on
the Mayo Trail the second Sunday in June, 1938."

There was a moment's breathless silence over the great gathering there
in Snead's Grove. The look of fear and apprehension gave way to that of
eagerness and hope as Devil Anse Hatfield's kinsman read with quiet
dignity:

"'One breathes a sigh for the Hatfields and McCoys who maintain the
Democratic majority in cemeteries along the West Virginia line. One
voices a word of commendation for the Hatfields and the McCoys who drive
taxi-cabs in Ashland or run quiet, respectable and legal beer parlors in
Huntington. And looking from one group to the other, one realizes that
something has happened to the hill country.

"'A person of imagination standing on the tree-shaded porch of the
Traipsin' Woman cabin up in Lonesome Hollow probably still can hear
echoes of "the singing gathering" which only a few hours ago
demonstrated the essential durability of the hill folks.... Where a day
or two ago there was only a neutral interest in such proceedings, now
people are talking of Elizabethan culture preserved completely for a
matter of centuries by people who lived on the wrong side of the tracks,
just a few rods from the fence of the rolling mills.

"'There is a tendency in some quarters to look upon the sing-festival as
a permanent and predictable community asset. But that is because the
sophisticated and urban population is ignoring the present status of the
McCoys and the Hatfields, as for many years it has ignored the
crack-voiced "ballet" singers and the left-handed virtuosi in its own
backyard.'"

Sid Hatfield paused in his reading to say a few words on his own. "There
is one, not calling any names, who discovered a forgotten England in the
Kentucky uplands." He turned again to read from the paper. "'One who set
down the words of the amazing ballads and studied music in order to
capture the changeless arrangements for psaltery, dulcimer and sakbut,
who has no such illusions. The music of the hills today is a thin echo
of tunes that were sung on the village greens in Shakespeare's time.
Tomorrow it will be gone!'" Sid Hatfield's voice lifted in warning.
"'And with it will vanish the early English idiom of the hill
folks--their costumes, their customs, their dances, the singing ritual
of their weddings. Pretty soon there aren't going to be any more hill
folk--if indeed, there are any now.

"'"The Hatfields and McCoys, they were reckless mountain boys," whose
history is n