cere collectors are not content with this alone--they complete the
record by tracing the songs to their origins. Such is a most gracious
work and one which lovers of beauty, whether music or in legend or in
local history, throughout the South, would do well to imitate."

Far removed from the metropolitan area where great singers interpret the
simple songs of our forbears and urge the necessity of their
preservation, an untrained mountain minstrel is lending his every effort
to aid not only in conserving but in correlating as well the folk lore
of the Blue Ridge Country. He is a kinsman of Devil Anse Hatfield and
lives just around the mountain from where the old warrior lies buried.
"Sid Hatfield never was mixed up in the troubles in no shape nor
fashion," anyone can tell you. "He'd not foir a gun if you laid one in
his hand. But just give him a fiddle! Why, Sid Hatfield is the
music-makinest fellow that ever laid bow to strings. What's more he puts
a harp in his mouth and plays it at the same time he's sawin' the bow.
I've seen him and hear-ed him, many's the time."

And so have thousands of others. For Sid Hatfield spends his spare time,
when he's not working for the Appalachian Power Company in Logan County,
West Virginia, making music first at one gathering, then another. Sid's
repertoire is almost limitless. He plays any fiddle tune from Big Sandy
to Bonaparte's Retreat. And when it comes to the mouth harp, Sid just
naturally can't be beat. "I love the old tunes," he says, "and they must
not die. You and I can help them to live. Let old rancors die, but not
our native song."

To that end he has become a prime mover in a folksong and folklore
conservation movement called American Folkways Association. "There are a
lot of McCoys," he says, "who can pick a banjo and sing as fine a ditty
as you ever heard. There's Bud McCoy over on Levisa Fork. Never saw his
betters when it comes to picking the banjo. We've played together a
whole day at a stretch and never played the same tune twice. We just
stop long enough to eat dinner and then we go at it again. Bud's
teaching his grandson, Little Bud, and he's not yet five year old.
Little Bud can step a hornpipe too. Peert as a cricket!" A slow breaking
smile lights Sid's open countenance. "Reckon you've heard of our
Association," and, not giving anyone time to answer, Sid is off on the
subject nearest and dearest to his heart. "We've got the finest
Association in the country.