The Madison daily leader. [volume] (Madison, S.D.) 1890-current, 1916-03-14
FIDDLERS TIGHTEN
HEART OF GEORGIA
Old Echoes Heard When Noun
taine0r Musicians Meet.
MANY ARE MOONSHINERS.

All of Fifty Men Assembled Are Deep
Dyed Americans and Are Able TO
Trace Their Ancestors Back Many
Years-Look With Soorn Upon Mod
ern Popular Music.
Atlanta.-Thc Old Fiddlers of Geor-
gin. first assembled as n clan a year
ago, have recently closed their second
engagement In this city. The pride OF
G%eorgia's heart is I'm her annual grand
opera. and thousands of people con
gregate In the Auditorium every April
to listen to strange music I'm Il strange
tongue. and many of them enjoy IL al
most as much as they think they do"
But the "old fddlers' really touch the
heart.
As n class these musicians represent
the mountaincer type. long and timber
OF body. silent. slow of speech, refined
of feature, with quiet gray eyes. hair
parted I'm the back. Their ancestors
took the mountains, and the sons have
never left the neighborhood. One fam
Ae ~ All tHt III ithNG bhAil n4
their sire more than n century ago. A
great majority of the men are poor
Their fare is simple. their life is bare
and hard. and almost the only diver
sion Is from the music OF the fiddle or
m~elodion-that IS. IL the family be rich
enough to invest In IA melodeon. The
fiddle is often homemade.
NNhap tbn p.n,trtn4n,a ,sms4. -
ceiyes visits the fiddle Is used as the
entertainer. and when the men journey
to the county courthouse the instru-
ment is carried along to make music
and join in with other fiddlers congre-
gated there, and I'm the hands of these
men. who know no such thing as note
or tempo, the fiddle is made to sing for
all she's worth.
Inactivity and isolation have not
made ambitious men Of the mountain
GERS. and on long sunny days when it's
too hot to work in the fields the fiddle
Is picked up by ''pa," for the average
mountaineer does not seem TO take TO
master the instrument till he's I'm the
forties. Some OF the lddles-there are
no violins In the con~ventlon-are older
than the tunes they play, having Deer
In the family generations. and in one
instance the instrument has heen hand
ed down TO seven sires. The men look
with scorn upon modern popular music,
ragtime and opera, and nothing inter
ests them except tunes that have been
sung or played among them time out of
memory.
When the winter is a particularly
hard one and everything goes wrong
on the little strip of land to make both
ends meet, the head of the family finds
a use for his corn-almost the only
crop he can depend upon-and turns
his cabin into a distillery. sometimes
running the pipe into the kitchen chin
ney TO put the revenue officers Off the
track of smoke. The distiller and law
breaker Is found sooner or later, and.
with others. plodding slow and weary.
he Is brought before the federal Judge.
who gives a word of kindly counsel
and a light sentence.
The fifty men assembled are not all
moonshiners, however. a small per-
centage coming from wire grass re-
gions, but all are from the heart of the
woods on peak or in dale. far from the
roll Of locomotive or honk of automo-
bile. All the musicians are Americans.
They do not represent the Georgia
Cracker from the fact that for centu-
ries they have not mingled in the low
lands. II any enthusiasm on the sub
Ject could be raised-which is not prob
able-the fddlers could trace their or
igin straight back hundreds Of years to
their mother country.