Hello!

This thread has mainly focused on the word "Hilo", and the word/name "Sukie", and that's fine with me.

But using that first word as a base of operations [so to speak],
I'd like to expand the discussion.

As a result of a search of the DigiTrad, I found this shanty:

THE GALS O' CHILE
To Chile's coast we are bound away
Tim me heave-ho, hang 'er Hilo
To Chile's coast we are bound away
An' we'll dance an' all drink pisco!
We are bound away at the break o' day
Where the little Spanish gals are so bright an' gay
Tim me heave-ho, hang 'er Hilo
Sing olay for them Dago gals!

An' when we get to Vallipo,
Timme heave-ho etc.
An' when we get to Vallipo,
We'll dance etc.
Dance the gals up the street with a roll-'n'-go,
Grab 'em round the middle an' we won't let go.
Timme etc.

Them gals o' Chile, they are hard to beat.
From truck to keel they are trim an' sweet,
They're all a-pullin' on the ol' main-sheet.

Them senoritas, they are smart and gay,
They dance an' drink till the break o' day,
Then clean ye out an' blow yer pay.

Rosita, Anna, and Carmen too,
They'll greet ye with a hullabaloo,
An' soon ye'll know what they can do.

My trim little frigate is a very smart craft,
She's armed to the teeth both fore 'n' aft,
Sharp at the bows with a fine view abaft.

Them ol' senyoras, as we know well
They're red-hot divils drom the other side o' hell
An' ye'll niver get a chance for to ring a Chile bell

When the time comes for to sing farewell
Goodbye to the gals an' our money as well
Callyo, Coquimbo, an' ol' Corynel

From Shanties from the Seven Seas, Hugill
@sailor @work
filename[ GALCHILE
TUNE FILE: GALCHILE
http://www.mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=6349

It seems that the "Hilo" here is probably "high/low" as per a Miss Colcord [if I understood Q's very interesting & informative 08 May 06 - 02:05 PM post correctly}.

And btw, I'm deligted to see that I guessed correctly that hilo might also mean "party hardy" ["hardy" here meaning 'alot' or really have fun at parties/dances].

However, I was struck by the use of 'dago' in that THE GALS O' CHILE
song. I looked up that word through Google, and the first hit was the online American Heritage Dictionary. Here's an excerpt of that entry:

da·go
NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. da·gos or da·goes
Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for an Italian, Spaniard, or Portuguese.
ETYMOLOGY: Alteration of Spanish Diego, a given name, from Latin Iacbus, Jacob.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/60/D0006000.html

-snip-

I've been interested in name orgins & meanings for a while, but I had forgotten that the Spanish name 'Diego' was the root word for 'dago'. I knew that that word was a disparaging term for an Italian, but I didn't know that it also was used to disparge Spaniards, and Portuguese.

However, in that shanty quoted above, it seems to me that the girls from Chile were complimented. In that song, anyway, the "d" word * does not appear to be used as an insult.

I'm wondering if the Q or anyone else can provide some information about when this word became largely or totally a negative referent.

*Hereafter, when I post about the word, I am using the substitute "the 'd- word'". I feel that I have to be consistent since I use "the n-word" as a substitute for the word "n----r". I do so because of that word is considered highly offensive by me and by many but not all Black people. I recognize that during US and other forms of chattel slavery, some Black people in the South used the
n-word as a non-disparaging general referent for themselves and other Black people. But, I personally cringe when I hear that word and thus can't bring myself to dignify it by spelling it out. As a matter of fact, my aversion to that word, almost caused me to discontinue my study of secular African American slave songs. I also think that this aversion to the n-word and its common use in African American secular slave songs, is one of the main reasons these songs are rarely studied by Black people. I think two other reasons why African American secular slave songs these songs are rarely known and studied by African Americans and other Black people is because of the difficulty in understanding the meanings of dialectic words of those songs and the view that these songs may give support to the stereotypical image of the happy slave.

I reject that image of Black people being content in their servitude. And I believe that social singing & and dancing {as well as religious singing and religious dancing such as 'the shout"} gave my ancestors the strength to 'get over' the rigors and the horrors of chattel slavery.

I mean "get over" not in its current usage as someone who succeeds in pulling a fast one, but as that phrase is used in this African American spiritual that can still be heard today:

HOW I GOT OVER
How I got o-o-o-ver.
How I got o-o-o-ver.
{You know} my soul sits back and wonders
my soul sits back and wonders
how I got o-o-o-ver.