XVII 
THE SPEECH OF THE MOUNTAINS 
PERHAPS the first thing a stranger notices upon 
meeting the people is their quaint speech, for 
although they speak "English," one cannot talk 
with them five minutes without hearing something 
new and strange, their language besides other pecu- 
liarities containing many an odd phrase and word 
that returns us to the language of Shakespeare's day, 
or even to that of the "Canterbury Tales." Not 
that these people have remained incarcerated in the 
mountains from Chaucer's time, but they came across 
the seas a century and a half or more ago from coun- 
try places in England, Scotland, and Ireland where 
the old words were yet strongly intrenched, though 
nowhere else in this new world has the language of 
the past survived to the same extent as in the South- 
ern mountains and the adjoining foothills. 
Since the mountain people were as a rule separ- 
ated from contact with the negro, their speech dif- 
fers, therefore, from that of the Southern lowlanders, 
and while it is true that the people of the whole 
mountain region, as well as those of the foothills, 
have many idioms in common, yet the dialect of the 
natives of the North Carolina mountains differs 
from that of the people of the Virginia and Ken- 
tucky mountains, and other sections of the high- 
