Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/137

Rh point of the ridge and hear this fox-chase. They will fetch him out on the other side. Whoopee! Go it, Lead! Come on, old dog! Whoopee!

Just listen at those dogs run that fox! Listen, boys! I believe they have run him down in the gulf; we can just hear them down in there. Whoopee! Go it, Lead!

Just listen at 'em, boys! They have started him out of the creek. Whoopee! Come on, old dogs!

Come, boys, let's go round on the point of the ridge and hear that race. Whoopee! Just listen at Old Sounder!

Boys, they are bringing him out on the ridge. Just hear old Lead—Bow! Bow! Wow! Wow!

Come on, boys; you will miss the best part of the race. Whoopee! Hold 'em down, Rocks!

Boys, I can't stay here any longer—I've got to go to those dogs. I believe I hear old Lead at that old tree—bow, wow, wow! Let's go to them—they are treed on Round Knob. Whoopee! Coming to you, old dogs!

As I write these songs, old memories come drifting on their melody—memories of drowsy noons and the tankle-tump-a-tankle of the banjo on the porch, and the thump-chug, thump-chug of the batten as the mother's shuttle went patiently to and fro; of yodels ringing: down the gulch; of spinning-wheel songs, old Scotch ballads blurred together with the crescendo and diminuendo of the whirling spokes; of the crooning "By-ee By-ee" that lulls little children to sleep; of the laugh and leap of dancers bounding through "Cripple Creek" at the bidding of a man told off to call the figures; of red firelight flickering over an impromptu play party—neighbor lads and girls singing and romping through all the evolutions of those intricate games of courtship, in which the couples are never finally mated, saluting and pirouetting and following and flouting; of wilder nights at "protracted meeting," when, an awed and fascinated child, I clung to the wall or clambered on the benches to be out of harm's way; of the ripple of water and the drone of bees

Had I but words to say how these tunes are bound with the life of the singer, knit with his earliest impressions, and therefore dearer than any other music could ever be,—impossible to forget as the sound of his mother's voice!

Crude with a tang of the Indian wilderness, strong with the strength of the mountains, yet, in a way, mellowed by the English of Chaucer's time—surely this is folk-song of a high order. May it not one day give birth to a music that shall take a high place among the world's great schools of expression?