Bridgeton pioneer., 1916-03-09
FlDDLERS LICHTEN
HEART OF GEORGIA
Old Echoes Heard When Noun
taineer Musicians Meet.
MANY ARE MOONSHINERS.

All of Fifty Men Assembled Are Deer
Dyed Americans and Are Able to
Trace Their Ancestors Back Many
Years-look With Scorn Upon Mod
ern Popular Music.
Atlanta.-The Old Fiddlers of Geor-
gia, first assembled as a clan a year
ago, have recently closed their second
engagement in this city. The pride of
GeOrgia's heart is in her annual grand
opera. and thousands of people con-
gregate in the Auditorium every April
to listen to strange music in a strange
tongue. and many of them enjoy it "al-
most as much as they think they do"
But the "old fiddlers" really touch the
heart.
As class these musicians represent
the mountaineer type, long and timber
Of body, silent, slow Of speech, refined
Of feature, with quiet gray eyes, hair
parted in the back. Their ancestors
took the mountains, and the sons have
never left the neighborhood. One fam
lily live in the same house built by
their sire more than 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
melodion-that is, if the family be rich
enough to invest in melodeon. The
fiddle is often homemade.
When the mountaineer visits or re-
cetves 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 in 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 in the
forties. Some Of the fiddles-there are
nv 'ioiiliS III tiC COilN OlucT
than the tunes they play, having been
In the family generations, and in one
instance the instrument has been 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
use for his cOrn-almoSt the only
crop he can depend upon-and turns
his cabin into 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 word of kindly counsel
and light sentence
The fifty men assembled are not all
moonshiners, however, a small per-
centage coming from wire grass re-
g1ons, 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. If any enthusiasm on the sub
ject could be raised-which is not prob
able-the fiddlers could trace their Or
igin straight back hundreds of years ts
their mother country