Iditarod pioneer., 1915-07-24
COLONISTS' DESCENDANTS
 HOLD TO EARLY TRADITIONS

trlctS of Kentucky, tennessee ana FHSilia
 were described in an address by Miss Ethel
 De Long of the new school at Pine Noun
 tain, Ky., at the annual public meeting oi
 the Southern Industrial Educational Asso-
 citation in Washington. For upward of an
 hour Miss De Long held the interest of 400
 or 500 "fotched- on" folks, or 'furrlners, as
 all outsiders are termed by the mountain
 eers.
 1 Disregarding the stories of illness, lack of 1 sanitation and poverty which might have
 been told of the life in the mountains, Miss
 De Long plunged immediately into de-
 scription of the romance that is to be found
 there.
 She used the quaint language and expres-
 sons of the mountains, words and phrases
 which have been handed down from ances- l tors of Elizabethan days and which have
 been preserved in the cold storage of the
 mountains, shut in from the outer world. | She explained that the mountMneers were
 not to be considered ''poor white trash. | They are the direct descendants of the Eng 1 fish, Scotch and Irish settlers of colonlal
 and revolutionary days, and carry III thelr
 veins some of the best blood in the country.
 Miss De Long told incident after incl
 dent to show the genuine courtesy and klnd- | liness these people accorded to ''furrlners'
 and to each other Take them your cul- ture they have civilization" she said. Point ing to the white linsey -woolsey suit which
 she wore, Miss De Long said that the ma
 terial had been made on a hand loom by one of the mountain women. These women
 raise sheep, shear them and weave all the cloth they use for clothes towels linen, etc, l IL. ,a;l ;,,e+ oe did Uoman of ol0 yearS
 ago. They make their own dyes, in many cases, from bark and leaves and roots. And these dyes they frequently find more
 fast than cheap dyes sent in by the out side world
 l She told how she had found carved on an l old tree the inscription This IS Whar l | first kissed Nance" She declared that she was immediately filled with desire to learn | of this Nance Nance, she found, had never been married, and had died an old maid at the age of 9l. This was not because of a 1 lack of sweethearts or not being talked | to-" as the mountain boys and girls say when they mean "courted." She had been | girl full of spirit and beauty. But she had set her heart on one young mountAneer. 1 He rode away one day to get the marriage | license and, coming home with the license | in his pocket, he fell in with gang of young men and stayed to drink with them It ended in a fight, and they hanged Nance s intended husband to a poplar tree Then they took the body home and gavc Nance the marriage license. She never sad much about the death of her iance, bua she never would listen to any other young rnan when he came to "taIk" to her. She used to carry always with her her purse, and folks thought that she must have money. But when she came to die she made last request that she be buried in her wedding dress, made by her own hands, and kept for more than half century in small pine box.
 They put the little old gown on her be- fore they laid her in the coffin. All they found in the pocketbook was the marriage license and some Confederate money, so they buried the pocketbook with her, too. Miss De Long told another story of a mountaineer who had owned several thou sand acres of land. When the railroad came into that section he sold off the timber on his land, getting S6 for each poplar tree no matter what its size. He was paid, in two checks, sl7, ,444 Having no faith ill banks, he and his sons rode away to the nearest town where a bank was to be found to bring home the cash, and bring 1t home they did, in gold and greenbacks tied up ln salt bags, and for years it was kept about the place. When the old man would go into the woods with his two sons they would take the money with them, because they feared to leave it at home as a temptation to weaker nelghbors.
 Miss De Long told of the old mountaineer, Uncle William" she called him, who had made the new school at Pine Mountain pos sible He had determined that he would bring into the mountains school which would teach not only reading and writing, but also up-to-date methods of farming and housekeeping And for this purpose he had given of his own land some twenty-five acres for the school, and in the deed he placed clause that declared this land should be used for school purposes "as long as the constitution of the United States stands
 Already the school was betting under way she said, and they had employed trained nurse and an expert agrlculturlst
 Miss De Long described the songs and dances and games of the mountalneers de- claring that they were those of old England. The language used goes back even to the days of Chaucer, she said Light from your beastes and bring in your plunder," l she said, was the customary hail when at sunset you stopped at mountain home showing how the old English plural IS used 1 She sang several of the mountain songs and picked out tunes on curious noun tain musical instrument, fashioned after the | dulcimer of former centuries. The words of one of the songs, she said, she hardly dared to sing these days for they went something as follows: ''The minds of girls are weak, the minds of boys are strong; what they tell you they always tell you | wrong," the last referring to the girls.
 Miss De Long said that one of the noun 1 tain women who could not read, but who could do all kinds of work that modern women cannot do had said to her: We do powerful lot of thinkin'. l reckon that | is the reason we know so much more than you eddicated people W ashington Core spondence St. Louis Globe Democrat.
 DOUBLE MURDER COMMITTED
 ON HOOTALINQUA RIVER