Strange to say, it provokes them to be called mountaineers, that being a “furrin word” which they take as a term of reproach. They call themselves mountain people, or citizens; sometimes humorously “mountain boomers,” the word boomer being their name for the common red squirrel which is found here only in the upper zones of the mountains. Backwoodsman is another term that they deem opprobrious. Among themselves the backwoods are called “the sticks.” Hillsman and highlander are strange words to them—and anything that is strange is suspicious. Hence it is next to impossible for anyone to write much about these people without offending them or else falling into singsong repetition of the same old terms.
I have found it beyond me to convince anyone here that my studies of the mountain dialect are made from any better motive than vulgar curiosity. It has been my habit to jot down, on the spot, every dialectical word or variant or idiom that I hear, along with the phrase or sentence in which it occurred; for I never trust memory in such matters. And although I tell frankly what I am about, and why, yet all that the folks can or will see is that—
A chiel ’s amang ye, takin’ notes,
And, faith, he’ll prent ’em.
Nothing worse than dour looks has yet befallen me, but other scribes have not got off so easy. On more than one occasion newspaper men who went into eastern Kentucky to report feuds were escorted forcibly to the railroad and warned never to return. The feudists are scarce to blame, for the average news story of their wars is neither sacred nor profane history. It is bad enough to be shown up as an assassin; but when one is posed as “cocking the trigger” of a gun, or shooting a “forty-four” bullet from a thirty-caliber “automatic revolver,” who in Kentucky could be expected to stand it?
The novelists have their troubles, too. President Frost relates that when John Fox gave a reading from his Cumberland tales at Berea College “the mountain boys were ready to mob him. They had no comprehension of the nature of fiction. Mr. Fox’s stories were either true or false. If they were true, then he was ‘no gentleman’ for telling all the family affairs of people who had entertained him with their best. If they were not true, then, of course, they were libellous upon the mountain people. Such an attitude may remind us of the general condemnation of fiction by the ‘unco gude’ a generation ago.”
The Schoolhouse
As for settlement workers, let them teach more by example than by precept. Bishop Wilson has given them some advice that cannot be bettered: “It must be said with emphasis that our problem is an exceedingly delicate one. The Highlanders are Scotch-Irish in their high-spiritedness and proud independence. Those who would help them must do so in a perfectly frank and kindly way, showing always genuine interest in them but never a trace of patronizing condescension. As quick as a flash the mountaineer will recognize and resent the intrusion of any such spirit, and will refuse even what he sorely needs if he detects in the accents or the demeanor of the giver any indication of an air of superiority.”
“The worker among the mountaineers,” he continues, “must ‘meet with them on the level and part on the square’ and conquer their oftentimes unreasonable suspicion by genuine brotherly friendship. The less he has to say about the superiority of other sections or of the deficiencies of the mountains, the better for his cause. The fact is that comparatively few workers are at first able to pass muster in this regard under the searching and silent scrutiny of the mountain people.”
Allow me to add that this is no place for the “unco gude” to exercise their talents, but rather for those whose studies and travels have taught them both tolerance and hopefulness. Some well-meaning missionaries are shocked and scandalized at what seems to them incurable perversity and race degeneration. It is nothing of the sort. There are reasons, good reasons, for the worst that we find in any Hell-fer-Sartin or Loafer’s Glory. All that is the inevitable result of isolation and lack of opportunity. It is no more hopeless than the same features of life were in the Scotch highlands two centuries ago.