174 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
speech of a people is the last thing to yield to new 
customs, and in all the villages, even in Asheville, 
one constantly hears unfamiliar and interesting 
words and phrases. If you do not know what is 
meant when a mountaineer selling you peaches asks 
for a " poke " to put them in, the fault is in the times. 
Your English ancestors, several generations back, 
would have known and at once produced — not a 
"paper poke" in those days, but a sack of some sort. 
" Peart" is a survivor from bygone times when its 
use was perfectly proper, and " tolerable " in the form 
of "tollable" almost usurps the place of "fairly" or 
"rather" as an adverb. "She's tollable peart," you 
are told when inquiring after the health of an absent 
member of the family. It is seldom that any one ad- 
mits to being " stout," "jest tollable" being the polite 
limit of health. "Tollable by grace" is sometimes 
heard, and when a woman tells you she is "poorly, 
thank God," you feel that piety can go no farther. 
"Ill," retains the old meaning that survives with 
us only in the proverb of the ill wind, and it is com- 
pared, some snakes being iller than others and the 
king snake the illest of all. We have "moonshiny 
nights" in the mountains just as they had in Eng- 
land in Addison's time, and as they doubtless have 
in the country there to-day. Relatives are "kin" 
here, those closely related being "nigh kin," "nigh" 
as a rule everywhere taking the place of "near" or 
"nearly." When the ground is slippery it is "slick." 
A calf frisking along the roadside you hear referred 
to as an "antic calf." " It is big enough to hold quite 
