Sergeant York And His People

by Sam K. Cowan

The language of the people of the Great Smokies and the Blue Ridge mountains is filled with a quaintness of expression. Many of their words and phrases that attract through their oddity were at one time in popular use and grammatically correct. These people are clinging to the dialect of their fathers who were Anglo-Saxons. The use of "hit" for "it" is not confined to the mountains, but the Old English grammars give "hit" as the neuter of the pronoun "he."

"Uns," too, had once a grammatical sanction, for "uon" or "un" was the Early English for "one," and "uns" was more than the one. In many parts of the South are found the expressions, "you-uns" and "we-uns." The mountaineer says "you-uns" when he is addressing more than one person. It is one of his plural forms for "you," and he is adopting an Early English ending. But the true mountaineer does not employ "we-uns" The "we" to him is plural, the suffix is superfluous. In the same way he says "ye" when speaking to more than one, but he uses "you" when addressing an individual. He seems, too, to make a distinction between "you-uns" and "ye." The former is usually the nominative and the latter the objective.

When he wishes to convey the idea of past tense, the ending "ed" is popularly employed, but when he may he drops the "e." While he will properly use the present tense of a verb he goes out of his way to add the "(e)d." So he says "know-d," "see-d." But he is not always consistent. He prefers "kilt," the old form, to "killed."

Generations passed in which they had little opportunity to attend school, and there are today a number of the older people of the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" who can not read nor write. Some of the younger generation have been away to college, but, as with Alvin York, most of them grew to manhood with only a month or a month and a half at school during a year, with many years no school in session.

The church is in the center of the valley at the edge of a grove of forest trees. It is a frame structure, built by the Methodists during the past century. The board walls of the interior are unplastered and unpainted, and the pews are movable benches. The pulpit is slightly elevated with a railing in front, ending in two pillars upon which rest the preacher's Bible, song books and lamps. Along the entire front of the pulpit runs the mourners' bench. In the rear of the church a ladder rests against the wall and down toward it swings a rope from the open belfry.

Everyone in the valley attends church and there are but few who do not go to every service without regard to the denomination conducting it. They come on horse- and mule-back, on foot, in wagons in the beds of which are chairs for the entire family. In summer many of the men wear their overalls, and all, excepting the young men acting as escorts, come in their shirt-sleeves. Some of the women are in silks, but more of them are in ginghams, and many sunbonnets are to be seen. At the door of the church the men and women part and they sit in separate pews.

I attended a service at the end of a revival that was being conducted by the Rev. Melvin Herbert Russell, of the Church of Christ in Christian Union, the frail and eager evangelist who three years before had brought Sergeant York to his knees before the altar of that church.

It was an August day and the sun's rays fell into the valley without a single cloud for a screen. The little church was filled with worshipers, while many sat in the shade of the trees that sheltered it, within the sound of the minister's voice. Down through the grove the hitched horses "stomped" and switched, but this was the only evidence of restlessness.

The minister conducted the services in his shirt-sleeves, without collar, and with the sleeves rolled up. There is no organ in the church and he played a guitar as he led the earnest singing.

The mountain evangelist had but few of the pulpit arts of the minister, but he had the soul of a great preacher. His life, to him, was a mission to the unconverted to point out the imminence of death and its meaning. His belief had carried him beyond and above the pleading of the uncertainty of death to arouse fear in the hearts of his congregation. Instead, to him, the great clock of time was actually ticking off an opportunity which the unconverted could not permit to pass. In his earnest pleading his voice would rise from a conversational tone until it rang penetratingly through the hall, and he would emphasize his words with a startling resound from his open palm upon the altar-rail.