MOUNTAIN TALK (full documentary, official video)

the the way they pronounce their words and bangs you'll be a good people that's if I remember sitting on for some time Hillbillies up here and he is sitting around talking it's just it was just so nice [Music] you invite well I'm located about a hundred miles west of ice ville and about a hundred mile south of Knoxville Tennessee right you're in the corner of North Carolina join in Tennessee and Georgia and the name is Jim Juliet India Mike and I'm located in Robbinsville North Carolina Roger to outsiders the accents and pronunciations and mountain speech

may sound quaint uneducated or worse but they often resembled the English dialect spoken in Scotland and Ireland I've heard a lot of older women to say wrap something up they say Roffe it up yeah and the state is like Steve's your ear it's year you like instead of scowling a tire on a car or a tire you call it at are you called tires I'll call them tars they used to call them casings years ago everybody said hook them casings on that vehicle cases then I call them tires you know how much one Centaurs looking

tires and they call them tires government like that like we had some wood out in the yard instead of saying carry it and how she'd say towed it in the house and like she had something that she wanted to put in a paper bag you put in the paper poke you know instead of a paper bag well the way people talk around here I guess it'd be what more like you called hillbilly style or something like that I don't know there's a mountain toque most your local people have your mountaintop that's why you can tell

the mountain people from your outsiders by their language they use say I'll see you over yonder it means I'll see like in wineville it's a mountaintop Talent never nothing stops it's like a singing you know we're kind of like we're signing leader said we're saying you not oh yeah [Music] everybody here at about Greyhound County dumpty how good the people is how they'll hippies I run into people I don't know never seen them in my life and I help them any way I can somebody to Monday think you'll get luck now and I said well

today like this mark just good hearty everybody you meet just nineteen I'm Senate if I didn't know if you're a move when you where you want to go on vacation I've gotta go on the vacation not this stare out on you we are 20 years behind the whole country then I would swap places with nobody I feel much more comfortable here being twenty years behind everybody then I would be a setting in a lot of places and being so unkind Mirabal you don't like your neighbor you don't speak to your neighbor you're you're bitter over

the world and Latin is a good example Rowley you drive down the street and everybody's wide open the horns and no no nobody and don't want to know nobody and don't care about nobody it's quite a bit different up there I'll even wash them they say about four and a half year something I just see them being hell with my back broke his liver people are so good to each other here many of the words and expressions in Mountain speech are unfamiliar to outsiders scots-irish settlers brought much of the vocabulary from Europe but many new

words and expressions were invented here by their descendants just somebody coming up with a strange word is what it means I mean let's say you're trying to get something done you're building something and you'll take a look at it like the words I gargling you're looking at and it's all out of line and you just might come up with the words I si gargling I do that myself can't think of anything right off but I come up with a lot of new words myself and so you get somebody standing around to hear that okay it's

sy goggling say a carpenter has done a real poor job and then you think that's all sigh gargling you know it didn't have his wall straight or something like I think sign boggling they say I want you to look say what idiot if you're building some kind of a shed that's sighs I'll clean like younger and said that a road going up the under set up thanks a godly my grandmother she's always talking about people being styled or gained she used words like peckerwood if somebody she didn't like she'd call him a peckerwood if there's

somebody she didn't she didn't know but he's probably all right she didn't have many animosity for him she'd say he is a Jasper there's this Jasper come by here this morning I knocked on the door you know but if it's a Salesman as this peckerwood out there on the porch it's not people used to know like you go in the stores they put it in the bank old people says you put it in a poke that's a bag I used to go to the store walk two miles the store and when I was a kid

and carry a 25 pound polka flower home that's fly by the way not flour and me and my two sisters and one brother we'd be awaiting on him at the house to get our candy saw like the older man I was talking about had a little poker candy he said well I forgot to get anything well we'd scream oh here it is plum was a common word when I was growing plum this and plum that Union plum over there well he was just plumb wore out that copper mine that vine they tunneled under the ground

from out though here to Snowbird like the wind was employed you know a lot of iron they would say it's very Irish that's all right means it's a little bit chilly outside it means it's all right that means it's chilly today it's all rice today right now as we speak there he's blowing and breezy they go you don't go with no storm buy a coke I call them dopes back in I don't know if you ever heard anybody say that or not that's what we drink when I was a kid and it was called they

had me hide it at Pepsi Cola royal crown Cola a lot of Matt was dope Oh a dope you're talking about like a soda pop soda water yeah yes so do you water yeah no that's all they ever call them around here as a kid I mean this now if you go up toward ernestine place up fire stop along there about or you turn up to Tony's urn Empire Petra and along with that log house you probably see a Boomer right there the lady come through she said oh I said that's a pretty boomer she

said a boomer what's the boomer you know what a boomer is don't you ever see boomer they make a lot of chatting noises they're about the size of a warframe hair warp riot big already a Boomer is like a little squirrel it's not a squirrel it's just a mix between a grey squirrel and a chipmunk each if it's red can you eat them yeah she said that's a red squirrel I said well to me it's a bummer we're always told it boomers there's no skull I mean that's old dad land won't grow nothing yellow colored

skull one little few here daddy I know you have colors go Orland that's like a carburetor in my van all gone it with a little dirty stuff gone mean like now cluttered up gone up yeah that mean it's in a mess that's well that's what I would they didn't know their town such educated folks did [Music] instead of saying yonder you know over yonder eeeh that's Joey and you hear that word again yeah I said way over yonder yeah their mama used to come up to us and we live on she say goose egg and

urge people each year we say go she's a poet you glue and say yonder she said put it way over here and equipment they say yonder comes him a ride near Harland Davis a thank you to hurry [Music] every region of Appalachia there's usually if you come there even from another County you don't have to come there from another state you can just move from the adjoining County people use expressions you don't understand it's something that means something only to them and that's one of the delights of mountain culture [Music] it may change from one

community to the next you'll have different idiomatic expressions and different combinations of terms and inflections that will change just literally from one Cove to the next as you move up through the mountains here you know from Graham County up into Madison County then all up into Watauga and Boone if you were to speak with native speakers you you would see how the the idioms would change and how the inflections and and things would would shift right now on the our tree he was so strange because the people and Laurie into the Creek which is the

whole Creek if you went from one end to the other ring to Mars I mean it's not - well it's not a long distance but people on lure into the creek they talked twice or three times as fast as the people on the other crew the people on other creeks if they told you a story you were subordinate Arden wore out the time they ever got through telling you you forgot what they had to tell you anyway I guess it been a year since he'd named it but anyway named it again he is going to

get me a little red wagon and one day he went to the store and he come back and and I sing him coming with that red wagon on the shoulder poles was carrying it and I run out there and run to meet him I just I thought it was mine my daddy said honey that belongs to pose says they got that for his little girl boy I just felt like I was going down I started to go back to the house and they said no honey chores come back and get please didn't one manners of

death they had this wonderful expression of a lord which I guess is kind of like thou but they Lord Jonathan I'm just about tickled to death and you remember things that are said that well if you have talked to one of one of your neighbors on your front porch and he's about to leave and go back to his house he may say something like Yin's come go with us which has always struck me as strange but seems rather genteel thing to say and it also displays that other wonderful token of Western Carolina's speech or Appalachian

speech the Yun's my dad gets it at the Farmers Market in Nashville where he ends was that ya Yin's not even seen him yesterday and he is liar well when I was a kid growing up in Mississippi you all was frowned upon to the teachers told us try to avoid it but it didn't work any more than telling people not to say us here really really carries much weight I think there are quite a few that are very proud to cling to to those signs of earlier times airs on the olan that's easy picked up

ACCA's know that creek that's one of the olden yeah Roy Clark they can hit I kind of slow down a second to face there [Music] I know English pretty good that's about it I know some part of its real Old English we moved to Maggie Valley and lived up here on Campbell Creek I carried my lunch to school in a poke and they laughed at me but a poke was proper in England hundred years before and it was that was John parish has written a number of books and he said brother if you don't believe

that's correct you look up Chaucer and Shakespeare and some of the things that was proper in those days Appalachia Tracy's much of its ancestry to Scotland and Ireland although many cultures contributed to mountain culture and mountain talk the scots-irish brought an early form of English and many older words and expressions remained in mountain speech long after they dropped out of mainstream English most of the things that Chaucer used we still use it's just those little fossils that that dropped out between Chaucer's time and ours that still remain here well those are the ones that that

people are drawn to that's the easiest place to go to I mean but it's all cerritos area in English Old English there's a lot of that a lot of the the phrasing and the framework of speech patterns Mountain speech patterns but then like I said it's a very it's a very complex language really it comes from many different places and it's very spontaneous and quirky and so it's not a simple language it's not here's my mind sweet sunny my Santa could love [Music] my ancestors came from 13-mile Creek Ireland and no they didn't come over

on the Mayflower they come over on the cattle boat in the second half of the 1700 large numbers of Scots migrated first to Island then to North America most came in to Philadelphia and moved inland traveling south long Shenandoah Valley into southern Appalachia settlers from England Germany and elsewhere followed the same trails to find a remote piece of land they could call their own where you are from determines who you are and the cornerstone of the foundation of that is really all tied up in language I think that's really it okie-doke a if you can

copy I'll be open the western part of North Carolina a little place called Robbinsville NC and I'm not far from the Cherokee Indian Reservation you might know where that's at and the next little town close to me is Murphy and Bryson City and I Andrews North Carolina Roger well I think we talk a lot like the people that came over from England and Scotland and Ireland and we were so isolated for so many years that's how we can't be that but how she could imagine how a slide that was in these mountains before well you

know in the last century the last couple centuries [Music] well the dialect that I'm familiar with is dude isolation that's it we've been isolated in this region for so long older forms of English form the basis for mountain talk but languages continues to develop even in isolation the seclusion of mountain life marriage Scot Irish talent for improvisation every community quickly developed distinctive dialect features and new words and expression walked into that Wild Bill Jones walking in and talking by matru nervous I'd be part early he says my AG the past 21 [Music] destroyed Saturday any

stumbled and fell to the ground game [Music] saying darling time we ride along [Music] people back then done most of the court in the walking I mean I got along and it's not all the way we never went over a hard leading Lee basically growed up in the holler Dyer all of us kids did and mama she'd done older you know Canyon and work we never did go to store for nothing cuz she can Oh summer long and had the Sailor full of food and we're bestest growed up only is our the biggest part of

Reliance men Veera weird about inside of each other's home here we've known each other all of our lives when we got married my mother seen the first car come down to Ventura here first you never did come down it'd been a lot of changes made since that we live down on the mountain maybe a mile from that road and I could look up fire gets a little boy and see those car just top them go through a fireplace I could see them you know and so when Dad come in from work I can get beg

him you know I say now look getting next about close to Christmas time go up and catch me one of them little tiny little cars come on I tried to get him go catch me one of them I said well I've grown for I never in Robbinsville people had no cars in here back then I remember the first car I have a road day ISIL that was this black a foreign country Chad Nagar Atlanta you didn't go that far [Music] [Music] I lived hard people did back years ago real hard I know when I growed

up my growed up we we growed up hard I mean we didn't well you mean it wasn't it wasn't nobody wanted to come back knees mountains and stay or nothing because they you know you couldn't live [Music] how far back does your family go in this area well most time latches again what was it like growing up around here it was hell breath your one two enough time we worked like news bedtime coming we have to bed yourself as a loud eat breakfast and gone didn't have something say nothing much no one that I knew

around where I lived was was well-off we all worked and grew our own food raised a little tobacco and some of us even made a little moonshine to get by on and we didn't know we was born to the government come along and told us we were well I didn't know it was hard because everybody we had about the same as everybody else you know we didn't know we lived in poverty until we got ground and and Sargent Shriver came in here with a Billy Graham and said we were our poverty stick I've been asked

if when I grew up or when my family grew up if we you know we didn't have nothing to do oh I said you're very badly mistaken I said they was pretty to do well they would but I'd work out this good life I'd like to live that again best life we ever lived back a long time ago such is my granddaddy there was this old man named Manson arms he had a houseful a little young into Nona waked freedom he couldn't get no job he had to get out here and take what corny raised

and and turned it into a jar of liquor you can sell a jar liquor when you can't sell the bushes the taters and that's the way that folks put bread on the table for their kids I put clothes on them said Jim Tom Hedrick master of a nightshirt crown with roots going back to the back to the peat bogs of Ireland is currently a turning out corn whiskey without fear of Hendrix of the law with temporary suspensions that dispensations the 44 year old idea of the Snowbird Mountains set up a cup of moonshine still here

a Saturday are on the grounds were the second annual Great Smoky Mountain hurdies festival opened a five-day run you go over in Georgia go to tusks windy you didn't see who's got whisk you for sale you see who's got the best cause they all bootleg there everyone I'm boots late now we had a lot of a lot of fun with our last net but now you've got everything if you don't like what you got you can go to Hardy's or McDonald's and get you a ticket you know we had to shoot our with a rifle

after new yard and pick him and we need everything on the pig accepted squeal everything then the we don't eat chitlins no ears yeah you like ears fiorina hope you hearts a 15 year old I killed that first deer with a soft mouth 22 rifle no sign Sony 15 year old played hooky from scope more they're going around around and me of trying to get wet and dad I got it I finally got it by the leg and I tried to get a shell in the gun it was taking me everywhere nice I finally got

one in there and pulled out a hammer back and finally got it done early Cheers ah I got him you never had a squirrel you ain't never eat hound hogs unless you'd do that okay what about turtles if you turtle oh I love no turtle but I like turtle but I like squirrel better what about pumpkin blooms pumpkin bloom you reading pump that's what you call branch lettuce that's good stuff you can take and cut it up and put onions in pour hot grease on it that's some fine eating with cornbread I'll set that in

the back out I don't baby waste nothing most time you didn't see nobody for week we're out of time let's tickle to see somebody of Cammie and then that's why the storytelling y'all you know they tell them tales maybe helped you stick around a little longer you could meet somebody on the road and they just start hunting I'm a rock to sat down to talk to you people had time for each other if they meet up with somebody they talk to him maybe 30 minutes or longer now they ain't got time to talk to you

their neighborhood neighbor back in I'll put it you just got you a little v-notch anything wrap your line around earn time at about two three knots mm-hmm and you don't even have to have a sinker most in little holes it's not not that deep and the worm or the worm will pull the hook down how do you you can catch you later [Music] the isolation of mountain communities set the stage for innovations in speech and other expressions of culture such as music dance and storytelling mountain people worked hard and live far apart when they had

a chance to get together it was a social event [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that is mother hey they're gonna sign as farmers they wouldn't well that's what I thought that maybe might get lucky with blaze my love [Music] [Music] the outside world knew little or nothing of the mountain people and judge them to be without culture the negative stereotypes have become well known and widespread to speakers of mainstream English the strange sounding mountain talk confirms these misconceptions when I went off to work okay and and I was out hearing these other people places they was

all the time making fun of the way I talked so I you know of course I tried to you know to change my talking and you know this dad never did these other young people would come back and might try to talk like Yankees and we're down like fennel sighs I had to broke you know that's like trying to be somebody you're not getting above your eyes [Music] the paper in zit-faced way I love begins for my grandparents were Scott Irish I was raised by them here and as a consequence of that I talked the

way they did but when I first went to school the teachers had trouble talking to me I had trouble communicating they told me quite frankly that the way I talked was associated with ignorance and backwardness and a dis college professor I think you from up north I worked ASU he got that man of G from me and he said now I'm gonna tasted some Orville's words you may not understand you know and they kept on what I can suggest to lift them careful we got done telling this man whose wife Alterman he said I understood

you lot better not eat at college professor I got sick [Music] give me a dress of mine we may live in therefore I always know that let you know that language till I went in the Marines you know then I had to change my way of talking the stuff where they can understand me - I say one word o people in all I was talking about now you're getting out and you know around the world now you got to make a whole complete sentence what you're talking about but everywhere I went everybody know they're kind

of old country boy they asked me said now you're from the mountains and as you're when you're like shorter another and I'd say well I don't know it ain't sure nothing because you think you standing on the hill all the time won't let go further nothing you know I never did you know I said well no my life just good as yours are outrun you today my love [Music] we will marry if you give me the key to you this that I can have money at my request then I will my I'm a talking just

plain old oak I'll say go in there and get me a sack of them taters out of the basement and they'll say potatoes potatoes and doesn't the way the river maybe it is there's a bunch of us home operators on talking to the northern people in Pennsylvania and they said we have tried and tried we can't get the swing of each that southern town Tim we can't do it to save our life and we told him we couldn't get that northern top New Jersey they've got their own flat talk and saying things like we said

bog and they call a stocking hat kapparino or you'll say Oh Saudi or no or drank or coke they call it a pop says you want a pop I said no I don't think I need no pop you know you're getting a bar war that's you know better you think y'all are going in a fight they just like to raise your voice and run a mile party people don't eat to you I can understand hey what to say and they make fun of the way we tell the way they told a whole lot different so

understanding them to us is like or to me it's like another language it's like we're speaking foreign or something you know when I hear you know said we're you know somebody talk real fun he was a fine little voice said you ain't from around here are you wait you know I stayed that fight yes I said you see they're in Florida ain't you can tell a vast big difference in people up north I I'd love to just sit and listen to them talk and they're the same way by me oh oh yeah they think you're

something else now they don't what they can't agree they don't I don't know whether to kiss your tie yet [Laughter] [Music] well that's okay the whole stereotype of the hillbilly and all those kind of things is poison the the outside world giving it a wrong impression of mountain culture and mountain speech but it's also affected people inside the culture you know it's we've become very sensitive to all that how we're perceived from the outside and so the the language starts changing sort of from within mountain people are either either depicted as in bread and stupid

variations of the guys and deliverance or there's the other extreme where they're in impossibly noble and remarkable and intelligent and I can't stand either one Jim Wayne Miller told me once he said yeah if I lived in st. Petersburg Florida and the only thing I knowed about the mountains is what I read in Foxfire I think we is all jelly making dulcimer pluckers up here I think it was 1964 when I was 14 years old we got electricity into hockey I remember I was 14 full we got it and I remember the first light the

older OTT was three dollars and dad he didn't know how you won't pay the light bill as you don't call and tell him take the electric back out of the house but young I've Jarrod over stuff paid a lot bill so he wouldn't take him back in it's better than sitting by the old lamps was kind of read a book or do your homework my brother said when he was growing up that if anybody had told him that they did some time I've been a box that woulda you could turned on and it would have

talked through that the TV he said he told him it was large electricity telephones and television have a tremendous impact on the culture of any community they were late to arrive in Appalachia but when they did they quickly eroded the isolation in rich mountain culture was born and our first elevation little rounder a more laid back and watch that I must Andy I'd say I was there late went off a nice happy day like when it came out the TV was on all the time it was a diversion it was a distraction and I think

it had a tremendous impact on mountain culture and I think it affected the language and it probably affected a lot of other things I knew that we were in trouble when I met a mountain girl down in North Georgia who lived up and dial I think it was you couldn't get any more godforsaken and up in dial and cherry log where the roads run out and she had a baby and I inquired about the baby's name and she told me it was Baretta [Laughter] TV has helped a lot on people to get them together because

like you said used to your voice either brought you in or turns y'all and now seems like it was too much TV lot out from the north that you don't pay as much teaching it's used to the coming of television and radio certainly had some effect but probably not nearly so much as the coming of improved roads you don't interact with the radio or the television set you don't often talk back to it but if you can move out of the place where you were isolated to places where people do speak differently those are the

people that you have to interact with and those are the conversations that are ultimately going to alter your your speech patterns my was my Creed now I am married and I'm troubled to my grave lord I wish I was a single girl again lord I wish I was a single girl again when I was single I used to be afraid no one would ever with me in my diary my lord I wish I wish I was a single Berlin [Music] we have probably five or six hundred thousand people that come through Western Okolona each year

and of course the economy as better as far as that goes but we paid the price for it [Music] [Music] and now we've got go town and the stomping ground and fire child and Carolina nights and the Thunder Ridge slang and several attractions now for people to come and see but I remember they didn't have nothing first attraction in the valley I remember an old man's head Sutton he'd get out there on the wooden box he made and pick an old manager and sang and here's one of the first tourist attractions there was around here

Maggie Valley now is just about Miami I mean there's a few people here there's men you're all alike but people who Florida in places like that it's about both this country out when people like that moves into an area it makes it entirely different mmm because they think that it should go the way they say that it is maybe the people that they're living around says no that's not supposed to be well that's the mountain customs are definitely a thing that he's being lost and it's a tragedy as far as as the people that of

the steps were raised in the mountains like myself and and I think it's real important to keep alive when I was you know I used to come to court he always brought me candy and I thought he was us more Lord that we shot was a single girl lord I wish I was a singer now we have a lot of influx people that come here to get away from wherever they was and they they change it too they change it a little bit and sometimes it's for the better and sometimes it's not they come here

because it's perfect and some of them try to change it and stick it here you know what I mean so I like it when I mean we've got some real true friends that just love it here and they're dedicated to the community when people come maybe from up north they go to Florida and they come back we call them high specs and they got their attitudes or different their personalities different and they're raising the different than ours they're different we are and it takes them a while to get used to us or leave because we

don't change a lot [Music] castor milk and the spring to go to a whole kind of children crying after you lord I wish I was a single girl again Lord I wish I was a single girl again why sure feed and hurry off the bed your daddy's coming drunk and you knock you in the head lord I wish I was a single girl again I wish I was saying that picture I'm before my mother made live just like Cindy Cindy looks just like you well I wait you're way up on the corner and the picture

manager told him it always come down and spend the night and then he'd take up them wine cheese and make pictures I'll look I'll let them write mine Caesar didn't call on my record there's nobody other than it was a little bent on the house you don't much all right they're all dad with with the older generation the generation once removed from my generation the dialect and the language will in terms of it being used and spoken on a daily functional basis will be gone but you know like today you know everybody's got television staff

there by nose like the one only more and not us we're losing and hurt each you know my son he don't talk about me is the old-time religion tizzio Luger it's a old time for me right over know Mike's made love everybody makes me love everybody makes me love everybody and it's good that for me is the old-time religion it's the old-time religion to say oh I'm good [Music] it was good for our fathers it was dead for our fathers it was good for up all the planets good enough for me but that's about all

I live in now he's memory scoffs seems like life sort of slowed down for me if you go on to life something will stop you here you'll turn this up man but after a while it just it just quits yeah I got a couple sons real smart feeders I don't know how to turn one on but growing up you know different and we growed up no television no electricity now I'm growing up and we've got a couple televisions in the house and it's just kind of change little bit with life as you go yacht to

the yellow change a little with the time Mountain culture is not passing it's in transition it is becoming something else but it so much of it is still intact it's almost like it went underground and it it shifted and changed in order to survive I think in recent years I plan come to realize how important their heritage is and I know if it's lost its last forever you know if we lose it how do we know how do we know who we are I think it's really important to know who you are and where you

came from you know [Music] and here and the two meter band and bounce your ball ice off of the moon hit up hit the moon and bounce and come back over ten meters on nothing on the HL they call aloud a downlink and then you got your CW your I call it code continuous wave you know and that'll penetrate the earth you can well they ain't no end in the day I didn't just keep it going I'm going out here this morning that little old truck and I wasn't I wasn't watching what I'm doing I

come on higher turning for flip track down the other like the rest of the world Appalachia is adapting to the age of communication old ways are fading from you some new ways emerging mountain the talk is changing too just as all languages and dialects change over time but it is evolving not disappearing [Music] the greatest joys in life go to have something to do with individuality and uniqueness of people and species part of that and I have no desire to look like talk like some norm that everybody finds acceptable I see no advantage in everyone

speaking the same way [Music] we've let you know a little bit about our family but I'll tell you one thing though really to get to know if you'd have to know us a long long time ways back out in the mount and land on the town to curl of wheels a simple old man check out there I like so to be we're the wildflowers grow with the bloom in laurel trees yes and then it will Tuckasegee River flow in wild and free oh so wild and free know the place I'd like there to be home

sweet home in the mouth [Music] songbird sings sweetly from the time of trees the air is fresh as a daisy waving in the summertime dreams sometimes late at night out there when they everything's still you can hear the wild out talking singing high on the air [Music] no other plays wide lock there to me home sweet home in the mountain land the town well that ain't a drop in the bucket but I can tell you that ain't a drop in the bucket