Harking back to Old English

Published: Sunday, September 10, 2006 at 4:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, September 10, 2006 at 12:00 a.m.

It's no wonder the English language is challenging to foreigners trying to learn it.

Besides multiple and seemingly unrelated meanings of many of our commonly used words, people right here in Henderson County are accused of "murdering" the language that has been alive and well since the Scotch-Irish fled from the hardships of life under the rule of King James I and ultimately came to our Western North Carolina mountains.

Locked in the hills, isolated by rugged terrain, many kept their Old World customs, passing them down through the generations, and their manner of speaking was one of them.

Phrases from the past

We still hear "I'd just as lief" referring to a preference just as Chaucer and Sir Thomas Mallory said it centuries ago. We constantly hear Shakespeare's "hit" instead of "it," but today it's considered incorrect grammar.

We "aim" to do certain things our newcomers from cities across the country "intend" to do. And a few of our old-timers still cook egg "yelkes" as their forebears were doing when they landed on American soil long ago.

Understandably it's confusing when a sing word has several totally unrelated meanings, as, for example, the familiar word "croak." According to Carolina slang, it can refer to evil, to a person's demise, or to the vocal tones of the fabled Frog Prince. No wonder it turns up in all levels of conversation, depending on its immediate purpose.

Good education being basic to flawless grammar, people who have it are prone to be particularly aware of those who don't. But colloquialisms and originality are ready and waiting when the need of them arises, as it often does in our mountain community where they're always on the tip of the tongue.

Some even sound like colloquialisms even though they're a throw-back to Elizabethan times. A person commenting on a "sight" of flowers in a garden is known to be referring to a large number of them just as he would have meant back in Chaucer's time.

Elizabethan "yonder" is still in use where distance is referred to, and so is a "peart" -- a lively -- person who can easily walk from here to yonder without being "afeared" of getting tired. Originality prompted a man to decline another serving of coffee. "No," he said, "I've done destroyed two cups." And we still hear repetition in the use of many words, such as "stair-steps," "church house," "tooth dentist" and "nigh neighbor."

Individual ways of speaking

Many such words and phrases can easily be traced back to their Old World origins, but we hear others belonging solely to an individual.

An example occurred some years ago when a woman from upper South Carolina with a Piedmont accent that eliminated all "-ers" at the ends of words and some in between as well, was in our area when an old-time tent meeting was going on in a meadow beside the Greenville Highway south of town.

She attended services faithfully until circumstances caused her to miss a couple of them. As soon as possible, she was back again, but only once, for when she walked into the tent, she was welcomed by the person on the podium with an enthusiastic, "There's that friendly face again. If she keeps comin' we'll make her one of us!"

"That was when I got my friendly face out of there," the woman told her friends later. "It was a good thing I did," she went on, "cause right then was when they started shoutin' and doin' a holy squat!"

You can't help wondering what Chaucer or Mallory or Shakespeare would have called it, but in her own words she told it the way she saw it.

Louise Bailey is a native of Henderson County and lives in Flat Rock. She is the author of several historical books on the people of Henderson County and writes from a lifelong interest in the history of the area.


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