, that being a
"furrin word" which they take as a term of reproach. They call
themselves mountain people, or citizens; sometimes humorously "mountain
boomers," the word boomer being their name for the common red squirrel
which is found here only in the upper zones of the mountains.
Backwoodsman is another term that they deem opprobrious. Among
themselves the backwoods are called "the sticks." Hillsman and
highlander are strange words to them--and anything that is strange is
suspicious. Hence it is next to impossible for anyone to write much
about these people without offending them or else falling into singsong
repetition of the same old terms.

I have found it beyond me to convince anyone here that my studies of the
mountain dialect are made from any better motive than vulgar curiosity.
It has been my habit to jot down, on the spot, every dialectical word or
variant or idiom that I hear, along with the phrase or sentence in which
it occurred; for I never trust memory in such matters. And although I
tell frankly what I am about, and why, yet all that the folks can or
will see is that--

A chiel 's amang ye, takin' notes,
And, faith, he'll prent 'em.

Nothing worse than dour looks has yet befallen me, but other scribes
have not got off so easy. On more than one occasion newspaper men who
went into eastern Kentucky to report feuds were escorted forcibly to the
railroad and warned never to return. The feudists are scarce to blame,
for the average news story of their wars is neither sacred nor profane
history. It is bad enough to be shown up as an assassin; but when one is
posed as "cocking the _trigger_" of a gun, or shooting a "forty-four"
bullet from a thirty-caliber "automatic _revolver_," who in Kentucky
could be expected to stand it?

The novelists have their troubles, too. President Frost relates that
when John Fox gave a reading from his Cumberland tales at Berea College
"the mountain boys were ready to mob him. They had no comprehension of
the nature of fiction. Mr. Fox's stories were either true or false. If
they were true, then he was 'no gentleman' for telling all the family
affairs of people who had entertained him with their best. If they were
not true, then, of course, they were libellous upon the mountain people.
Such an attitude may remind us of the general condemnation of fiction by
the 'unco gude' a generation ago."

[Illustration: The Schoolhouse]

As for settlement workers, let them te