The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #67594   Message #1136204
Posted By: Sandy Mc Lean
14-Mar-04 - 12:36 PM
Thread Name: oral tradition - 'celtic' singing in usa
Subject: RE: oral tradition - 'celtic' singing in usa
The following is a few passages from Captains Courageous. The language is racist but the writing was a century ago, in very racist times.
             Sandy


The cook was a huge, jet-black negro, and, unlike all the negroes
Harvey had met, did not talk, contenting himself with smiles and
dumb-show invitations to eat more.

"See, Harvey," said Dan, rapping with his fork on the table, "it's
jest as I said. The young an' handsome men - like me an' Pennsy
an' you an' Manuel - we 're second ha'af, an' we eats when the
first ha'af are through. They're the old fish; and they're mean
an' humpy, an' their stummicks has to be humoured; so they come
first, which they don't deserve. Ain't that so, doctor?"

The cook nodded.

"Can't he talk?" said Harvey, in a whisper.

"'Nough to git along. Not much o' anything we know. His natural
tongue's kinder curious. Comes from the in'ards of Cape Breton, he
does, where the farmers speak home-made Scotch. Cape Breton's full
o' niggers whose folk run in there durin' aour war, an' they talk
like the farmers - all huffy-chuffy."

"That is not Scotch," said "Pennsylvania." "That is Gaelic. So I
read in a book."