Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?

Subject: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: GUEST,Richard H
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 02:55 PM

First verse of song "Kingdom Coming" goes:
Say, darkies hab you seen de massa, Wid de muffstash on his face; Go 'long de road sometime dis mornin', Like he gwine leab de place? He seen the smoke 'way up de ribber, Whar de Lin-Rum gunboats lay, He took off his hat and lef berry sudden, An' I spec' he's run away."

Another verse mentions "Lin-Rum sojers". It's probably something obvious but I can't as yet figure out what Lin-Rum refers to.

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 02:59 PM

well - it appears to reference UNION gunboats and soldiers - but how "lin-rum" is derived I wouldn't know...

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 03:00 PM

Bad typo! The word is "Lin-kum," Henry Clay Work's stab at a dialectal pronunciation of "Lincoln."

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 04:50 PM

Lighter,
I stand educated. Should've checked other versions - I found it in one of those International Song Books printed in Scotland. The closest I could come was "Lincoln-Rumsfeld".

Was also surprised to learn that whites wrote songs making fun of whites from a black perspective.

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 05:00 PM

and the title is often called "The Year of Jubilo"

but here is the whole thing

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 05:19 PM

Putting in strange spellings to try to show how the accent sounded was a convention of the time. William Barnes did it in his Dorset poems. Kipling did it in Barrack Room Ballads. George Orwell commented how it often got in the way of really listening to the words.

Sometimes it's accurate enough - people do often pronounce "the" as "de" in many accents - but it doesn't really help writing it down. Spell it out in standard spelling, and read it with the accent in mind, and it's likely to be far more accurate anyways.

I suppose sometimes it was done as a way of making fun of people, but I suspect very often it would have been meant with the idea of reespecting the way people actually spoke. There's nothing any funnier about "de" then "the".

Change to orthodox spelling here and there's nothing disrespectfiul about this, aside arguably from "darkies". Apart from disrespect to the Master legging it:

Say, darkies have you seen the Master,
With the moustache on his face;
Going along the road sometime this mornin',
Like he gonna leave the place?
He seen the smoke 'way up the river,
Where the Lincoln gunboats lay,
He took off his hat and left very sudden,
And I expect he's run away."

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 06:12 PM

The story is given by Masato Sakurai in thread 48667: Kingdom Coming
The song was first performed in Chicago in 1862 by Christy's Minstrels.
That thread also mentions the sequel, "Babylon is Fallen."

At the time the song was written, the dialects of poorly educated whites, both born in America and immigrants from the British Isles and Europe, as well as the blacks, were common. The dialects of the whites, because of superior educational opportunities, disappeared more rapidly; moreover they appeared less frequently in printed matter except in diatribes against certain immigrant groups.

Digressing- "De" and "dat" persist in white accents in North America, especially among the French, because of their difficulty with "th." The soon-to-retire prime minister of Canada, Jean Chretien, like many other Canadians of French origin in (officially) bilingual Canada, never overcame the problem and in western Canadian newspapers (such as the Calgary Herald of right-wing bent), is represented as saying "de" and "dat" in political cartoons.

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: CET
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 06:14 PM

McGrath:

You're dead right. Using standard spelling really improves this song, just as it does with some of Kipling's poems.

Edmund

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 07:08 PM

well, it improves the political correctness of it...I'm not sure it improves the song. Although the dialect spelling 'may' be a bit exaggerated at times, this is pretty much how a slave would have said it. It is not necessary to assume that every case of dialect spelling is an affront to the speakers.

It is a fine line to walk between presenting history and music "as it was" for accuracy's sake and gratuititously insulting a group of people by bad parodies of their speech. It may be that where & when it is performed, and whether a disclaimer is offered is the dividing line.

I just hate to see the sweeping attempts to sanitize everything that are so common today.

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 07:10 PM

As a bit of a newspaper columnist, I used to be torn between our Bajan dialect (which sounds quite a lot like the Kingdom Coming language) and standard English. Sometimes I would do one, sometimes the other. Nowadays I stick mostly to English spelling but use our idiom quite a bit. One of our writers uses dialect spelling all the time but it can be tedious to read.

Some of our expressions and pronunciations are African but a lot are old English like "ax" for "ask". There is a Barbadian who reads the Caribbean news on BBC and it's kinda embarrassing to hear that "ax".

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 07:47 PM

Nothing to do with "political correctness", everything to do with removing something that tend to make it harder to get close to what is being said.

When reading or singing a poem or song it's normal enough to slip into some fancied approxiamtion of how the person portrayed might be likely to sound. But that isn't actually made any more accurate or easier by using those spelling conventions.

I was at a talk by Tim Laycock where he was telling about the Dorset poet William Barnes (Linden Lea was one of his) - and he was saying how it was much easier to get Dorset people with strong accents to reproduce these, while reading the poems, if Barnes' efforts to write down the accents were thrown overboard, and standard spelling used instead.

For all of us, if you tried to write down the way we speak Englsih in a way that actually reflected the sounds we make, the results would look extraordinary.

Here is William Barnes doing that (and granted, it's not just accent, there's dialect involved as well, and though I'm all for removing many of the spellings, I'm all for retaining the dialect constructions in this kind of affair) From a poem called The Wife a-Lost:

Since I noo mwore do zee your feäce,
Up steärs or down below,
I'll zit me in the lwonesome pleäce,
Where flat-bough'd beech do grow;
Below the beeches' bough, my love,
Where you did never come,
An' I don't look to meet ye now,
As I do look at hwome.

And here it is with standard spelling:

Since I no more do see your face
Upstairs or down below
I'll sit me in the lonesome place
Where flat-boughed beech do grow;
Below the beeches bough, my love,
Where you did never come
And I don't look to meet you now
As I do look at home.

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 08:07 PM

Ax for ask was widespread in America and still heard. It has been a long time since axi and axen were in common use- still common in the 16th century, when the first colonists came. It must have persisted in the dialect of immigrants from the British Isles, long after it disappeared in the written word. Skakespeare, Johnson, and the other playwrights adopted ask, probably as a result of the dictionaries of Randall Cotgrave and others. The old variation ast also is still heard in some areas.

Personally, I deplore the loss of dialect. A mature and literate people should be able to accept the dialects of their forefathers.

It has been pointed out that words which rhyme in dialect may not when sanitization is attempted, and temporal meanings are distorted. This is true of English, Scots, and other dialects as well as African-American.
Or should we sing For old times sake rather than For Auld Lang Syne?

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 08:18 PM

Whether it's written "ax" or "ask" doesn't surely stop people pronounce it the way that feels right in their part of the world? All kinds of older versions people think are gone are still very much current, and more often than not people don't even know they say them.

For example the dictionaries would tell you that "chimley" or "hankerchee" are obsolete, but they are said every day - but if you asked (or axed) the people who say to write it down, they'd spell them "chimney" and "handkerchief" (and when was the last time anyone heard someone pronounce "handkerchief" the way it is spelt?)

Subject: RE: Who were the 'Lin-Rum so-jers'?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 08:31 PM

McGrath, "Too right;" to borrow from Bob Bolton.