at the head of Raccoon
Hollow will cut two corn stalks about the length of his small arms and
earnestly proceed to make music by sawing one across the other, singing
happily:

Corn stalk fiddle and shoe-string bow,
Best old fiddle in the country, oh!

not knowing that Haydn, the child, likewise sawed one stick upon another
in imitation of playing the fiddle. And there's Little Babe of Lonesome
Creek who delights in a gourd banjo. His grandsir, finding a straight,
long-necked gourd among those clustered on the vine over kitchen-house
door, fashioned it into a banjo for the least one. Cut it flat on one
side, did the old man, scooped out the seed, then covered the opening
with a bit of brown paper made fast with flour paste, strung it with cat
gut. And there, bless you, as fine a banjo as ever a body would want to
pick.

They are neighborly in the Blue Ridge Country. They ask no favor of any
man. Yet the road is never too rough, the way too far, for one neighbor
to go to the aid of another in time of sickness or death. I knew a
little boy who was dangerously sick with a strange ailment that
primitive home remedies could not heal. Neighbor boys made a slide, a
quilt tied to two strong saplings, and carried their little friend some
ten miles over a rough mountain footpath to the nearest wagon road.
There, placing him in a jolt wagon, the bed of which had been filled
with hay to ease his suffering in jolting over the rough creek-bed road,
they continued the journey on for thirty miles to the wayside railroad
station where the cars bore the afflicted child on to town and the
hospital.

A feud is the name given to their family quarrels by the level-landers.
Mountain people never use the word. They say war or troubles. Their
clannishness was inherited from their Scotch ancestors, and the wild,
rugged mountains lent themselves perfectly to warfare among the clans.
They had lived apart so long, protected from invasion and interference
by their high mountain walls, that they learned to settle their own
differences in their own way. They knew no law but the gun. If John
warned his neighbor Mark that Mark's dog was killing his sheep and the
neighbor did nothing about it, John settled the matter forthwith by
shooting the dog. Families took sides. The flame was fanned. The feud
grew.

However, in time of disaster, with grim faces and willing hands, they
come to the aid of an unfortunate neighbor.