/pt/ – Petrarchan

“The charm and mystery of bygone days broods over the mountain country - the charm of pioneer hardihood, of primitive peace, of the fatalism of ancient peoples, of the rites and legends of the aborigines. To one who understands these high solitudes it is no marvel that the inhabitants should be mystics, dreamers, given to fancies often absurd, but often wildly sweet. Must this free folk who are in many ways the truest Americans of America be forced under the yoke of caste division, to the degradation of all their finer qualities, merely for lack of the right work to do? Let it be made clear that here is no question of ‘elevating the masses’ in the ordinary sense of the term. That task awaits the world everywhere. In the mountains the need is for development not foreign to our natures, cultivation of talents already in blossom. Let us be given work that will make us better Appalachians, instead of turning us into poor imitation city people. But before such renaissance the mountaineers must awaken to consciousness of themselves as a people. For although throughout the highlands of Kentucky, Tennessee and Carolina our nature is one, our hopes, our loves, our daily life the same, we are yet a people asleep, a race without knowledge of its own existence. This condition is due to the isolation that separates the mountaineer from all the world but his own blood and kin, and to the consequent utter simplicity of social relations. When they shall have established a unity of thought corresponding to their homogeneity of character, then their love of country will assume a practical form, and then, indeed, America, with all her peoples, can boast no stronger sons than these same mountaineers. Looking upon the fresh, sweet young faces of the children of the Log Church school, I often wonder which of them is destined to carry forth the word to his people for a Gathering of the Clans, not to war, but to work - work that shall uplift instead of degrade; work that shall make the influence of the Appalachians into a peculiar and beneficent force in their country and in the world of men.“ - Emma Bell Miles, 1905