Martha reminisces about her family’s mountain roots while dipping into the delicious vocabulary of Southernisms found in The Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English. When ya’ll listen to this one, you’ll find out what a “cackleberry” is — and why you don’t want to drink milk that’s “blinky.”
Transcript of “Appalachian Cackleberries (minicast)”
Welcome to another mini-podcast of A Way with Words.
I’m Martha Barnette.
My co-host Grant Barrett is off at the zoo.
He said something about going over there, looking for part-time work, teaching English as a second language to parrots.
Anyway, speaking of learning to talk, you know, I’m always curious about the stories of how a person falls in love with language, and I wanted to share with you one of mine.
My story goes all the way back to the foothills of western North Carolina.
My dad, Henley Barnette, was born there in a one-room log cabin at the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain.
My father’s people were hillbillies, and each year my parents would take me from our home in Louisville, Kentucky to pay him a visit.
So every summer, I’d hear all these relatives of mine using words and phrases I’d never heard before.
They’d say things like, I reckon, and over yonder, and he was a-going to church.
They’d use the word fetch instead of get.
And for the past tense of fetch, they’d say foched, as in, he foched me the rifle gun.
And from the time I was very small, I’d hear my Aunt Mazo, that’s M-A-Z-O, Aunt Mazo, say things like, Mothan, you want me to fry you up some liver mush?
And no, you don’t want to drink that milk. It’s blinky.
Blinky, I wondered. The milk is blinky? Why did Aunt Maiso say it was blinky?
Well, it turns out that in that part of the country, milk that’s blinky is milk that’s gone sour.
It’s an idea that may derive from the folk tradition that sour milk is the result of witchcraft, specifically the evil eye.
And of course, then there’s the fact that if you’re unlucky enough to sip sour milk, you’re going to wince and blink a lot.
So imagine what it was like for me, this little budding word nerd, to be immersed each summer in this whole new way of speaking, to hear my own relatives speaking a kind of English, but not the one that I knew.
I’m reminded of all this whenever I browse through one of my all-time favorite reference books.
It’s the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, edited by Michael B. Montgomery and Joseph S. Hall.
Now, this is a scholarly work, but it’s very accessible, and it gives you a whiff of the poetry that is Southern Appalachian English.
Now, notice I said Southern Appalachian, which is the way you pronounce it in that part of the country.
If you flip through this magnificent volume, you’ll find a whole passel, that’s another word my dad used to use, a whole passel of delicious expressions like, blue snow, brag dog, and chatarack.
You’ll discover that a cackleberry is simply an egg.
You gotta love that, going out to the hen house to gather cackleberries.
And you’ll learn that a clawed buster is simply a heavy rain, also known, of course, as a frog strangler or a gully washer.
And get this, I was thrilled recently to find out that you can read excerpts of the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English online at Michael Montgomery’s website.
And here’s the best part. You can also hear audio of native speakers of Southern Appalachian English recorded by a researcher back in 1939.
Now, this is a real linguistic treat.
There are recordings and transcripts to go with them.
And it’s been so long since I spent a summer in North Carolina, I have to tell you, I got chills listening to it just now.
It’s like when you catch the scent of something and it instantly whisks you all the way back to childhood.
If you’d like to hear some of these gorgeous recordings and read the transcripts, you’ll find a link at our website.
It’s waywordradio.org.
That’s Wayword as in way with words, waywordradio.org.
And while you’re online, why not write to us?
Our address is words@waywordradio.org.
Or you can always call us with your questions about language.
The number is 1-877-929-9673.
Thanks for listening, y’all.
I’m Martha Barnette.
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You can read excerpts from The Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, and hear audio of Southern Appalachian speakers circa 1939 at Michael Montgomery’s site.
To see the log cabin where Martha’s dad was born, check out the photo on her blog.
This article in the Tennessee Alumnus by someone else from that region is also a lot of fun.
Wow,
this one really got my attention. Of course we always have some difference of vocabulary used among the accents in a certain language, but i’d never thought about it before hearing this one. Having english as a foreigner language, it’s really stopped me from thinking about this stuff. As its not my own language, i think sometimes that there is only one way of saying things and i dont care much with the accents, and if i dont understand a “new” english, that doesnt mean it was a different one, but that means i dont know enough english. I dont know if i was clear, but my point is that its very good to see that native speakers face this kinda situation sometimes. And if i dont understand some english, that might mean its just different form the one im used to.
Thanks for your comment, Jorge. That podcast was especially dear to my heart, so I’m glad it got you thinking! And yes, sometimes it’s hard to understand someone from another region of the USA, or a different era — and even tougher to understand the English in other English-speaking countrie
I imagine that as a Brazilian, you’d run into the same thing in parts of Portugal, no?
Yeah, that definitely happens with us, brazilians
i gotta an aunt who has been linving in portugal for many years, and her husband is portuguese… its really hard to understand him… it seems that the language is completely another one!
The same happens with the portuguese from the south of brazil. I myself think its very hard to understand them as well. As they r very close to argentina and uruguay and they have received lots of immigrants from all over the world, their portuguese is different, sometimes i think they r speaking spanish and i have to take all my attention in order to understand them.
I might be mistaken, but i still think, although there r lots of differences, that its harder to understand a guy from portugal than you americans understand someone from UK.
Like you, I come from generations of Appalachians, although I was born in Indiana a year after my parents left West Virginia. Your podcast reminded me of years ago, when I took a South Dakotan to eastern Kentucky and West Virginia — and had to explain what people were saying for much of the trip. She simply could not understand the accent. I remember during a tour at Shakertown (Pleasant Hill), I did simultaneous translation of the tour guide’s entire talk. I’ve often claimed to be multilingual because I speak Hillbilly. Anyhow, thanks for bringing this way of speech to others’ attention.
Great story, Deborah. I remember Shakertown well! Reminds me of an interview I did years ago at Barbara Kingsolver’s farm in Southeastern Virginia. She was talking about all the prejudice against folks with Appalachian accents — how they’re one of the last groups it’s still considered OK to make fun of. But it’s quite a heritage indeed, isn’t it?
Hey,
I grew up in Oklahoma, but some of the expressions you mentioned are so powerful that they made it all the way there.
Especially, I remember “cackleberries,” and “gullywasher.” In the area I grew up, gullywashers really could cause damage by washing gullies through fields we were trying to raise crops in.
And while “clodbuster” was used, it referred to a farmer, especially one who was not particularly rich.
It looks like really descriptive (or just fun) words can make some big journeys on their own.
I couldn’t find this podcast episode available in ITunes this past week. Are the podcasts generally going to be made available there in the future? Thanks y’all.
Andy
They’ll be there soon! There was a technical snafu that should be resolved later today.
Ever hear a rain so bad it was a “frog strangler?”?
Hi, Larry — I’ve heard of “sodbuster” for a farmer, but not ‘clodbuster.”
Andrew – The iTunes feed is working now, right?
And Michael, yup, I sure have!
My Dad, who was more Aussie than Paul Hogan or Steve Irwin, used to call eggs “cackleberries” as well.
Convergent evolution is more likely than Dad picking up Appalachian slang, I think!
In “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?: The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music” authors Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg recount a anecdote of somebody praying in an Appalachian Church for “a clodbuster, but dear Lord, don’t give us no gullywasher!” suggesting a difference in degree of severity between the two. The words themselves suggest different meanings. One softens the soil, the other sweeps it downstream.