week of 9/4/02
 
 
 

A closer look at southern dialect and its origin
By George Ellison

I’m no expert on regional linguistics, but through the years I have delighted in the dialect still spoken here in the Smokies region. One sometimes hears or reads that it dates back to the Elizabethan era; that is, to the second half of the 16th century when Shakespeare appeared on the literary scene. On the other hand, Western Carolina University historian Tyler Blethen, who has studied the Scots-Irish movement from England to Ireland to North America and into the southern mountains in great detail, once told me that the language dates more or less back to the Plantation of Ulster era; that is, from about 1620 to 1715 when Scots were settled in northern Ireland in great numbers.

Whatever its sources, the language is rich in dialect words and expressions. These are used to express a wide range of emotions and insights that can be mournful or humorous. To a certain extent, the dialect language spoken here is fading due to the onslaught of outsiders and the media, but it still survives in various coves and hollers, coffee and barber shops, or wherever you might, by chance, overhear someone local speaking naturally. Some of the boys and girls (now men and women) that I’ve known here in Swain County for 30 years are bilingual in the sense that they still speak the dialect language they learned as a child — but they can also switch over, if need be, to the language learned in college.

Three mountain historians — John Preston Arthur, Horace Kephart, and Paul Fink — have taken a particular interest in dialect expressions. Here are some of their observations as well as words or expressions they recorded.

Under the heading “Elizabethan English” in Western North Carolina: A History, 1730-1913 (1914), Western North Carolina resident Arthur noted that “writers who think they know, have said that our people have been sequestered in these mountains so long that they speak the language of Shakespeare and of Chaucer. It is certain that we sometimes say ‘hit’ for ‘it’ and ‘taken’ for ‘took’; that we also say ‘plague’ for ‘tease,’ and when we are ‘willing,’ we say we are ‘consentable.’ If invited to accompany anyone and wish to do so, we almost invariably say, ‘I wouldn’t care to go along,’ meaning ‘we do not object.’ We also say ‘haint’ for ‘am not,’ ‘are not,’ and ‘have not,’ and we invite you to ‘light’ if you are riding or driving ... We have Webster for our authority that ‘hit’ is the Saxon for ‘it’; and we know ourselves that ‘taken’ is more regular that ‘took’ ... We may ‘mend,’ not ‘improve’; and who shall say that our ‘mend’ is not a simpler, sweeter and more significant word than ‘improve’? But we do mispronounce many words, among which is ‘gardeen’ for ‘guardian’ and ‘pint’ for ‘point’. The late Sam Lovin of Graham County was told that it was improper to say Rocky ‘Pint,’ as its true name is ‘Point.’ When next he went to Asheville he asked for a ‘point’ of whiskey ... Finally, most of us are of the opinion of the late Andrew Jackson who thought that one who could spell a word in only one way was a ‘mighty poor excuse for a full grown man.’”

Swain County resident Horace Kephart, author of Our Southern Highlanders (1913), recorded dialect expressions he heard from 1904 until his death in 1931 in extensive journals now housed at WCU. Here are some uses of the word “law” for “lord” that he overheard:

“Law!”

“Good law!”

“Why, laws-a-me!”

“Laws-a-mighty-me!”

“Yea, law!”

“A - law!”

When disappointed folks would say:

“Dod burn hit!”

“Consarn hit!”

“Hell’s conniptions!”

When just fooling around, they expressed it this way:

“I’m jes shacklin’ along.”

“Jist a loaferin.’”

“Jist louzin’ ‘bout.”

“No, he wasn’t workin’ none — jes spuddin ‘round.”

‘Me? I’m jes cooterin’.”

“Jes prodjectin.’”

“She kept on sputterin’.”

Mountain women had this to say about their men-folk:

“Well, he laid off to do that an ain’t never got it done yit.”

“He has a disinclination toward work.”

“A feller like that’d pour lamp oil on a pine knot.”

“Bill Cope’s house is a-slidin’ downhill.”

It’s still good form in Swain County to make fun of a friend as if he’s letting his wife do all the heavy work: “Bob whittled Old Pete Laney’s store-bought axe-handle for him an remarked: ‘Thar! I’ll see that Pete’ll have a decent axe-handle fer his women-folks to chop wood with, anyhow.’”

During the pre-feminist era Bob Burnett was asked why he let his wife do all the housework: “No use keepin’ a dog an doin’ yer own barkin,” he replied.

The expressions Kephart collected regarding the weather were often poetic:

“The dews are so heavy that they patter from the trees like rain in the morning.”

“The sky denotes snow.”

“Hit was spittin’ snow.”

“The fog is friz shoe-mouth deep on the mountain.”

“It was along late in November and the ground all spewed up with frost.”

“Twilight? That’s the edge o’ dark.”

Folks often tended to be plain spoken: “Ain’t you glad ter see me Silas?” asked one fellow. “As glad as if I’d run my head into a hornet’s nest,” Silas replied.

The vernacular language Kephart heard and recorded was rooted in the mountain landscape: “Boys,” said Old John Proctor who had had to leave Swain County to work in the cotton mills. “I dream of the spring branch runnin’ over THAT THAR poplar root, and I wake up and think if I could only git one drink of that mountain water I’d be content to lay down an die.’” Kephart’s note in the journal margin reads: “In John’s county there are an hundred spring branches running over poplar roots, but now when he said ‘THAT THAR poplar’ — why, I know the very one he means.”

East Tennessee historian Paul Fink published a little dictionary titled “Bits of Mountain Speech” (1974) that used expressions to illustrate how each word was used. Here are some of his entries:

° Aidge (n): edge ... He lived on the aidge of the cliff.

° Argufy (v): to argue ... They’d argufy all night.

° Beal (v): to fester, as an abscess ... I had a bealed ear.

° Bodaciously (adv.): completely, totally ... I’m most bodaciously wore out.

°Coon (v): climb or crawl ... I cooned up a tree.

° Cuss-fight (n): interchange of profanity.

° Dotey (adj): aged or senile ... He’s got plumb dotey.

° Galack (v): to gather galax or other ornamental greens ... They are going galacking.

° Jedgematically (adv): in my judgment ... Jedgematically, he’ll come tomorrow.

° Purt’ nigh (adv): almost, very close ... I purt’ nigh fell in.

° Sing coarse (v): sing bass ... He sings coarse at meeting.

° Slauchwise (adj): diagonally, off a straight line ... The fence come up the hill slaunchwise.

° Yan or overyan (adv): yonder ... They live overyan in Tennessee.

° You-uns (plural n): you ... Can you-uns come?

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com