he
Eastern Band of Cherokees still holds its ancient capital on the Okona
Lufty River, and the whites mingle freely with these redskins, bearing
them no such despite as they do negroes, but eating at the same table
and admitting Indians to the white compartment of a Jim Crow car. Yet
the mountain dialect contains not one word of Cherokee origin, albeit
many of the whites can speak a little Cherokee.

In our county some Indians always appear at each term of court, and an
interpreter must be engaged. He never goes by that name, but by the
obsolete title linkister or link'ster, by some lin-gis-ter.

Many other old-fashioned terms are preserved in Appalachia that sound
delightfully quaint to strangers who never met them outside of books. A
married woman is not addressed as Missis by the mountaineers, but as
Mistress when they speak formally, and as Mis' or Miz' for a
contraction. We will hear an aged man referred to as "old Grandsir'"
So-and-So. "Back this letter for me" is a phrase unchanged from the days
before envelopes, when an address had to be written on the back of the
letter itself. "Can I borry a race of ginger?" means the unground
root--you will find the word in _A Winter's Tale_. "Them sorry fellers"
denotes scabby knaves, good-for-nothings. Sorry has no etymological
connection with sorrow, but literally means sore-y, covered with sores,
and the highlander sticks to its original import.

We have in the mountains many home-born words to fit the circumstances
of backwoods life. When maize has passed from the soft and milky stage
of roasting-ears, but is not yet hard enough for grinding, the ears are
grated into a soft meal and baked into delectable pones called
gritted-bread.

In some places to-day we still find the ancient quern or hand-mill,
jocularly called an armstrong-machine. Someone who irked from turning it
invented the extraordinary improvement that goes by the name of
pounding-mill. This consists of a pole pivoted horizontally on top of a
post and free to move up and down like the walking-beam of an
old-fashioned engine. To one end of this pole is attached a heavy
pestle that works in a mortar underneath. At the other end is a box
from which water flows from an elevated spout. When the box fills it
will go down, lifting the pestle; then the water spills out and the
pestle's weight lifts the box back again.

Who knows what a toddick or taddle is? I did not until my friend Dargan
reported it from the