Love's Labor Lost: The Hatfield-McCoy Feud

Feuds are pointless tragedies carried out for political, religious, or personal honor, thrust upon generation after generation, father to son (seldom mother to daughter, let us note). There are the Montagues and Capulets, and there are the Hatfields and McCoys: Shakespeare's time in fair Verona, and post–Civil War in the verdant Appalachian Mountains. The meandering Tug Fork forms part of the West Virginia–Kentucky border in the Tug River Valley, an especially remote mountainous region. Real-life feuds, as opposed to those generated in the myriad minds of Shakespeare and company, are fueled by complex cultural and economic pressures. The story of the Hatfields and McCoys is one of endlessly conflicting details, but the tale is yet another condescending variation of Appalachia bashing: observe the ignorant hillbillies killing each other over the ownership of a hog. It's (thankfully) no longer acceptable to be openly racist or sexist, to fat-shame or thin-exult, but it's perfectly okay to bait Appalachia: no understanding of history necessary. But let us confine ourselves to the appropriated story of the Hatfields and McCoys (near as we can make out, as we say even in north-central West Virginia, an hour's drive from Pittsburgh, where I grew up, a world away from Mingo or Logan Counties on the southern border of the state).