Old Daddy Flicker Likes Corn Likker 291 



Line, describes that section of Virginia's frontier and the set- 

 tlers along it. Many of these were runaways from Maryland 

 and Virginia, ne'er-do-wells and idlers, evaders of justice. 

 Many were descendants of the indentured servants who had 

 served their terms, and then moved out to the Back Woods. 

 The Black Swan found them a rag-tag, bobtail crew; shiftless, 

 dirty, illiterate. Their custard complexions told of malaria, 

 country distemper and other ills due to a constant diet of 

 pork without salt. Their 'Indian corn," he reported, "is of so 

 great increase that a little pains will subsist a very large family 

 with bread." 



Much of that corn went into whiskey which was their 

 remedy for snake bite, hookworm and all other miseries. 



Pushing farther into the mountains, Colonel Byrd en- 

 countered the advance tide of the Ulster immigrants who 

 were flowing down into the Great Valley from Pennsylvania. 

 These too, he noted, had brought their stills with them. Lack- 

 ing mills, they had made for themselves rude querns with 

 which they also ground the sprouted corn for the making of 

 "corn likker." They brought with them, too, their home-made 

 fiddles, their Scotch superstitions, ballads, and their Gaelic 

 gift for ballad-making. Away in the coves of the mountains 

 they perpetuated a folklore and folkways that were passing 

 from the British Isles. They had the Gael's enjoyment of a 

 wake or a burying, and saw to it that the corpse was toasted 

 on his way to the spirit world in powerful, clear white "corn 

 likker." 



To that "corn likker" we owe the second volume of the 

 Black Swan's History, which is no less than an unblushing 

 account of his and his fellow commissioners' sexual adventures 

 on the expedition. Some of the exploits are worthy of the 

 author of Moll Flanders. That the Colonel enjoyed the experi- 

 ence is proven by his purchase of twenty thousand acres in 

 western Carolina which he named his "Land of Eden." Part of 

 this he proceeded to sell to the Ulster immigrants as they came 

 down the valleys from the north. Later, when many Scotch 



