Southern highlands. Self-respect and intelligence are\u00a0hers as the gift of nature, for she was born at the head of the\u00a0<\/span>hollow.<\/p>\n Hers is a country at the \u201cBack of the Beyond\u201d more real and vivid than you can guess even if you have read Mr. Kephart\u2019s \u201c Our Southern Highlanders<\/em>,” or heard the plaintive\u00a0music of the “Lonesome Tunes<\/em>.\u201d To appreciate it you first\u00a0accept the invitation so graciously given you by everyone you\u00a0meet in the mountains\u00a0to “come back down and stay all night with\u00a0us,\u201d and you must sojourn among the mountains. You will\u00a0travel in the main through a roadless<\/span>\u00a0country, for though the\u00a0road may\u00a0have the best of Intentions, keeping for a time well\u00a0on the side of the hill,<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n On the side of a hill in a land of young mountains where there\u00a0are no valleys, it has no other alternative than to plunge into\u00a0the creek now and then. You amuse yourself counting how\u00a0many times you have forded the stream endwise in the course of\u00a0a twenty-mile ride. Two miles straight in the waters of Possum Trot you may have ridden, a dozen fordings of Lonesome, in quicksands on Hell-fer-Certain, and so the count\u00a0goes. It is delightful so long as there is no rain and consequently no \u201ctide\u201d in the creeks. But as you ford Bull Skin or\u00a0Buffalo, holding your feet high because the water comes up on\u00a0your mule\u2019s side, your eyes catch the marks of the last \u201ctide\u201d in\u00a0brown leaves held in the willow and alder twigs far over\u00a0your head on the edges of the creek. Then you understand why\u00a0mails are irregular in the mountains, why school attendance is uncertain.<\/p>\n In the hills you take these matters with characteristic humor.\u00a0\u201cI was goin\u2019 to town,\u201d says a friend, \u201cbut thar come\u00a0a tide\u00a0and the creek riz on me. So I jest stepped back and took a run\u00a0and a jump. When I was jes\u2019 half-way over, I seed a great big\u00a0yaller\u00a0pieded<\/span>\u00a0rattlesnake, all coiled up ready for to spring, jes\u2019\u00a0whar I was about to land. I made up my mind I warn\u2019t aimin\u2019\u00a0to land on hit, so I jest turned round and landed right whar\u00a0I\u00a0started from.\u201d<\/p>\n You hear your neighbor mirthfully describe his hill farm as\u00a0bein’ so steep that \u201cyou are \u2018bliged to dig a hole for a dog to\u00a0set in and howl.\u201d\u00a0Yet<\/span> as you look at his acres, patiently<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>cleared, toilsomely fenced with rails that he and his wife have\u00a0split and laid, you feel the gallantry of man\u2019s struggle<\/span>\u00a0in the\u00a0wilderness. You catch a glimpse, used as you are to a world of\u00a0mechanical contrivances and control of nature, of little man’s contest with his naked fists against the primitive force of the world.\u00a0<\/span>You feel profound respect for the pioneer who could\u00a0start out with his wife and his children, all his worldly possessions\u00a0on a nag\u2019s back, into a wild country which he could subdue only\u00a0with his hands, aided by a flintlock gun and an ax.<\/p>\n Yet this country of the Cumberlands was rich to the eyes of\u00a0the pioneer who came into it after Daniel Boone had found out\u00a0a wilderness road, \u201cfollerin\u2019 the game,<\/span>\u201d and who then \u201cholp\u201d<\/span> \u201cI looked over <\/em>yander and I <\/em>seen paw coming,<\/em> \u201c1 looked over <\/em>yander and I. <\/em>seen paw coming,<\/em> It is the original ballad of the\u201d Briary Bush,\u201d and goes back to\u00a0the time when men\u00a0were hanged for debt. You can\u00a0hunt it out\u00a0in Professor Child\u2019s English and Scottish Ballads<\/em>\u00a0but we of If you would learn the art of racy<\/span>, beautiful speech, come\u00a0to the\u00a0mountains where speech still blossoms freely. Where a woman speaks of her youth as \u201cthe rise of her bloom,\u201d and the\u00a0preacher prays for the old as \u201cthose whose heads are a-blooming for the grave.\u201d Where someone who has outstayed her\u00a0visit, singing to the accompaniment of the dulcimer, cries at It is easy to see the defects and limitations of the mountains\u2014their need of roads\u00a0that can bring greater economic opportunities; of good\u00a0schools that can prepare them for the world that\u00a0is not merely knocking at their doors but snatching their homes\u00a0away from them, thrusting them into a competition for which\u00a0three generations of life in\u00a0the woods has unfitted them; of\u00a0preventive medical work which shall free them from the incubus\u00a0of hookworm and eradicate trachoma; of effective co-operation for\u00a0a people whose life has made them the sturdiest of individualists.\u00a0These defects have been a matter of talk for so many years that\u00a0to-day there is need to remember that these are a people\u00a0<\/span>t<\/span>\u00a0with\u00a0their faces set toward the morning; as a group, the three million\u00a0of them living in the remote Appalachians, undeveloped wealth\u00a0for America. Meeting their keenness of mind, one discovers\u00a0that reading and writing are something of a shibboleth, not a\u00a0true touchstone of intelligence; that poise and dignity of behavior are qualities of the heart, not of environment; that the\u00a0bringing up of children to obedience and beautiful manners\u00a0may be successfully done by the mother of a dozen whose day\u00a0is full of tasks and who has had no opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\n Rhoda Creech Wilder’s Family: Kermit 8, Brit 10, Sallie 12, holding ?,Mary 1, Margaret 3, Cindy 6, Polly 4. [Vl_37_1195a.jpg]<\/p><\/div>\n If you have felt it America\u2019s duty to decrease the percentage\u00a0of illiteracy in the Southern mountains rather than her privilege\u00a0to stretch out the hand of opportunity, if you have grudgingly\u00a0admitted that in self-interest we ought to provide better educational facilities and insist on their being used, listen to the\u00a0mother who said, when she was asked if she made her children\u00a0go to school, \u201cLord! they hain\u2019t to make, they cry to go.\u201d The\u00a0biggest thing about people on the lonesome creeks hidden away\u00a0in the folds of the mountains is that they crave a chance. As\u00a0one father put it: \u201cI want my little fellers raised toward humanity.\u201d There are men in the mountains who for years have\u00a0dreamed wistfully of a chance for their people, though they\u00a0could never see how it could come. Few of us have done as\u00a0much original thinking as Mr. William Creech<\/a>, who a few\u00a0years ago gave all he had to establish a settlement school in his\u00a0neighborhood. For forty years he had wanted a school that\u00a0would not only teach book learning, but would \u201clarn\u00a0folks to\u00a0do things with their hands,\u201d because \u201chit\u2019s better for folkses characters to larn them to do things with their hands ;\u201c and\u00a0who wrote:<\/p>\n My idea was that if we could get a good school here and get\u00a0the children interested it would help moralize the country. If\u00a0we can bring our children to see the error of the liquor we\u00a0<\/em>can squash it.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Some places hereabouts are so lost from\u00a0<\/em>knowledge that the\u00a0young uns have never been taught the knowledge of reading and\u00a0writing and don\u2019t know the country they were <\/em>borned in or what\u00a0State or County they <\/em>was borned.\u00a0We need a whole lot of teaching how to work on the farm and how to make their farms pay,\u00a0also<\/span>\u00a0teachin’ them how to take care of their timber and stuff\u00a0they\u2019re wasting. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n If the school has as its ideal not only the fitting of boys and\u00a0girls for life in the\u00a0mountains, but of large community service\u00a0which shall include preventive medical work, and the building\u00a0of a good road across the mountains and in all the hundred and\u00a0fifty miles between the ends of Pine Mountain, which runs from\u00a0\u201cPraise the Lord\u201d to \u201cHell\u2019s Point,\u201d there is not one good\u00a0road across it, it c<\/span>an never outstrip Uncle William\u2019s visions.\u00a0He says:<\/p>\n We want to teach them books and agriculture and machinery and all kinds of labor and to help\u00a0them to live up as good\u00a0American citizens. We are trying to teach them up\u00a0so they can be\u00a0a help to the poor\u00a0and to the generation unborn. . .\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I don\u2019t look after wealth for them. I look after the prosperity\u00a0of our Nation.<\/strong> The question of this world is naught. We are born into it naked and we go out naked. The savin’ of the soul is\u00a0what we should seek. I want all young uns taught to serve the livin’ God. Of <\/em>course they won\u2019t all do that, but they can have\u00a0good and evil laid before them and they can choose which they\u00a0will. I have heart and cravin’ that our people may grow better.\u00a0I have<\/em> deeded my land to the Pine Mountain Settlement School\u00a0to be used for school purposes\u00a0as long as the Constitution of the\u00a0United States stands. Hopin’ it may make a bright and intelligent people after<\/em> I’m dead and gone.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nto subdue the wilderness. Even less than a generation ago it\u00a0abounded in fish and game. The pea vine grew over the hills,\u00a0making the best of grazing for stock. There were sugar trees
\nto give you \u201csweetenin\u2019,\u201d and tulip blossoms enough so that the\u00a0bees could fill the old-fashioned bee-gum with a wealth of honey\u00a0for you. Even to-day, when the bees and the bears are gone\u00a0and a mess of fish is a treat, the trappers find mink and red\u00a0fox, coon\u00a0and \u2018possum, and the industrious can still dig for\u00a0themselves an honest penny when they go \u201csanging\u201d in the\u00a0woods; for whereas fifty years ago ginseng brought only\u00a0twenty-five cents a pound, to-day it sells for about five dollars\u00a0and sometimes goes as high as eight.\u00a0But if the good old days are gone for the pioneer, they are\u00a0only beginning for the capitalist. Fortunes have already been\u00a0made in timber in the Kentucky mountains, and the coal-fields\u00a0just being opened are said to be the richest in the world. There\u00a0are fortunes, indeed, in the mountains for men who have bought\u00a0fifty thousand acres of original forest for fifty cents an acre;\u00a0<\/span>who have purchased poplar trees, averaging from two thousand\u00a0to ten thousand feet of lumber, at two dollars a tree; and have\u00a0bought in trade six hundred acres of land for a little gray nag\u00a0and a squirrel-shooting rifle. But, even though in his first\u00a0encounter with the commercial world the mountain man was not\u00a0shrewd enough to hold his own, the greatest wealth of the\u00a0mountains is the people themselves.\u00a0It is already becoming trite to speak of the \u201cpurest Americans in America,\u201d so well known is the fact that the mountain\u00a0people are practically a homogeneous race, their fore-parents who\u00a0came from way yon side of the briny deep having been\u00a0mostly English, Scotch, and Irish in race. If you want proof\u00a0of it, stop your nag in midstream and listen to the girl hoeing\u00a0corn at the top of the mountain, and singing to keep herself\u00a0company the song the grandmother taught her sitting by the\u00a0fire on winter evenings:<\/p>\n
\nHe\u2019s walked for many a long mile.<\/em>
\nSay, paw, <\/em>say, paw, have you <\/em>brung me any gold,<\/em>
\nAny gold for today my fine?<\/em>
\nNo, sir, no, sir, we <\/em>brung you no gold,<\/em>
\nNo gold for\u00a0to pay your fine,<\/em>
\nFor I\u2019ve just come to see you hanged,<\/em>
\nHang on\u00a0the gallows line.<\/em>
\nHangman, hangman, slack up your rope,<\/em><\/p>\n
\nHe’d\u00a0walked for many a long mile.<\/em>
\nSay, paw, <\/em>say, paw, have you <\/em>brung me any gold,<\/em>
\nAny gold for to pay my fine?<\/em>
\nNo, sir, no, sir, we <\/em>brung you no gold,<\/em>
\nNo gold for to pay your due<\/span>,<\/em>
\nFor I\u2019ve just come to see you hanged,<\/em>
\nHang on the gallows line.<\/em>
\nHangman, hangman, slack up your rope,<\/em>
\nSlack it for a while!<\/em>
\nI looked over yonder and I <\/em>seen maw coming,<\/em>
\nShe\u2019s walked for many a long mile.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nthe mountains do not consider it as a quaint bit of literature\u00a0to be unearthed by scholars. It is just one of our \u201csong ballets.\u201d\u00a0And though some strict church members in the mountains may
\ncount it and such a love song as \u201cBarbara Allen<\/em>\u201d or \u201cJackaro\u201d as \u201cdevil\u2019s ditties,\u201d*<\/span> they have been saved through generations as the heritage from home of the mountain people.\u00a0And then listen to the everyday speech. An old woman who can shear twenty-eight sheep in a day, and knows how to scour\u00a0the wool, to spin, dye, and weave it into linsey-woolsey or into a\u00a0coverlet whose pattern may be called \u201cKing\u2019s Plower\u201d or\u00a0\u201cQueen\u2019s Patch\u201d or \u201cLonely Heart,\u201d tells you, \u201cNo, you\u00a0cain\u2019t never toll<\/span> sheep off their usin\u2019 grounds of an evenin\u2019,\u201d\u00a0and you remember Shakespeare\u2019s double negatives and Spenser\u2019s\u00a0\u201cWhere never foot did use\u201d in \u201cThe Faerie Queene<\/em>,\u201d though\u00a0to-day we have forgotten that old meaning, \u201c to frequent,\u201d of the\u00a0word \u201cuse.\u201d\u00a0 Has somebody been \u201cacting anticky,\u201d did not\u00a0Hamlet put an \u201cantic disposition on\u201d? When you have been\u00a0invited to a frolic, remember that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu did not go to \u201cat homes,\u201d or the dansants<\/em> either, but\u00a0records herself as invited to \u201cfrolicks.\u201d Very probably she too\u00a0would\u00a0have complained of some mischievous little boy that he\u00a0had been \u201cpranking with her things,\u201d and certainly she would\u00a0have understood the apologetic mother who snatched her baby\u00a0from the floor, saying, \u201cGod love my baby! Hit\u2019s motley faced.\u00a0I hain\u2019t had no time to clean hit to-day.”<\/p>\n
\nleave-taking, as she remembers the night duties awaiting her at\u00a0the end of a seven-mile walk, \u201cLord, I won\u2019t never be satisfied\u00a0away from you again no more in this world!\u201c Where a child\u00a0eager to see you writes that she would like to \u201chold your lily white hand,” and another one, wanting an answer to her letter\u00a0speedily, puts on the corner of the envelope, \u201cGo in haste.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Brit](\"http:\/\/staging.pinemountainsettlement.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Vl_37_1195a.jpg\")