-------- Timothy Jaques wrote: | I understand that the Hatfields and the McCoys started their quarrel over 50 | cents that was owed by someone for the final payment for a fiddle. Another | account I read said that it started over a pig. There are several other competing theories. One I like is that it started, in part, with a disagreement at a dance over who was the best clogger. There also seems to have been some dispute over which clan had the best fiddlers, though the evidence is that (as usual) those fiddlers were busy playing together and learning tunes from each other, and even from the banjo players. There were a lot of little pretexts, none of them sufficient to justify shooting. The local historians generally seem to agree that the real cause was a lot of guys who came home from the War and found that they were now just poor, unemployed hillbillies who had never learned a trade. But they had brought home a lot of weapons, and a lot of general grudges against the "system" that had used them as cannon fodder and tossed them aside. It's easy to focus on those guys who fought on the other side, and miss the fact that you were all really just pawns in a remote game that was none of yours. A number of books have been published on the subject, mostly by the grandchildren of the participants. I don't think any was ever on any best seller list, and you may not be able to find them outside the area. In Matewan there's a small but interesting historical museum that is worth visiting if you're in the area. Its main emphasis is the coal-mine labor troubles in the 20's and 30's. A lot more people died from this than from the Hatfield-McCoy feud. It's a shameful part of the country's history. | I recently read that they had a joint reunion. It wasn't stated if the 50 | cents was formally paid over, or if the fiddle/pig was returned. Yeah; my wife was disappointed that we couldn't go. I think that about all that was done about the origins of it all was to do a lot of talking (over much food and beer). But then, those hill folks do like to talk. There does seem to be general agreement that it was the "crazies" in both clans that were the problem, and that we're all better off without them. Meanwhile, it does seem that a lot of the folks thereabouts have been reconnecting to their Scottish (and Irish) roots, now that transportation is so much cheaper than in previous centuries. We ran into several of the Kentucky McCoys a couple years ago at Grandfather Mountain. One family was running a clan booth with lots of history of the Scots in North America. Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
