Appalachian Devo

The modern Ulstermen, however, are not the only surviving overseas representattives of this stock; for the Scottish pioneers who migrated to Ulster begot 'Scotch-Irish' descendants who re-emigrated in the eighteenth century from Ulster to North America, and these survive to-day in the fastness of the Appalachian Mountains, a highland zone which runs through half a dozen states of the American union from Pennsylvania to Georgia. What has been the effect of this second transplantation? In the seventeenth century the subjects of King James crossed St. George's Channel and took to fighting the Wild Irish instead of the Wild Highlanders. In the eighteenth century their great-grandchildren crossed the Atlantic to become 'Indian fighters' in the American backwoods. Obviously this American challenge has been more formidable than the Irish challenge in both its aspects, physical and human. Has the increased challenge evoked an increased response? If we compare the Ulsterman and the Appalachian of to-day, two centuries after they parted company, we shall find that the answer is once again in the negative. The modern Appalachian has not only not improved on the Ulsterman; he has failed to hold his ground and has gone downhill in a most disconcerting fashion. In fact, the Appalachian 'mountain people' to-day are no better than barbarians. They have relapsed into illiteracy and witchcraft. They suffer from poverty, squalor and ill-health. They are the American counterparts of the latter-day White barbarians of the Old World--Rifis, Albanians, Kurds, Pathans and Hairy Ainus; but, whereas these latter are belated survivals of an ancient barbarism, the Appalachians present the melancholy spectacle of a people who have acquired civilization and then lost it.   (pp. 179-180) 

as cited in Arnold Toynbee's "A Study of History: Volume One"