From the Mountain From the Valley

Contents

A Man Singing to Himself: An Autobiographical Essay by James Still

The Bright Road

Let This Hill Rest

Swift Were Their Feet

Mountain Fox Hunt

When the Dulcimers Are Gone

Death on the Mountain

Shield of Hills

Child in the Hills

Passenger Pigeons

Fox Hunt on Defeated Creek

On Troublesome Creek

Tracks on Stone

Fiddlers’ Convention on Troublesome Creek

Journey Beyond the Hills

Rain on the Cumberlands

Dance on Pushback

I Was Born Humble

On Redbird Creek

Pattern for Death

Yesteryear’s People

A Hillsman Speaks

Hounds on the Mountain

Horseback in the Rain

With Hands Like Leaves

On Double Creek

Night in the Coal Camps

Epitaph for Uncle Ira Combs, Mountain Preacher

Nixie Middleton

Come Down from the Hills

Eyes in the Grass

On Buckhorn Creek

Year of the Pigeons

Where the Mares Have Fed

A Man Singing to Himself

Now Has Day Come

I Shall Go Singing

Leap, Minnows, Leap

Morning: Dead Mare Branch

A Child’s Wisdom

Banjo Bill Cornett

Mountain Men Are Free

Death in the Hills

Passing of a County Sheriff

The Broken Ibis

Early Whippoorwill

Abandoned House

The Trees in the Road

On Being Drafted into the U.S. Army from My Log Home in March 1942

“Welcome, Somewhat, Despite the Disorder”

Of the Wild Man

Are You Up There, Bad Jack?

The Common Crow

After Some Twenty Years Attempting to Describe a Flowering Branch of Redbud

On the Passing of My Brother Alfred

What Have You Heard Lately?

Unemployed Coal Miner

Apples in the Well

Yesterday in Belize

Of the Faithful

Mine Is a Wide Estate

Mrs. Lloyd, Her Rag Sale

At Year’s End

Those I Want in Heaven with Me Should There Be Such a Place

Index of Titles

Index of First Lines