300 Singing Valleys 



"an illegitimate orphan of the royal line." White mule is its 

 appropriate name. 



It was corn whiskey either honorable Bourbon or native 

 white mule which filled the Log Cabin bottles that pro- 

 moted William Henry Harrison's campaign for the presidency. 

 The cabin, and the whiskey distilled from corn, symbolized the 

 traditions of the American frontier. Ohio Republicans shouted 

 their campaign song: 



Where, oh, where, was your Buckeye cabin made? 



Way down yonder in the sylvan shade. 

 Where the Buckeye boys wield the plough and spade, 



There, oh, there, was our Buckeye cabin made. 



The inference was that a vote for Harrison was a vote for 

 corn whiskey, and plenty of it, for everybody. 



One can no more tell the story of the lower reaches of the 

 Mississippi and leave out "corn likker" than one can write of 

 France without its vineyards. The French settlers, with their 

 violent dislike of corn, distilled brandy from peaches and 

 grapes, and even brewed beer from wild persimmons. In all 

 the French villages it was the custom to keep the festival of 

 the patron saint with a local celebration. The Scotch-Irish 

 Protestants who settled Kentucky and Tennessee, not to be 

 outdone by their Catholic French neighbors, canonized a 

 saint of their own. St. Tammany's original was an Indian chief. 

 But his "Day," on the first of May, was kept as enthusias- 

 tically as if he had had a place in the church calendar. At 

 Louisville they held a shooting match, greased pig races, bar- 

 becues, and dances around a decorated Maypole. Kegs of Bour- 

 bon and jugs of mountain "white mule" stood about within 

 easy reach. When it came to dancing "Sugar in the Gourd" 

 or "The Rattlesnake Shake," the corn juice limbered one up, 

 and inspired fancy steps that made the Negroes on the edge 

 of the crowd stare and gasp admiringly. 



The river's rambunctious days, when the keel-boat men 



