Any one who has ever paid a flying visit to New Orleans probably knows
something about those various culinary preparations whose generic name
is “Gombo”--compounded of many odds and ends, with the okra-plant, or
true gombo for a basis, but also comprising occasionally “losé,
zepinard, laitie,” and the other vegetables sold in bunches in the
French market. At all events any person who has remained in the city for
a season must have become familiar with the nature of “gombo filé,”
“gombo févi,” and “gombo aux herbes,” or as our colored cook calls it,
“gombo zhèbes”--for she belongs to the older generation of Creole
_cuisinières_, and speaks the patois in its primitive purity, without
using a single “r.” Her daughter, who has been to school, would
pronounce it _gombo zhairbes_:--the modern patois is becoming more and
more Frenchified, and will soon be altogether forgotten, not only
throughout Louisiana, but even in the Antilles. It still, however,
retains originality enough to be understood with difficulty by persons
thoroughly familiar with French; and even those who know nothing of any
language but English, readily recognize it by the peculiarly rapid
syllabification and musical intonation. Such English-speaking residents
of New Orleans seldom speak of it as “Creole”: they call it _gombo_, for
some mysterious reason which I have never been able to explain
satisfactorily. The colored Creoles of the city have themselves begun to
use the term to characterize the patois spoken by the survivors of
slavery days. Turiault tells us that in the towns of Martinique, where
the Creole is gradually changing into French, the _Bitacos_, or country
negroes who still speak the patois nearly pure, are much ridiculed by
their municipal brethren:--_Ça ou ka palé là, chè, c’est nèg:--Ça pas
Créole!_ (“_What you talk is ‘nigger,’ my dear:--that isn’t Creole!_”)
In like manner a young Creole negro or negress of New Orleans might tell
an aged member of his race: “_Ça qui to parlé ça pas Créole: ça c’est
gombo!_” I have sometimes heard the pure and primitive Creole also
called “Congo” by colored folks of the new generation.
The literature of “gombo” has perhaps even more varieties than there are
preparations of the esculents above referred to;--the patois has
certainly its gombo févi, its gombo filé, its “gombo zhèbes”--both
written and unwritten. A work like Marbot’s “Bambous” would deserve to
be classed with the pure “févi”;--the treatises of Turiault, Baissac,
St. Quentin, Thomas, rather resemble that fully prepared dish, in which
crabs seem to struggle with fragments of many well-stewed meats, all
strongly seasoned with pepper. The present essay at Creole folklore, can
only be classed as “gombo zhèbes”--(_Zhèbes çé feuil-chou, cresson,
laitie, bettrav, losé, zepinard_);--the true okra is not the basis of
our preparation;--it is a Creole dish, if you please, but a salmagundi
of inferior quality.
* * * * *
For the collection of Louisiana proverbs in this work I am almost wholly
indebted to my friend Professor William Henry, Principal of the
Jefferson Academy in New Orleans; not a few of the notes, Creole
quotations, and examples of the local patois were also contributed by
him. The sources of the other proverbs will be found under the head of
Creole Bibliography. The translations of the proverbs into French will
greatly aid in exhibiting the curious process of transformation to which
the negro slave subjected the language of his masters, and will also
serve to show the peculiar simplicity of Creole grammar. My French is
not always elegant, or even strictly correct;--for with the above object
in view it has been necessary to make the translation as literal as is
possible without adopting the inter-linear system. Out of nearly five
hundred proverbs I selected about three hundred and fifty only for
publication--some being rejected because of their naïve indecency,
others because they offered mere variations of one and the same maxim.
Even after the sifting process, I was partly disappointed with the
results; the proportion of true Creole proverbs--proverbs of indubitably
negro invention--proved to be much smaller than I had expected.
Nevertheless all which I have utilized exhibit the peculiarities of the
vernacular sufficiently to justify their presence.
* * * * *
While some of these proverbs are witty enough to call a smile to the
most serious lips, many others must, no doubt, seem vapid, enigmatic, or
even meaningless. But a large majority of negro sayings depend
altogether upon application for their color or their effectiveness; they
possess a chameleon power of changing hue according to the manner in
which they are placed. (See for examples: Prov. 161, 251, or 308.) Every
saying of this kind is susceptible of numerous applications; and the art
of applying one proverb to many different situations is one in which the
negro has no rival--not even among the Arabs themselves, whose use of
such folklore has been so admirably illustrated by Carlo Landberg.
* * * * *
No two authors spell the Creole in the same way; and three writers whom
I have borrowed largely from--Thomas, Baissac, and Turiault--actually
vary the orthography of the same word in quite an arbitrary manner. At
first I thought of remodeling all my proverbs according to the phonetic
system of spelling; but I soon found that this would not only disguise
the Creole etymology almost beyond recognition, but would further
interfere with my plan of arrangement. Finally I concluded to publish
the Creole text almost precisely as I had found it, with the various
spellings and peculiarities of accentuation. The reader will find
_cabrit_, for example, written in four or five different ways. Where the
final _t_--never pronounced in our own patois--is fully sounded, the
several authorities upon Creole grammar have indicated the fact in
various fashions: one spelling it _cabritt_; another _cabrite_, etc.
* * * * *
The grammatical peculiarities and the pronounciation of the several
Creole dialects are matters which could not be satisfactorily treated
within the compass of a small pamphlet. Some few general rules might,
indeed, be mentioned as applying to most Creole dialects. It is
tolerably safe to say that in no one of the West Indian dialects was the
French “_r_” pronounced in former days; it was either totally
suppressed, as in the word “fòce” (_force_), or exchanged for a vowel
sound, as in _bouanche_ (for _branche_). The delicate and difficult
French sound of _u_ was changed into _ou_; the sound _en_ was simplified
into _é_; the clear European _o_ became a nasal _au_; and into many
French words containing the sound of _am_, such as _amour_, the negro
wedged the true African _n_, making the singular Creole pronounciation
_lanmou_, _canmarade_, _janmain_. But the black slaves from the Ivory
and Gold Coasts, from Congo or Angola, pronounced differently. The Eboes
and Mandingoes spoke the patois with varying accentuations;--it were
therefore very difficult to define rules of pronounciation applicable to
the patois spoken in all parts of one island like Guadaloupe, or one
colonial province like Guyana. Not so in regard to grammar. In all forms
of the patois (whether the musical and peculiarly picturesque Creole of
Martinique, or the more fantastic Creole of Mauritius, adulterated with
Malgache and Chinese words)--the true article is either suppressed or
transformed into a prefix or affix of the noun, as in _femme-la_ “the
woman,” or _yon lagrimace_, a grimace;--there is no true gender, no true
singular and plural; verbs have rarely more than six tenses--sometimes
less--and the tense is not indicated by the termination of the verb;
there is a remarkable paucity of auxiliaries, and in some dialects none
whatever; participles are unknown, and prepositions few. A very fair
knowledge of comparative Creole grammar and pronunciation may be
acquired, by any one familiar with French, from the authors cited at the
beginning of this volume. I would also recommend those interested in
such folklore to peruse the Creole novel of Dr. Alfred Mercier--_Les
Saint-Ybars_, which contains excellent examples of the Louisiana
dialect; and Baissac’s beautiful little stories, “Recits Créoles,” rich
in pictures of the old French colonial life. The foreign philological
reviews and periodicals, especially those of Paris, have published quite
a variety of animal fables, proverbs, stories in various Creole
dialects; and among the recent contributions of French ethnologists to
science will be also discovered some remarkable observations upon the
actual formation of various patois--strongly resembling our own
Creole--in the French African colonies.
* * * * *
Needless to say this collection is far from perfect;--the most I can
hope for is that it may constitute the nucleus of a more exhaustive
publication to appear in course of time. No one person could hope to
make a really complete collection of Creole proverbs--even with all the
advantages of linguistic knowledge, leisure, wealth, and travel. Only a
society of folklorists might bring such an undertaking to a successful
issue; but as no systematic effort is being made in this direction, I
have had no hesitation in attempting--not indeed to fill a want--but to
set an example. _Gouïe passé, difil sivré_:--let the needle but pass,
the thread will follow.