No one ever asked why or
when they were first begun; it was never the way of the Kentuckians to
ask any questions about anything that they had always been used to. And
indeed, had they tried ever so hard, they could hardly have found in
their own history the origin of these ancient customs. Those must have
been sought much farther back than the coming of those first settlers
into the wilderness,--as far back, perhaps, as the oldest traditions of
the purest stock of the old English yeomanry from which these people
were sprung. For in their veins throbbed the same warm red blood,
which, having little to do with the tilling of the soil or the building
trade, had everything to do with the fighting of battles and the making
of homes. For in their strong simple hearts was the same love of country
that bore England's flag to victory, and the same love of the fireside
that made peace as welcome as conquest.
And as these old English fighters had danced with their sweethearts on
the greensward in the intervals between wars, so these fighters of the
wilderness now went on with the dance in the forest just as if there had
been no fierce conflict at hand.
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