THE RURAL TYPE AND THE DIALECT
The origin of the term “Hoosier” is not known with certainty. It has
been applied to the inhabitants of Indiana for many years, and, after
“Yankee,” it is probably the sobriquet most famous as applied to the
people of a particular division of the country. So early as 1830,
“Hoosier” must have had an accepted meaning, within the State at least,
for John Finley printed in that year, as a New Year’s address for the
Indianapolis _Journal_, a poem called “The Hoosier Nest,” in which the
word occurs several times. It is a fair assumption that its meaning
was not obscure, or it would not have been used in a poem intended
for popular reading. “Hoosier” seems to have found its first literary
employment in Finley’s poem. Sulgrove, who was an authority in matters
of local history, was disposed to concede this point.[8] The poem is
interesting for its glimpse of Indiana rural life of the early period.
Finley was a Virginian who removed to Indiana in 1823 and had been
living in the State seven years when he published his poem. He was an
accomplished and versatile gentleman, and his verses, as collected
in 1866, show superior talents. One of his poems, “Bachelor’s Hall,”
has often been attributed to Thomas Moore. The “Hoosier Nest” is the
home of a settler, which a traveller hailed at nightfall. Receiving a
summons to enter, the stranger walked in,--
“Where half a dozen Hoosieroons
With mush-and-milk, tin cups and spoons.
White heads, bare feet and dirty faces
Seemed much inclined to keep their places.”
The stranger was invited to a meal of venison, milk, and johnny-cake,
and as he sat at the humble board he made an inventory of the cabin’s
contents:--
“One side was lined with divers garments,
The other spread with skins of varmints:
Dried pumpkins overhead were strung,
Where venison hams in plenty hung;
Two rifles placed above the door;
Three dogs lay stretched upon the floor,--
In short, the domicile was rife
With specimens of Hoosier life.”
“Hoosieroons” is never heard now, and was probably invented by Finley
for the sake of the rhyme. Both Governor Wright and O. H. Smith were of
the opinion that “Hoosier” was a corruption of “Who’s here” (_yere_ or
_hyer_) and Smith[9] has sought to dramatize its history:--
“The night was dark, the rain falling in torrents, when the inmates
of a small log cabin in the woods of early Indiana were aroused from
their slumbers by a low knocking at the only door of the cabin. The
man of the house, as he had been accustomed to do on like occasions,
rose from his bed and hallooed, ‘Who’s here?’ The outsiders answered,
‘Friends, out bird-catching. Can we stay till morning?’ The door was
opened, and the strangers entered. A good log fire soon gave light
and warmth to the room. Stranger to the host: ‘What did you say when
I knocked?’ ‘I said, Who’s here?’ ‘I thought you said Hoosier.’ The
bird-catchers left after breakfast, but next night returned and
hallooed at the door, ‘Hoosier;’ and from that time the Indianians
have been called Hoosiers.”
This is the explanation usually given to inquirers within the State. The
objection has sometimes been raised to this story, that the natural
reply to a salutation in the wilderness would be “Who’s there?” out
of which “Hoosier” could hardly be formed; but careful observers of
Western and Southern dialects declare that “Who’s hyer?” was, and in
obscure localities remains, the common answer to a midnight hail.
Sulgrove related the incident of an Irishman, employed in excavating
the canal around the falls at Louisville, who declared after a fight in
which he had vanquished several fellow-laborers that he was “a husher,”
and this was offered as a possible origin of the word. The same writer
suggested another explanation, that a certain Colonel Lehmanowski,
a Polish officer who lectured through the West on Napoleon’s wars,
pronounced Hussar in a way that captivated some roystering fellow,
who applied the word to himself in self-glorification, pronouncing it
“Hoosier.” Lehmanowski’s identity has been established as a sojourner
in Indiana, and his son was a member of an Indiana regiment in the
Civil War. The Rev. Aaron Woods[10] is another contributor to the
literature of the subject, giving the Lehmanowski story with a few
variations. When the young men of the Indiana side of the Ohio crossed
over to Louisville, the Kentuckians made sport of them, calling them
“New Purchase greenies,” and declaring that they of the southern
side of the river were a superior race, composed of “half-alligator,
half-horse, and tipped off with snapping turtle!” Fighting grew out of
these boasts in the market-place and streets of Louisville. An Indiana
visitor who had heard Lehmanowski lecture on “The Wars of Europe” and
been captivated by the prowess of the Hussars, whipped one of the
Kentuckians, and bending over him cried, “I’m a Hoosier,” meaning,
“I’m a Hussar.” Mr. Woods adds that he was living in the State at the
time and that this was the true origin of the term. This is, however,
hardly conclusive. The whole Lehmanowski story seems to be based on
communication between Indiana and Kentucky workmen during the building
of the Ohio Falls Canal. The original canal was completed in 1830; and
as the Polish soldier was not in this region earlier than 1840, ten
years after the appearance of Finley’s poem, it is clear that those who
would reach the truth of the matter must go back of “The Hoosier Nest”
to find secure ground. No one has ever pretended that Finley originated
the word, and it is not at all likely that he did so; but his poem
gave it wide currency, and doubtless had much to do with fixing it
on the Indianians. Bartlett, in his “Dictionary of Americanisms,”
gives the novel solution of the problem that the men of superior
strength throughout the early West, the heroes of log-rollings and
house-raisings, were called “hushers” because of their ability to hush
or quiet their antagonists; and that “husher” was a common term for a
bully. The Ohio River boatmen carried the word to New Orleans, where
a foreigner among them, in attempting to apply the word to himself,
pronounced it “Hoosier.” Sulgrove may have had this meaning in mind in
citing his Irishman, though he is not explicit. Hoosier as a Christian
name has been known in the Ohio Valley; it was borne by a member of
the Indiana Methodist Conference in 1835. A Louisville baker named
Hoosier made a variety of sweet bread which was so much affected by
Indiana people that they were called “Hoosier’s customers,” “Hoosier’s
men,” and so on; but no date can be found for this. The Rev. T. A.
Goodwin, first heard the word at Cincinnati in 1830, where it described
a species of gingerbread, but without reference to Indiana.
It is clear that the cultivated people of Indiana recognized the
nickname in the early half of the century. Wright and Smith, as
mentioned above, had sought to determine its genesis; and Tilghman
A. Howard, when a congressman from Indiana, writing home to a friend
in 1840, spoke casually of the “Hoosier State.”[11] The word occurs
familiarly in Hall’s “New Purchase” (1855), and it is found also
in Beste’s rare volume, “The Wabash; or, Adventures of an English
Gentleman’s Family in the Interior of America,” published at London
in the same year, and in Mrs. Beecher’s “From Dawn to Daylight”
(1859). And when, in 1867, Sandford C. Cox published a book of verses
containing the couplet,--
“If Sam is right, I would suggest
A native Hoosier as the best,”--
the word was widely known, and thereafter it frequently occurs in all
printed records touching the State. It is reported from Tennessee,
Virginia, and South Carolina by independent observers, who say that the
idea of a rough countryman is always associated with it. In Missouri it
is sometimes used thus abstractly, but a native Indianian is usually
meant, without reference to his manners or literacy.
No reader of Hoosier chronicles can fail to be impressed by the
relation of the great forests to the people who came to possess and
tame them. Before they reached the Indiana wilderness in their advance
before civilization, the stalwart pioneers had swung their axes in
Pennsylvania or Kentucky, and had felt the influence of the great,
gloomy woodlands in their lives; but in Indiana this influence was
greatly intensified. They experienced an isolation that is not possible
to-day in any part of the country, and the loss of nearly every
civilizing agency that men value. These frontiersmen could hardly have
believed themselves the founders of a permanent society, for the exact
topography of much of their inheritance was unknown to them; large
areas were submerged for long periods, and the density of the woods
increased the difficulty of building roads and knitting the scattered
clearings and villages into a compact and sensitive commonwealth. Once
cleared, the land yielded a precarious living to the pioneers in return
for their labors and sacrifices; after the first dangers from beasts of
prey, the pestiferous small animals anticipated the harvest and ate the
corn. One ear in four acres remained after the gray squirrels had taken
their pleasure in a Johnson County field.[12] Sheep were out of the
question on account of the wolves; and always present and continuing
were the fevers that preyed on the worn husbandmen and sent many to
premature graves. The women, deprived of every comfort, contributed
their share of the labor, making homes of their cabins; dyeing the
wool, when they had it, with the ooze of the walnut, carding,
spinning, and weaving it, and finally cutting the cloth into garments;
or if linen were made, following the flax from the field through all
the processes of manufacture until it clothed the family.
The pioneers could not see then, as their children see now, that
the wilderness was a factor in their destiny; that it drove them
in upon themselves, strengthening their independence in material
things by shutting them off from older communities, and that it even
fastened upon their tongues the peculiarities of speech which they had
brought with them into the wilderness. But their isolation compelled
meditation, and when reading matter penetrated the woodlands it was
usually worth the trouble of transportation in a day of few roads
and little travel. The pioneers knew their Bibles and named their
children for the Bible heroes, and most of their other books were
religious. There have been worse places in which to form habits of
thought, and to lay the foundation for a good manner of writing our
language, than the Hoosier cabin. Lying before the fireplace in his
father’s humble Spencer County home during the fourteen years that
the family spent in Indiana,--years that were of the utmost importance
in his life,--Abraham Lincoln studied his few books and caught the
elusive language-spirit that later on gave character and beauty to his
utterances.
The social life of the first comers also drew its inspiration from
their environment, and was expressed in log-rolling, house-raising,
and other labors that could best be done by coöperation, and which
they concluded usually, in a fashion quite characteristic, with a
frolic. After the axe, the rifle was most important among their
belongings; for they trusted largely to the fortunes of the hunt for
food; and peltries became a valuable medium of exchange in their simple
economy. Expertness in the use of the rifle and friendly rivalry in
marksmanship among the settlers led to other social gatherings; and
even professional men took pride in the sport and participated in these
contests. The militia system in the early days was not an important
feature of Hoosier life. The Hoosier’s sense of humor has always been
keen, and where, as once occurred on muster day in the White Water
country, a part of the officer’s duty was to separate wearers of shoes
from those who appeared in moccasins, and bearers of cornstalks from
those who carried rifles, there was nothing of the pomp and pageantry
of war to captivate the imagination of the people.
The Hoosier fiddle was a factor in all the festivities of the country
folk. The fiddler was frequently an eccentric genius, ranking with
the rural poet, who was often merely a maker of idle rhymes; however,
the country fiddler in Indiana has held his own against latter-day
criticism and the competition of the village brass band. Governor
Whitcomb enjoyed local fame as a violinist, and Berry Sulgrove and
General Lew Wallace, in their younger years, were skilful with the
bow. Dr. H. W. Taylor, a conscientious student of early Hoosier
customs, connects the Hoosier fiddler with the Scotch Highlanders,
and has expressed his belief[13] that the Highlander folk coming to
the United States naturally sought the mountain country of Virginia,
North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, and that the Scotch fiddle
and its traditions survive principally in these mountainous countries.
We are told that the fiddle of the Hoosiers is an exotic and cannot
long survive, though fifteen years after this prediction a contest of
Hoosier fiddlers was held in the largest hall at Indianapolis, and
many musicians of this old school appeared from the back districts to
compete for the prizes. The great aim of the old time fiddlers was to
make their instruments “talk.” Their tunes enjoyed such euphonious
names as “Old Dan Tucker,” “Old Zip Coon,” “Possum up a Gum Stump,”
“Irish Washerwoman,” “Waggoner,” “Ground Spy,” and “Jay Bird.” Dr.
Taylor discovered that the very Hoosier manner of bowing, _i.e._
fiddling, was derived from the Scotch, and he gives this description
of it: “The arm, long, bony, and sinewy, was stretched forwards,
downwards, and outwards from the shoulder, and at full length. There
was absolutely no movement of the wrist, a very little at the elbow,
and just a degree more at the shoulder.” Hall ironically observed that
the country fiddler could, like Paganini, play one tune or parts of
nearly two dozen tunes on one string; and like the great _maestro_
he played without notes, and with endless flourishes. He gives this
attractive portrait of one of the New Purchase fiddlers:--
“He held his fiddle against his breast--perhaps out of affection--and
his bow in the middle, and like a cart-whip; things enabling him,
however, the more effectually to flog his instrument when rebellious:
and the afflicted creature would scream right out in agony! Indeed,
his Scremonah bore marks of premature old age--its fingerboard
being indented with little pits, and its stomach was frightfully
incrusted with rosin and other gummy things, till it looked as dark
and careworn as Methuselah! Dan was, truly, no niggard of ‘rosum,’
for he ‘greased’ as he termed it, between his tunes every time! and
then, at his first few vigorous jerks, fell a shower of dust on the
agitated bosom of his instrument, calling out in vain for mercy under
the cruel punishment.”[14]
James Whitcomb Riley corroborates the impression of earlier writers in
a characteristic poem, “My Fiddle:”[15]--
“My playin’s only middlin’--tunes I picked up when a boy--
The kind o’-sort o’ fiddlin’ that the folks calls ‘cordaroy’;
‘The Old Fat Gal’ ‘Rye-Straw,’ and ‘My Sailyor’s on the Sea,’
Is the old cowtillions _I_ ‘saw’ when the ch’ice is left to me;
And so I plunk and plonk and plink
And rosum-up my bow,
And play the tunes that make you think
The devil’s in your toe!”
In several of the Southern Indiana counties the least admirable traits
of the ancestors of the “poor whites” who came in from the South have
been continued into a third and fourth generation; but these do not
appear prominently in any fair or comprehensive examination of the
people. Much has been written of the lawlessness of Indianians, and
lynching and white-capping have sporadically been reported from many
of the southern counties. An attorney-general of the State who had
brought all the machinery of the law to bear upon particular instances
of lynching during his term of office, and who had given much study to
the phenomena presented by these outbreaks, expressed his opinion that
the right of way of the Baltimore and Southwestern Railway marked the
“lynching belt” in Indiana. Statistics in confirmation are lacking,
but it is safe to say that a large percentage of the lynchings reported
in the State have occurred either in counties on the line of the road
or in those immediately adjoining. Lynchings have also occurred in
at least half a dozen counties north of Indianapolis, so that all
the crimes of this sort perpetrated in Indiana cannot be charged to
the descendants of the “poor whites” in the more Southern counties.
Lynching has not been viewed with apathy, and every instance of it has
been followed by vigorous efforts at punishment. In 1889 a drastic
law was added to the statutes, defining lynching and providing severe
penalties. It struck to the quick of the matter by making possible the
impeachment of law officers who yield prisoners to a mob. But under
any circumstances these people are so intensely clannish that even the
sincerest prosecution usually fails for lack of witnesses. The Hon.
W. A. Ketcham, State attorney-general, after heroic efforts to fix
responsibility for the lynching of five men in Ripley County on the
night of September 14, 1898, gravely stated in his official report
that he had applied the Sherlock Holmes principle to the incident;
that is to say, after excluding every other possible hypothesis he had
assumed the correctness of the one remaining, and this he stated in his
syllabus of the case to be: “That A broke jail and travelled across
the country to the town where the revolver had been pawned, a distance
of seven miles, broke into the store, stole the revolver, returned
again, broke back into jail, shot himself, then killed B and C and hung
their dead bodies to a tree, put the finishing touches to his crime by
hanging D and E, and then in order that suspicion might be directed
against innocent men, finally hanged himself.”[16] The milder form of
outlawry, known as “white-capping,” has also been practised in Indiana
occasionally, and sometimes with barbarous cruelty; but it, like
lynching, is not peculiar to the State, and its extent has been greatly
exaggerated by Eastern newspapers.
It has been insisted by loyal Indianians that the speech of the later
generations of natives is almost normal English; that the rough
vernacular of their ancestors has been ground down in the schools,
and that the dictionaries are rapidly sanctioning new words, once
without authority, that inevitably crept into common speech through
the necessities of pioneer expression. It may fairly be questioned
whether, properly speaking, there ever existed a Hoosier dialect.
The really indigenous Indiana words and novel pronunciations are so
few as to make but a poor showing when collected; and while the word
“dialect” is employed as a term of convenience in this connection, it
can only be applied to a careless manner of speaking, in which novel
words are merely incidental. A book of colloquial terms, like Green’s
“Virginia Word Book,” could hardly be compiled for Indiana without
infringing upon the prior claims of other and older States to the
greater part of it. The so-called Hoosier dialect, where it survives
at all, is the speech of the first American settlers in Indiana,
greatly modified by time and schooling, but retaining, both in the
employment of colloquial terms and in pronunciation, the peculiarities
that were carried westward from tide water early in the nineteenth
century. The distinctive Indiana countryman, the real Hoosier, who
has been little in contact with the people of cities, speaks a good
deal as his Pennsylvania or North Carolina or Kentucky grandfather or
great-grandfather did before him, and has created nothing new. His
speech contains comparatively few words that are peculiar to the State
or to communities within it; but in the main it shares such deviations
from normal or literary English with the whole Southwest.
In his book “The Wabash” Beste describes his interview with an
Indiana carpenter, who questioned whether the traveller was really an
Englishman, because his speech was unlike that of the usual English
immigrants whose trouble with the aspirate had evoked derisive comment
among the Americans. This occurs in his chapter on Indianapolis, in
which the carpenter is quoted thus:
“‘You do not say ‘ouse’ and ‘and’ for ‘house’ and ‘hand’; all the
children, and all of you, pronounce all these words like Americans,
and not as real English pronounce them. Their way of speaking
makes us always say that we talk better English than the English
themselves.’ I had, indeed, often heard the Americans laughed at
for saying so; but now the matter was explained. My carpenter
repeated with great accuracy various instances of provincialisms
and vulgarisms which he and all of them had noticed more or less,
in all the English emigrants who had come amongst them. Seeing none
of any other class, they naturally supposed that all English people
pronounced the language in the same manner, and so prided themselves
upon the superiority of American English. For notwithstanding the
disagreeable nasal tone and drawling whine in which most of them
speak, and notwithstanding a few national phrases and the peculiar
use and pronunciation of certain words, it must be admitted that the
American people, in general, speak English without provincial dialect
or vulgarisms. Whence, in fact, could they acquire such, since all
the emigrants they see came from different parts of England, and the
provincialisms of the one neutralize those of the other.”
Professor Whitney, in his “Language and the Study of Language,”
expresses in academic terms much the same idea.[17]
Lapses in pronunciation have never been punishable with death on the
Wabash, as at the fords of the Jordan, where the shibboleth test of
the Gileadites cost the Ephraimites forty and two thousand. The native
Indianian is not sensitive about his speech and refuses to be humble
before critics from the far East who say “idea-r” and “Philadelphia-r.”
James Whitcomb Riley has made the interesting and just observation
that the average countryman knows in reality a wider range of diction
than he permits himself to use, and that his abridgments and variations
are attributable to a fear lest he may offend his neighbors by using
the best language at his command.[18] This is wholly true, and it
is responsible in a measure for contributions to the common speech
of local idioms and phrases. In rural Indiana and generally in the
Southwest the phrase “’s th’ fellah says” is often used by a rustic
to indicate his own appreciation of the fact that he has employed an
unusual expression. Or it may be an actual quotation, as, for example,
“Come over fer a visit, an’ we’ll treat you ’n a hostile manner, ’s
Uncle Amos use t’ say.” This substitution of hostile for hospitable
once enjoyed wide currency in Indiana and Illinois. Sulgrove confirms
Riley’s impression:--
“Correct pronunciation was positively regarded by the Southern
immigration as a mark of aristocracy or, as they called it,
‘quality.’ The ‘ing’ in ‘evening,’ or ‘morning’ or any other words,
was softened into ‘in,’ the full sound being held finical and
‘stuck up.’ So it was no unusual thing to hear such a comical string
of emasculated ‘nasals’ as the question of a prominent Indiana
lawyer of the Kentucky persuasion, ‘Where were you a-standin’ at
the time of your perceivin’ of the hearin’ of the firin’ of the
pistol?’... To ‘set’ was the right way to sit; an Indian did not
scalp, he ‘skelped’: a child did not long for a thing, he ‘honed’ for
it,--slang retains this Hoosier archaism; a woman was not dull, she
was ‘daunsy’; commonly a gun was ‘shot’ instead of fired in all moods
and tenses.”[19]
While the French settlements in Indiana made no appreciable impression
on the common speech, yet it has been assumed by some observers that
the inclination at the South to throw the accent of words forward, as
in gentle_men_, settle_ment_, was fairly attributable to the influence
of the French Catholics in Louisiana and of the Huguenots who were
scattered through the Southeastern colonies, though this would seem a
trifle finespun; but the idiosyncrasy noted exists at the South, no
matter what its real origin may have been, and it has been communicated
in some measure through Southern influences to the middle Western
people. However, Southern Indianians sometimes say _Tennes_-sy,
accenting the first syllable and slurring the last, illustrating again
the danger of accepting any theories or fixing any rules for general
guidance in such matters. Dr. Eggleston remembers only one French word
that survived from old French times in the Wabash country,--“cordelle,
to tow a boat by a rope carried along the shore.” The most striking
influence in the Indiana dialect is that of the Scotch-Irish, who
have left marked peculiarities of speech behind them wherever they
have gone. Notwithstanding the fact that both the English Quakers and
the Germans contributed largely to the settlement of Pennsylvania
and of the Southeastern colonies, the idiosyncrasies of speech most
perceptible in the regions deriving their population from those sources
are plainly Scotch-Irish; as, for example, the linguistic deficiency
which makes _strenth_ and _lenth_ of _strength_ and _length_, or
_bunnle_ of _bundle_, and the use of _nor_ for _than_, after a
comparative adjective. The use of _into_ for _in_ and _whenever_ for
_as soon as_ are other Scotch-Irish peculiarities. These, however, are
heard only in diminishing degree in Indiana, and many of the younger
generations of Hoosiers have never known them. The confusion of
_shall_ and _will_ and of _like_ and _as_ is traceable to North-Irish
influences, and is not peculiar to the spoken language at the South and
West, but is observed frequently in the newspapers, and is found even
in books.
The anonymous writer of “Pioneer Annals” (1875), a rare pamphlet that
contains much invaluable matter relating to the occupation of the White
Water Valley, speaks of the prevalence of Carolina Quakers among the
first settlers of that region, and remarks that when newcomers were
asked where they came from, the answer would be “Guilford County, near
Clemmens’s Store”; or “Beard’s Hatter-shop”; “Dobson’s Cross Roads”;
or “Deep-River Settlement of Friends.” The same writer gives a dialect
note which illustrates the ephemeral character of idiom. _Sleys_
(slays) was a term applied by the Carolinians to the reeds used by them
in their home-made looms. A Carolina emigrant bound for Indiana stopped
at Cincinnati and offered to sell a supply of these. It was in August,
and the storekeeper knew but one word having the same sound, sleighs,
which were not used in Cincinnati in midsummer. His ironical comment
almost led to a personal encounter before the Carolinian could explain.
John V. Hadley states in his “Seven Months a Prisoner” that “Guilford
County” and “Jamestown” (North Carolina) were household words in many
families of Hendricks County (Indiana), where he lived. At Jamestown,
on his way to Libby Prison, he was accosted by a citizen who asked
whether a former neighbor who had moved to Indiana, but still owned
property in North Carolina, had not enlisted in the Union army, the
purpose of the inquiry being to obtain testimony on which to confiscate
his estate.
The circulation of newly coined words has been so rapid in late years,
owing to the increase of communication between different parts of
the country, and to dissemination by the newspapers, that few useful
words originating obscurely are likely to remain local. Lowell amused
himself by tracing to unassailable English sources terms that were
assumed to be essentially American; and if Chaucer and the Elizabethans
may be invoked against our rural communities, the word-hunter’s
sport has grown much simpler when he may cite a usage in one State to
disestablish the priority claimed for it in another. There is risk
in all efforts to connect novel words with particular communities,
no matter how carefully it may be done, and it is becoming more and
more difficult to separate real dialect from slang. Lists of unusual
words that have been reported to the American Dialect Society afford
interesting instances of the danger of accepting terms as local which
are really in general use. The word _rambunctious_, reported from New
York State as expressing impudence and forwardness, cannot be peculiar
to that region,[20] for it is used in Indiana in identically the same
sense. Other words, collected through the same agency and common in
Indiana, are: _scads_, reported from Missouri, signifying a great
quantity; and _sight_, meaning a large amount, noted in New England and
New York. _Great hand for_, meaning a _penchant_, traced from Maine to
Ohio, may be followed also into Indiana, but this, like _druthers_,
for a preference or choice, belongs to the towns rather than to
the country. _Go like_, in the sense of imitation, as “_go like_ a
rooster,” is reported from both Maine and Indiana; and _foot-loose_,
meaning free and untrammelled, observed in Georgia, is used in the
towns, at least, of Indiana. The natural disposition of Americans
to exaggerate led to the creation by the Southeastern element in
Indiana population of _bodaciously_,[21] a corruption of audaciously;
and to the employment of _powerful_, indiscriminately with _big_ or
_little_, as a particularly emphatic superlative. Curiously enough
_powerful_, which is usually identified with the earlier generations
of the Southwest, is reported also from Eastern Massachusetts.[22]
_Sarcumstansis_ for _circumstances_, _b’ar_ for _bear_, and _thar_ for
_there_ reached Indiana through Kentucky, and are now rarely heard. Dr.
Eggleston employs the broad _a_ in “The Graysons,” where one character
says _bar_ while another pronounces the word correctly, explaining that
words are not always pronounced the same in a dialect--an observation
that has also been made by Mr. Riley.
Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher, whose unamiable novel, “From Dawn to
Daylight,” is a dreary picture of Indiana life, gives a few interesting
usages; as _a right smart chance of money_, _heap of plunder_, _sight
stronger_, _proper hard_, showing that her acquaintance was principally
with the Southern element, which she had known at Lawrenceburg and
Indianapolis. _Plunder_, as a synonym for baggage, seems to be largely
Southern and Western, and was probably derived from the Pennsylvania
Germans. The insolent intrusiveness of dialect is illustrated by the
appearance of the word in its colloquial sense in the first chapter of
General Wallace’s “Prince of India.” Dr. Eggleston in “The Graysons”
gives _weth_ for _with_, _air_ for _are_, _thes_ for _just_, _sher’f_
for _sheriff_, and _yer’s_ for _here is_. Indianians usually pronounce
the name of their State correctly, though the final vowel sometimes
becomes _y_. Benjamin S. Parker remembers that in the early days
pioneers sometimes said _Injuns_, _Injiana_, and _immejut_; but these
usages are obsolete in the State.[23] Mr. Riley frequently uses
_miled_ (mile), and yet the word is somewhat similarly spoken on
Nantucket, _maild_. _Ornery_, a vulgar form of ordinary, seems to be
generally used, and has been observed in the Middle States as well
as in Indiana and Kentucky. The injunction _mind out_, which is used
in Kentucky in such admonitions as “_mind out_ what you are doing,”
becomes _watch out_ in Indiana. _Wrench_ for _rinse_, used in the
States contiguous to the Ohio, is _rense_ in New England. _Critter_
for _horse_ is still heard in parts of rural Indiana, which derived
population through Kentucky, where the same usage is noted. _Fruit_, as
applied to stewed apples (apple sauce) only, is a curious limitation
of the noun, heard among old-fashioned people of Southern origin in
Indiana. _Some place_ for _somewhere_ is not chargeable to Indiana
alone, but this and the phrases _want on_ and _want off_ seem to be
used chiefly in the West Central States, and they belong to the
borderland between slang and dialect. It would seem a far cry from
the Hoosier speech to the classic Greek, and yet Dr. H. W. Taylor has
pursued this line of philological inquiry with astonishing results,
tracing an analogy of sound and sense most ingeniously between Greek
terms and words found in the American dialects.[24]
In the speech of the illiterate, there is usually something of rhythm
and cadence. All slang shares a feeling for the balance and nice
adjustment of words, and slang phrases are rarely clumsy. The cry of a
boy calling his mate has its peculiar crescendo, and pedlers the world
over run the scale of human expression in pursuit of odd effects. The
drawl of the Southerner and Southwesterner is not unmusical, though
it may try the patience of the stranger. Even cultivated Indianians,
particularly those of Southern antecedents, have the habit of clinging
to their words; they do not bite them off sharply. _G_ performs its
office as final consonant in _ing_ under many disadvantages; and it
was long ignored, though the school-teachers have struggled nobly to
restore it. The blending of words, which begins with childhood, is
often carried into maturity by the Indianian; thus by a lazy elision
“did you ever” is combined in _jever_, and “where did you get”
becomes _wherjuget_. _Ju_ is, in fact, usual in the Ohio Valley. The
history of the Italian _a_ in this country is in itself interesting.
In New England and in Virginia it finds recognition, whereas in the
intermediate region the narrower sound of the vowel prevails; and
likewise the softening of _r_ is noted in New England and among the
Virginians and other Southerners, while in the intermediate territory
and at the West _r_ receives its full sound. The shrill nasal tone
is still marked in the back country folk of New England, while
the Southern and Southwestern farmer’s speech is fuller and more
open-mouthed. Whether climatic influences have been potent in such
matters remains a matter of speculation, but such theories are to be
received with caution.
It is unfortunate that there are so few trustworthy records of the
early Southwestern speech, and that first and last bad grammar,
reckless spelling, and the indiscriminate distribution of the printer’s
apostrophe by writers who had no real knowledge to guide them, have
served to create an erroneous impression of the illiteracy of the
Indianians and their neighbors. It is likely that during the next
quarter of a century the continued fusion of the various elements of
Western population will create a dead level of speech, approximating
accuracy, so that in a typical American State like Indiana local usages
will disappear, and the only oddities discernible will be those of the
well-nigh universal slang, which even now reach Colorado and California
almost as soon as they are known at the Atlantic seaboard. At the South
and in New England, where there is less mingling of elements, the old
usages will probably endure much longer; and it is a fair assumption
that in the Mississippi Valley and in the Trans-Missouri country, a
normal American speech free of local idiosyncrasies will appear first.
Our keen sense of humor and our love of the conveniences of speech are
likely to continue to be national traits, leading to the creation and
adoption of slang from time to time; but where a people imply quotation
marks in all their lapses from propriety, they anticipate and destroy
criticism.
After all, there is nothing reprehensible in dialect, as we loosely
use the word, or even in slang. Flexibility is necessary to the living
language; and the word-hunter who really delights in his avocation, and
is not limited in his researches to the remoter fields of classical
philology, hearing in his daily walks and in the tranquil talk at
peaceful inns the pungent or pictorial word that no lexicographer has
yet detected, knows a joy that is greater than that of fly fishing or
butterfly hunting. “No language,” writes Lowell, “after it has faded
into diction, none that cannot suck up the feeding juices secreted for
it in the rich mother-earth of common folk, can bring forth a sound
and lusty book. True vigor and heartiness of phrase do not pass from
page to page, but from man to man, where the brain is kindled and the
lips suppled by downright living interests, and by passion in its very
throe.” He continues: “Language is the soil of thought, and our own
especially is a rich leaf-mould, the slow deposit of ages, the shed
foliage of feeling, fancy, and imagination, which has suffered an earth
change, that the vocal forest, as Howell called it, may clothe itself
anew with living green.” And this suggests Horace’s words, in “Ars
Poetica”:--
“Ut silvae foliis pronos mutantur in annos,
Prima cadunt; ita verborum vetus interit aetas,
Et juvenum ritu florent modo nata vigentque.”
As the leaves have fallen through a century in the Wabash country,
they have buried words that will never reappear; and the change will
continue, old words vanishing and new ones taking their places, so long
as tradition and heredity yield to the schoolmaster, that ruthless
forester who grafts and trims to make all trees uniform.