ow as stale as that of the Capone mob. Their feud, which ...
threatened to provoke a civil war between two states, gave rise to the
general belief in the lasting endurance of the hill dwellers. A race
must be hardy as the ragweed when it could not be exterminated even by
its own patient effort. The tenantry of the flatlands might be excused
for believing that a special Providence intended it to survive, despite
poverty, malnutrition, bad housing and wasting disease forever and ever.

"'And so it might have survived, for the hill people had "the habit of
standing." They had set a precedent of fertility and hardihood and the
will to live for a matter of centuries.... But there had come influences
over which not even the carefully nurtured stubbornness of 300 years
could prevail.... The railroad and the concrete highway and the
automobile and the black tunnels of the coal mine.

"'... The day of isolated communities and isolated culture in the United
States is already past.... The hill folk have been known to the flatland
people chiefly for feuds and moonshine. Perhaps tempers are no less
quick, but it's less trouble to get to court and have grievances
adjudicated according to law. And the music is going--and the
traditional dances. It is one of the defects of all educational systems
that they make it easier for a person to forget by removing the
necessity for his remembering.'"

Sid Hatfield again voiced his own observations. "Time was when old folks
could recall every word of hundreds of ballads." He turned once more to
read from the newspaper in his hand. "'... and every note of a music
whose disregard for melodic rule made it exceedingly difficult to
remember. Now, when such things can be written down, no "grandsir" will
bother to repeat them to the youngins and the youngins will get their
music from the radio. By that time there will be no doubt that Queen
Elizabeth is dead.'"

Devil Anse's kinsman surveyed his listeners. "My friends, we've got
a-bound, me and you and you," he singled out a lad here a man, a woman
there, "to put our shoulders to the wheel and save our old ways and our
old music."

Then he told about the American Folkways Association and its purpose.
"We aim to unify efforts to conserve and cultivate the traditions and
customs of the Blue Ridge Country where conditions are ideal for a
renewed emphasis on living a simple and natural life ... to preserve the
past and present expressions of isolated