How We Talked and Common Folks

By Verna Mae Slone, Michael B. Montgomery, Sidney Saylor Farr and Len Slone

In these two classic memoirs, the beloved Appalachian author shares a rare and vibrant look at the life and culture of her rural Kentucky home.

A free-form combination of glossary and memoir, How We Talked is a timeless piece of literature that uses native expressions to depict everyday life in Caney Creek, Kentucky. In addition to phrases and their meanings, the book contains sections on the customs and wisdom of Slone's community, a collection of children's rhymes, and stories and superstitions unique to Appalachia.

Originally published in 1979, Common Folks documents Slone's way of life in Pippa Passes, Kentucky, and expands on such diverse topics as family pets, coal mining, education, and marriage. Slone's firsthand account of this unique heritage draws readers into her hill-circled community and allows them to experience a lifestyle that is nearly forgotten.

Whether Slone is writing about the particulars of Appalachian folk medicine or the universal experiences of family life, her deep insight and eye for evocative detail make for compelling reading. Published together for the first time, How We Talked and Common Folks celebrate the spirit of an acclaimed Appalachian writer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 26, 2009
• ISBN: 9780813139173

Book preview

HOW WE TALKED and COMMON FOLKS

HOW WE TALKED and COMMON FOLKS

Verna Mae Slone

Illustrations by Len Slone

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

Copyright © 2009 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

www.kentuckypress.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Slone, Verna Mae, 1914–

How we talked ; and, Common folks / Verna Mae Slone ; foreword for How We Talked by Michael B. Montgomery ; foreword for Common Folks by Sidney Saylor

Farr ; illustrations by Len Slone.

p. cm.

First work originally published: Pippa Passes, Ky. : Pippa Valley Printing, 1982; 2nd work originally published: Pippa Passes, Ky. : Writers and the Appalachian Learning Laboratory, Alice Lloyd College, 1979.

ISBN 978-0-8131-9209-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Knott County (Ky.)—Biography. 2. Knott County (Ky.)—Social life and customs. 3. English language—Provincialisms—Kentucky. 4. Pippa Passes (Ky.)—Biography. 5. Pippa Passes (Ky.)—Social life and customs. I. Slone, Len. II. Slone, Verna Mae, 1914– Common folks. III. Title. IV. Title: Common folks.

F457.K5S57 2009

This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

CONTENTS

How We Talked

Foreword by Michael B. Montgomery

Our Old Sayings

Words and Their Meanings as Used by Us

Descriptive Phrases

Names of People, Places, and Things

Chimney Corner Laws: Customs of the Hills

Food—Grub or Vittles

Whiskey—Likker, Mountain Dew, Moonshine, White Lightnin’

Religion

School

Children’s Rhymes

Children’s Toys, Snacks, and Games

Weather Signs and Seasons

Medical Terms: Cures and Superstitions

Superstitions

Terms of Work and Names of Tools

Common Folks

Foreword by Sidney Saylor Farr

HOW WE TALKED

To Brandon, Justin, and Kari my three great-grandchildren

May their tribe increase.

They are the twelfth generation of Slones that have lived on Caney.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In no way have I tried to list all the peculiar words and phrases used by my people. Also, many that I have included are universal—used by other people from another locality with a different background; but every word seen here in this book was used by us, so maybe that just goes to show we were just like folks everywhere.

The following people helped me to gather the information to write How We Talked:

The late Herbert Slone

Armatha Inmon

Mary Sparkman

Edna Pratt

Dock John Whesley Hall and his wife, Bertha

Lurainia Watson Hall

Jimmie Smith

FOREWORD

The remarkable circumstances of how a memoir, written by a native of a small rural community in Knott County, Kentucky, became an Appalachian classic are unique to the annals of American literature. Critics and readers alike wondered how Verna Mae Slone, a grandmother who did not devote herself to writing until well into her sixties, could emerge to produce such a striking, compelling account of life in the Kentucky mountains. Given her plainspokenness, she probably would have told an interviewer something like, I wrote when I was ready to write. Indeed, she was prompted first to write for her descendants, to preserve the memories of her struggles and redeeming joys. This private audience, however, soon shared her work with others. But in a more profound sense I suspect that she was ready to write after a lifetime persuaded her to become an apologist and defender of such mountain values as unpretentiousness, closeness of family, endurance in trial, respect and consideration for others, dignity, and pride tempered by modesty. By presenting her story as one that could have been told by any ordinary woman in Caney Creek, What My Heart Wants to Tell gained the universal appeal that continues to give it a special place in the hearts of those who have read it and recommended it to friends. What more effective antidote for the demeaning stereotypes of Appalachian people than the account that is What My Heart Wants to Tell? The story of Slone’s life, so touchingly and powerfully rendered, makes each of us reflect on our own lives.

How We Talked is in many ways a sequel to What My Heart Wants to Tell. Produced by a tiny publisher in Pippa Passes in 1982, it too is meant as a testimony to lifeways rapidly fading. The book is part glossary and part memoir; it catalogs usages and expressions mainly by subject matter (medicine, superstitions, food, school, etc.), often with accompanying anecdotes from episodes and patterns of Appalachian family life. The arrangement is never alphabetical—one cannot simply look up a term—but is ram-shackledty and seemingly based on loose association. This fluid organization permits comparison with terms never or rarely used (as by only men or women) and the inclusion of other types of information not usually found in conventional glossaries.

The reader quickly learns that the author aims not to compile language so much as to reveal how language was the essential glue of mountain life. Slone explains not just the forms of language that were used in certain situations to mean certain things (although there is, to be sure, plenty of insight into the nuances of mountain vocabulary), but, more important, the implicit rules governing language use in the mountains. One of my favorite examples is found on page 29, where Slone recounts her son’s experience with a bus driver in Gary, Indiana, where he worked. When her son asked a question, he pronounced light in his down-home way as laht, eliciting a sneer from the driver: ‘What part of the South are you from, boy? Haven’t you been up here long enough to learn how to talk?’ ‘I hope that I never lose my way of talking,’ my son replied. ‘If and when I do, I am going home. If I forgot how my mother taught me to talk, I might forget what she taught me, and one of the first things she taught me was to be kind to strangers.’

I don’t reckon that bus driver argued with that boy much for teaching such a universal lesson. Slone has a typical Appalachian sense of insider/outsider duality, but she wants less to take pleasure in the tables being turned on a foreigner than to affirm the integrity of mountain speechways and behavior, and the values communicated, such as a highly refined sense of propriety. How We Talked is thus about much more than talking. It’s about the entire range of communicative behavior witnessed by the author during her early adulthood—how people related to one another and how communities functioned. The rules of interaction are finely nuanced; often what is not said is as important as what is actually spoken. Slone is a keen, lifelong observer of the intimate language that encapsulates the mores, customs, beliefs, humor, attitudes, empathy, and wisdom of generations of mountain people.

This book is a fine blend of sharply personal narrative and typical Appalachian life. People from other communities (and perhaps the rare anthropologist who learns the insider’s world) will have to judge how typical Caney Creek speech and customs are, but the material in this book comes from a sharp lifelong observer of her community, and is a chronicle of mountain life made all the more precious by the gradual passing of that life. How We Talked stands virtually alone as a testament by an insider to what many mountain people will recognize as an accurate, sensitive, and unvarnished presentation of a way of life they once knew and that, though receding, is too deeply ingrained, too vital a part of what makes mountain people who they are, to disappear in a generation or two. It should be read closely by sociologists, anthropologists, social workers, educators, and many other specialists. How We Talked will teach or remind all of us how talk makes mountain society work.

Michael B. Montgomery

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

This book presents Appalachian language as it was spoken during Verna Mae Slone’s formative years, nearly a century ago, and it includes some language that modern readers might find offensive. After serious consideration, the publisher decided to retain that language in the interests of authenticity and preserving the historic record. This book offers insight into the development of modern mountain life, and censoring it would provide an inaccurate picture of the heritage of Appalachian language.

OUR OLD SAYINGS

The beautiful language of our people is slowly fading into the past. Impossible to capture on paper, hard to understand or learn, it cannot be imitated: even on tape it loses something. Yet it’s never forgotten or lost by someone born into it. I have seen and heard folks come back to the hills after being away, Ph.D’s to their credit, slip back into our dialect in a manner of hours. Yet I have heard professional actors that speak several languages fluently think they were talking like a hillbilly: to us it sounds so unreal it would be pathetic if it were not so laughable.

I have heard the words deep twangy used to describe our voices, which is correct as far as it goes, but its musical, soft, low murmuring sound is hard to describe. The memory of its beauty has been tarnished by outsiders, ridiculed and demeaned by its exaggeration. Our language belongs only to us people of Appalachian Mountains. It may vary from state to state; small but distinct differences in the pronouncing of a word, use of an expression; even families living only a few miles apart are found to have some words used only by them. For example, when we mean to say I don’t know if I will, I say I don’t know where I will or not. My husband says, I don’t know what I will. We do not talk the same to outsiders as we do among ourselves. My husband can tell when I am on the phone if I am talking to one of us or an outsider. I am proud of our way of talking. I wish to retain it, I want to preserve its memory. I hope to accomplish more than just a list of words and their meaning; the expressions, the thoughts behind them, how they were used . . . thus capturing the way mountain people think and believe, their customs, traditions, way of life.

The softness of our voices causes us to drop the g in words ending in ing, then laughing becomes laughin’; morning becomes mornin’; smiling becomes smilin’. We slur two syllables together, then chestnut becomes chesnet. Sometimes two or three words become one, the greeting how do you do turns to howdy; how are you—harrie.

We do not talk as our fathers and mothers did. As the outsiders moved in, our language was absorbed into theirs. Our children have lost more, the grandchildren have only a small trace of it left, as they get more educated. I know it’s something that must be folded and put away, as the clothes worn by our dead ancestors, but it must not be forgotten, but preserved, taken out now and again, admired for its beauty, accepted for its wisdom, and remembered with pride by those to whom it belongs.

Some of my sayings belong to the Slone family, some just to the community of Caney Creek here in Knott County of Eastern Kentucky—but most were used by all hill people of Appalachia.

I will not try to keep them alphabetically, but group them as food, work, medicine, school, religion, superstitions, etc.

Some words or expressions are a little off color and as a Christian I am reluctant to use them, but as they were a part of our language, I feel I must include them. I have tried to make this as interesting as I can so it will not be too boresome to read. Some parts are amusing, some perplexing, all educational. Some words are still used. Most are forgotten by the grandchildren of the people that once used this form of communication. Yet it will bring back memories to others of another place and time. It’s not my intention to ridicule or criticize in any derogatory manner these, my people. I love and respect them. I am one of them.

To call these, our people, ignorant is the highest act of ignorance that could be imposed by anyone. There is a great difference between being ignorant and illiterate. The ingenuity they used to accomplish some of the things they did shows wisdom. That the results were sometimes crude and simple does not mean a lack of intelligence, just that they had less to work with. People that obtain their education from books are only learning what someone else learned before them; our folks learned out of need and necessity. Like learning to tell time by the sun, the seasons and the stars; how to measure by using the length of the fingers, hands, arm spread, or walking stride; weather prediction by watching the formation of the clouds, how the smoke rose from the chimney, actions of the animals. Sure it was spiced with superstition, but among the chaff were kernels of truth. To remember which were the short months and which were the long ones, they counted the knuckles on the fist, each knuckle counting one, the space between one; beginning with January for the first knuckle, the space between the first and second finger as February, the second finger March, etc., the last one July, then back to the beginning with August. All the knuckles were long months, the spaces between the short ones.

All our sayings had a different meaning when they originated. Some were first used for the first time as late as the last fifty or sixty years, some are so old no one knows when they began—based on a real event, the incident forgotten, the expression still used because so much can be implied in a few words when both parties know the meaning of an expression, yet so useless and misunderstood by others with a different background. Some phrases have lost their meaning and are now used humorously.

—When someone knocks on the door he might hear a voice from inside say, Come in if your nose is clean. Long ago people were not welcome if they had some contagious disease. An unclean or runny nose might be a sign of sickness, a clean nose meant a healthy and welcome person. We now use this phrase just as a joke and only as long as we know to whom we are speaking.

—Lots of older people on Caney still say, Now I guess you know how Humpy stands it. This means, Now that you are having the same trouble that I have been having for some time you can now sympathize with me. When Mrs. Lloyd first established a school on Caney in Knott County of Eastern Kentucky, which later became the Alice Lloyd College, she used coal for fuel. Abisha Johnson was hired to attend the fires in all the buildings connected with the school. The coal was bought from and delivered by other residents of Caney. As the houses were built high on the sides of the hills, the coal had to be carried from the coal house, where it had been dumped, to each house. Abisha carried it, one sackful at a time, on his back. It’s very uncomfortable to carry coal this way; the edges of the coal are sharp. It’s also very dirty. To make things worse, Abisha had a hunchback that had given him the nickname Humpy. One day he met my father in the road leading through the campus. (My father was also employed by the college, to make chairs.) This time my father also had a sack of coal on his back. Looking at him with sympathy and humor, Abisha said, Now I guess you know how Humpy stands (endures) it.

—Another: It’s strictly understood that old dry don’t count means, Don’t bring up anything from the past although it is relevant to the present situation. We must only use the present evidence as bearing on the case. A small boy was helping my father make molasses, getting into more trouble than helping, when he almost fell into the pan of boiling molasses, frightening everyone, as well as himself. My father said to him, I bet you a quarter that you got so scared you nastied your britches (pants). The boy took him up on the bet. There’s only one way to prove it, you must pull down your clothes and show me. As the little fellow began to remove his pants he said, Now, it’s strictly understood that old dry don’t count. Needless to say, he got the quarter.

—Another one: The peanuts are coming up awful pretty, belongs only to our family and oddly enough means, Let’s change the subject. This talk is going to hurt someone that’s listening and cause us all to be sad. When my children were very small, my husband was away from home a lot of the time. The children and I were alone. We had no close neighbors. There was only one bedroom, which was also the living room. After we had gone to bed we would talk for a while. I would not let them bring up any subject that might cause us to be sad, just before we went to sleep. If it was something that needed to be discussed, it could wait until the next day. One night something had bothered them and they kept on again and again referring to it, as I kept trying to talk away from it. At last, in desperation, I said, Can’t you all think of anything else to talk about? My oldest son answered, Mom, our peanuts are coming up awful pretty. The laugh that followed chased away all the gloom and we went to sleep in a happy mood.

—Being paid by Grant means you are working without wanting or expecting any pay. Grant was the name of a man who drove around with his wife in a buggy, staying with first one person, a relative or friend, then another, having no home of their own. Going the same route, they usually visited Caney once a year. One day some men were playing horseshoes. A neighbor asked them, When do you expect to get paid for this hard work? One of the men answered, Oh, Grant will pay us on his next trip around.

—The words Nigh to me can mean We are close kin, but it means a lot more than just that. If you hear someone say of another person, He is nigh to me, it represents a closeness, a belonging to each other, that no one nor anything can come between, not even death. This is only found in the mountains, and not understood by outsiders. Some man might jokingly say of his wife, I have lived with her so long that she has begun to feel nigh to me.

—The word love is not used very much by a hill person except when he is talking about the love he has for God. The word love is held too sacred to be used lightly, if at all. I think a lot of that person means I like them a lot. Some respected man of the community in a high position is said to be Well thought of and a woman or man that shows love for their spouse or children is said to be a fool about them. Young people beginning to show interest in someone of the opposite sex are said to be claiming each other; the feeling has not progressed quite far enough along for a date. Then, when they begin to date, they are going with each other. The real dating was sparking. This word sparkin’ got its beginning because the couple’s only way to get to talk to each other was to sit side by side in two straight-backed chairs (homemade split bottoms) before the fire, after the family had gone to bed in the same room. Whispering to each other, sparks rising from the chimney told the neighbors that someone was up later than the usual bedtime. During the daytime they might do their sparking lying across the bed, side by side, while the family went in and out of the same room. Not much privacy, huh? Maybe that’s why they did not spark very long before they got married and set up a housekeeping. Yet most often they lived with their parents for the first months, until they got together enough house plunder. Some parents had a small, one-room house close by where the newlyweds first lived, while waiting to build a house of their own. This house was called a weening house and was used over and over again as each child got married. The term meaning sexual intercourse was fooling around with a woman. A man would boast of his faithfulness to his wife by saying, I never fooled with any woman in my life but her. Rape was mistreating a woman and the man involved was dealt with very harshly—sometimes hanged. Using obscene language was blackguarding. One of the first lessons taught to a boy by his father was Never talk bad to a good girl and never fool with a mean girl under age. Never talk bad in front of your women kinfolks. A man could be indicted for asking a woman for a sexual favor unless he could prove she had thrown herself at him (showing undue friendship)—even as small an act as asking for a cigarette, as smoking was unbecoming to women. Incest and homosexuality were seldom heard of. The few times it was suspected it was unbelieved, talked about in whispers. The man was hated, shunned, called a brute, sometimes beat up or flogged, and even hanged.

—We’uns will pay you’s: when these words were used, with a handshake by a mountain man, it was more binding than any contract drawn up by a lawyer, or a treaty between countries. On these words were based the very essence of mountain philosophy. Even death could not break this promise. It did not just mean, I will pay you, but, If for some reason I cannot pay you, some of my family or kinfolks will see that you are paid. If for some reason you can’t receive it, then it will be paid to some of your family or kin. The cash money would be paid only once, but the favor remembered and paid again and again, over and over, generation after generation. A grudge (resentment for an insult or injury) was repaid the same way, thus resulting in the family feuds. Almost all local elections were either lost or gained by this custom. A man could lose or gain votes for something done by his grandfather. Another well-known custom: if you asked a price for something, and someone offered to give you what you had asked, you must take this price, even if you had later changed your mind and did not want to sell at that price. It was counted very shameful if you did not, and was called ruing back. Also, when trading with someone, you might ask for something else thrown in for boot. Like, I will give you my horse for yours if you will throw in the saddle to boot.

—Laying a child to someone meant to tell who the father was. This phrase had its beginning before our folks left the old country. Many times a poor girl, pretty enough to catch the eye of a rich neighbor, found herself pregnant and deserted. When the girl’s father learned of it, he would take the baby and leave it at the door of the rich man. The guilty man would raise the baby as his own, never telling anyone that it really was his; she was laying the baby to him.

Once a middle-aged man, a resident of Caney, had been indiscreet with his neighbor’s wife, whose husband had been gone from home for some time. The affair progressed long enough for the woman to get pregnant. The man knew the woman would soon be showing and the news would soon become common knowledge, and his wife would hear it. Thinking that it would be better if she heard it from him, one night he said to her, Well, you know that baby our neighbor is going to have, well she is laying it to us.

—Our folks did not mind being joked about their looks. If they had a long nose, big ears, large feet, or were cross-eyed, it was treated and accepted as something to laugh about. As long as it was not meant to be an insult it was accepted as a joke, as long as it was by kinfolks. You did not talk about a person if they were not your people (relative). My father was always telling one of my cousins, whom he loved very much, that he had a face that would scare a dog to death. One night my cousin came home and found his old dog lying before the fire. He was very old and apparently dying. He pushed the dog and told him to move. When the dog did not move quickly enough, he took him by the ears, meaning to put him out of the house. The dog took one look at him and dropped dead. Well, he said, Uncle Kitteneye has always told me that I had a face that would scare a dog to death, now I’ve went and done it.

—The word mind was used many ways and had different meanings—If I have to mind a child, and it don’t mind me, I might have a mind to whip it. I don’t think its parents would mind, for I was out of my mind to agree to mind it.

a)  mind - take care of a child

b)  mind - to obey

c)  mind - not care

d)  mind - to have a mind; to think

e)  mind - to not mind; not care

f)   mind - out of your mind; crazy

g)  mind - out of your mind

h)  mind - bring back to mind; remember

i)   mind - Do you mind that time; do you remember

j)   mind - Pay that no never mind; don’t let that bother you

k)  mind - I have a half a mind; undecided

l)   mind - give him a piece of my mind; tell him what you think

m) mind - I don’t mind if I do; sure, I would love to

n)  mind - I don’t mind my children going swimming; I don’t care.

o)  mind - Just put that out of your mind; forget it

p)  mind - It came to my mind; I remembered

q)  mind - out of his mind; delirious; sick with fever

r)   mind - out of sight, out of mind; quickly forgotten

s)   mind - lost his mind; gone crazy

—TURN

a) turn - personality; He has a good turn. She has a friendly turn.

b) turn - a turn of meal; a sackful. When folks took their corn to be ground into meal, it was first come, first served, so each waited his turn.

c) turn - to turn a post; in making a chair the post was formed on a turning lay (a large wooden wheel made to go around by a foot pedal, causing a smaller wheel to turn the piece of wood so it could be cut and formed by a sharp chisel.

d) turn - He won’t turn a hand to help me. He won’t do anything.

e) turn - Turn and turn about is fair play; You help me and I will help you; one good turn deserves another.

f) turn - for milk to turn, or a turn of milk; milk was put in a crock or churn and set before the fire or in the sun so the warmth would cause it to ferment, or become sour, so it could be churned and made into butter. When the process first began it was said to blinky, also called blue John, then clabbered.

Once, when an old woman that I will call Aunt Rue sat her churn before the fire, her dog Fido came into the house and used the side of the churn for his own purpose. When Aunt Rue saw this she screamed, Oh, now I will have to strain my milk all over again, because Fido has - - - - - - in it. Now we use this phrase when