Blue Ridge Country   By: Jean Thomas (1881-)

EDITED BY ERSKINE CALDWELL

BLUE RIDGE COUNTRY

by

JEAN THOMAS

DUELL, SLOAN & PEARCE · NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1942, BY JEAN THOMAS

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To My Brother

DOCTOR GEORGE G. BELL

A once itinerant "Tooth Dentist" who became the first Republican county judge in more than a quarter of a century at the mouth of Big Sandy and whose unique sentences have become legendary throughout the Blue Ridge

APPALACHIAN RITUAL

Emerald nobility Reaching to the sky, Makes the eye a ruler Fit to measure by.

In the spring an ecstasy Lies upon the hills Purpling with new red buds, Ruffling colored frills.

Make an early ritual For the mountain side; Pine and beech are spectators, White dogwood a bride.

Give a pair of ivory birch For a wedding gift, All the mountain side a church Where wild flowers sift

Velvet carpet petals down To the edge of hill and town, Showing wild grape fringes through Opal cloud thrones dropped from blue.

Now the summer like a queen Does her mountain home in green; With a season for a bier Some old majesty lies here.

Autumn gold is swift and fleet With a wing upon the feet, Rushing toward a winter breath Pausing for immaculate death.

In such economic bliss And a swift parenthesis In immortal mountain trails, There are resurrection tales.

All the while the mountains know Sudden death is never so.

Rachel Mack Wilson

CONTENTS