sung out of their natural setting of brushwood camp or half-lighted log church, and reenforced by the vibrant, frenzied voices of exhorters and the high strained singsong of the preacher who has reached what is known as his "weavin' way." I confess that the wild fascination of a mountain revival has a strange power over me; the scene and the music draw me with a charm that I do not understand.
Such a religion has naturally little to do with the moral law. I am far from wishing to imply that they regard no principles of right and wrong, or that their own code of morals is not rigidly adhered to by the majority. The popular idea in this connection is, I am well aware, one of mere lawlessness. But the world at large knows little of the mountain people except as some bloody feud or fight over a raided still finds its way into court. This is as if one judged society by the divorce columns and reports of fraud and embezzlement. It should be remembered that the greater number of the mountaineers never get into the newspapers. Who is there to speak of their hospitality, their independence, their fidelity to marriage bonds? They are really of superior moral fibre for so primitive a race.
But, like most primitive peoples, they are prone to hold brute courage the first of the virtues, and the hero of their ballad is too often the criminal. The bold robber stands to their minds as the buccaneers and marooners of the Spanish Main stood to seventeenth-century England. He is the Man Who Dared—that is all—and if justice overtakes him, their sympathies, of course, follow him all the more.
Last night as I lay sleeping, I dreamt a pleasant dream;
I dreamt I was down in Moscow, 'way down by Pearly stream;
The prettiest girl beside me, had come to go my bail;
I woke up, broken-hearted, in Knoxville County jail.
In come my jailer, about nine o'clock,
A bunch of keys was in his hand, my cell door to unlock,
Saying, "Cheer you up, my prisoner, for I heard some voices say
You're bound to hear your sentence some time to-day."
In come my mother, about ten o'clock,
Saying, "Oh, my lovin' Johnny, what sentence have you got?"
"The jury found me guilty, and the judge a-standin' by
Has sent me down to Knoxville to lock me up to die."
THE GAMBLING MAN
I have played cards in England,
I have played cards in Spain,
I always played the high-low-jack,
And never lost a game.
My mammy used to talk to me
Of things I hadn't seen;
Said she, "My boy, you'll be in the workhouse
Before you are sixteen."
I knew she was a-talkin',
But I thought she was in fun,
But I had to wear the ball and chain
Before I was twenty-one.
I'll play cards with a white man
And I'll play with him fair;
I'll play the hat right off of his head,
And I'll play him for his hair.
I've gambled away my pocketbook;
I've gambled away my comb;
I've gambled away all the money I had,
And now I will go home.
There are simple dance tunes, such as "Citieo," "Shady Grove," and "Muskrat," to which a mere shuffling step is measured, the couples dancing in an "eight-handed set":
MUSKRAT
Romantic love as a motif is almost altogether absent throughout the mountaineer's music. It is a subject of which he is very shy. His passion is not a thing to be proclaimed from the housetops. Once married, his affection is a beautiful thing, faithful to whatever end; but he does not sing of it.
