Weddings never are celebrated in church, but at the home of the bride, and are jolly occasions, of course. Often the young men, stimulated with more or less “moonshine,” add the literally stunning compliment of a shivaree.
The mountaineers have a native fondness for music and dancing, which, with the shouting-spells of their revivals, are the only outlets for those powerful emotions which otherwise they studiously conceal. The harmony of “part singing” is unknown in the back districts, where men and women both sing in a jerky treble. Most of their music is in the weird, plaintive minor key that seems spontaneous with primitive people throughout the world. Not only the tone, but the sentiment of their hymns and ballads is usually of a melancholy nature, expressing the wrath of God and the doom of sinners, or the luckless adventures of wild blades and of maidens all forlorn. A Highlander might well say, with the clown in A Winter’s Tale, “I love a ballad but even too well; if it be doleful matter, merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed, and sung lamentably.”
But where banjo and fiddle enter, the vapors vanish. Up strike The Fox Chase, Shady Grove, Gamblin’ man, Sourwood Mountain, and knees are limbered, and merry voices rise.—
Call up your dog, O call up your dog!
Call up your dog!
Call up your dog!
Let ’s a-go huntin’ to ketch a groundhog.
Rang tang a-whaddle linky day!
Wherever the church has not put its ban on “twistifications” the country dance is the chief amusement of young and old. I have never succeeded in memorizing the queer “calls” at these dances, in proper order, and so take the liberty of quoting from Mr. Haney’s Mountain People of Kentucky.—
“Eight hands up and go to the left; half and back; corners turn; partners sash-i-ate. First four, forwards and back; forward again and cross over; forward and back and home you go. Gents stand and ladies swing in the center; own partners and half sash-i-ate.
“Eight hands and gone again; half and back; partners by the right and opposite by the left—sash-i-ate. Right hands across and howdy do? Left and back and how are you? Opposite partners, half sash-i-ate and go to the next (and so on for each couple).
“All hands up and go to the left. Hit the floor. Corners turn and sash-i-ate. First couple cage the bird with three arms around. Bird hop out and hoot-owl in; three arms around and hootin’ agin. Swing and circle four, ladies change and gents the same; right and left; the shoo-fly swing (and so on for each couple).”
In homes where dancing is not permitted, and often in others, “play-parties” are held, at which social games are practiced with childlike abandon: Roll the Platter, Weavilly Wheat, Needle’s Eye, We Fish Who Bite, Grin an’ Go ’Foot, Swing the Cymblin, Skip t’ m’ Lou (pronounced “Skip-tum a-loo”) and many others of a rollicking, half-dancing nature.
Round the house; skip t’ m’ Lou, my darlin’.
Steal my partner and I’ll steal again; skip (etc.).
Take her and go with her—I don’t care; skip (etc.).
I can get another as pretty as you; skip (etc.).
Pretty as a red-bird, and prettier too; skip (etc.).