English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians

English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians Synopsis

Excerpt from English Folk Songs From the Southern Appalachians: Comprising 122 Songs and Ballads, and 323 Tunes

Economically they are independent. As there are practically no available markets, little or no surplus produce is grown, each family extracting from its holding just what is needed to support life, and no more. They have very little money, barter in kind being the customary form of exchange.

Many set the standard of bodily and material comfort perilously low, in order, presumably, that they may have the more leisure and so extract the maximum enjoyment out of life. The majority live in log-cabins, more or less water-tight, usually, but not always, lighted with windows; but some have built larger and more comfortable homesteads.

They area leisurely, cheery people in their quiet way, in whom the social instinct is very highly developed. They dispense hospitality with an openhanded generosity and are extremely interested in and friendly toward strangers, communicative and unsuspicious. But surely you will tarry with us for the night? Was said to us on more than one occasion when, after paying an afternoon's visit, we rose to say good-bye.

They know their Bible intimately and subscribe to an austere creed, charged with Calvinism and the unrelenting doctrines of determinism or fatalism. The majority we met were Baptists, but we met Methodists also, a few Presbyterians, and some who are attached to what is known as the Holiness sect, with whom, however, we had but little truck, as their creed forbids the singing of secular songs.

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