129 



Perhaps this explains the wide girdle, or other bit of modern adornment, 

 now seen sometimes on the quaint costumes. 



We were pushing through a deep forest in toiling over a ridge. Be- 

 fore us were two children, walking in single file, a boy of fourteen and a 

 girl a year younger. Our youthful guide pointed in their direction and 

 remarked, "They were married last spring. Some of us do get married 

 that early hereabouts ; but we who have been to the settlement school 

 don't calculate to get married that soon." 



"Store clothes" have displaced the homespun garments, the result 

 being unfavorable in the appearance of the men. However, the settle- 

 ment schools are reviving the home-weaving industry to some extent. The 

 belt is beginning to rival the suspender on "Sunday" garments. 



The quaint old English language also is disappearing, though slowly. 

 It is becoming crystallized and is losing its flexibility whereby it was wont 

 to be bent this way or that, to suit the fancy or fit the occasion. In a 

 reminiscence of his boyhood, Professor Dizney tells of a minister in 

 Dizney's valley, who, in preaching about apostasy, took as his text: "If 

 they shall fall away", and who concluded in a high key: "'If they .shall 

 fall away', means that they cannot fall away, for anybody who knows 

 anything about the English laguage knows that it is a verb in the im- 

 possible mood and everlasting tense." There also comes to mind the 

 following expression : "Law me, Honey, I'm glad to be back from the 

 plains. Wooded mountains make the restinest place to lay your eyes on." 



There is about to pass away a most interesting folk-song based upon 

 English and Scotch ballads, and preserved verbally in the mountains with 

 slight modification, from generation to generation. These songs of 

 romantic love, hate, sacrifice, and revenge are sung in almost all of the 

 log cabins. Thereby the visitor, who may have thought that the moun- 

 taineers neither weep nor smile, learns with delight that their natures 

 are intensely fluid. The songs are sung in slow time, and in minor tones 

 difficult to express in written music. An effort is being made to collect 

 the words and write the music before it becomes too late. 



The open hospitality, once common, is shrinking. An old man in his 

 watermelon patch put it thus : "I used to raise melons for the whole 

 valley, so that the folks would come to sit and talk with me on the porch 

 while we ate them. But now too many foreigners have come in ; they 



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