Eloise Buckner Ebbs 

"Scene along the French Broad," Harper's New Monthly Magazine

WESTERN CAROLINA 

Oh Western Carolina, “Fair Land of the Sky.”
Where verdant hued mountains rear lofty heads high,
And the birds and the bees ever sing their glad song,
To cheer and encourage the whole summer long.  

Where the sweet cooling breezes from mountains and streams
Softly blow day and night, and make pleasant our dreams,
And the beautiful flowers and the gay butterfly,
Brightly paint every vista that greets the tired eye.  

Where health-giving springs from green mountain-sides pour
In melodious welcome as though to implore
Those wearly and ill with flushed lips parched and dry
To come and drink health in “The Land of the Sky.”  

Where in autumn the fruits shower down on the ground,
And the corn and the pumpkins, and wheatfields abound,
And old mother earth unlocks storehouses rare,
And spreads here a feast with which none can compare.  

Our mountains supply all man’s needs: rain or shine,
 From milk for the babe, to his last bed of pine,
Then here would we live, and oh here let us die,
In Western Carolina, “Fair Land of the Sky.”

From Carolina Mountain Breezes, by Eloise Buckner Ebbs,  1929                       

So goes a poem by Eloise Buckner Ebbs about her native land. Born and raised in western North Carolina, Eloise, was educated at the Denominational School (Mars Hill College) and married a childhood sweetheart. The formative years of her life are recorded in a semi-autobiographical novel she wrote at the end of her life in 1928-29 and in which, this poem appears. In the novel she describes the trials and tribulations of her sister Ruth, her own courtship and marriage and a mixture of factual and fictitious events. The novel, Carolina Mountain Breezes, was intended to “give the mountaineer’s viewpoint.”  She believed the native people of western North Carolina had been poorly represented by “outsiders” and she wished to place before the reader the “true and honest people” of the mountains.  Given her strong sense of place and her fervid defense of the local, it is curious that in her preface to the novel she gives inspirational credit to Margaret Morley, among others. She says “…I found it very hard to separate my own thoughts from those of others, as all had become rather a part of me,” a testimony to the influences that shape all our attitudes and perceptions and that make who we are as women,  both unique and universal.
Ebbs, Eloise Buckner. Carolina Mountain Breezes. Asheville, NC: Miller Press, 1929.

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