20 To-Englan agency;
An week by week dem shippin off De m countryman like fire Fi immigrate an populate De seat a de Empire.
25 Oonoo? se how life is funny, you (plural) Oonoo see de tunabout? Jamaica live fi box bread Ou t a English people mout.
5. The girls went crying after him. hundred thousand Jamaicans migrated to Britain 1. Encouraged by the postwar labor shortage in from 1948 to 1962. England and the scarcity of work at home, three
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BENNETT: JAMAICA OMAN / 247 3
For when dem catch a Englan
30 An start play dem different role Some will settle down to work An some will settle fi de dole.0 for unemployment benefits
Jane seh de dole is not too bad Because dey payin she 35 Tw o pounds a week fi seek a job Dat suit her dignity.
Me seh Jane will never fine work At de rate how she dah look For all day she stay pon Aunt Fan couch
40 An read love-story book.
Wha t a devilment a Englan! De m face war an brave de worse; But ah wonderin how dem gwine stan Colonizin in reverse.
1957
Jamaica Oman1
Jamaica oman cunny, sah!? cunning, sir Is how dem jinnal SO?? how are they so tricky? Look how long dem liberated An de man dem never know!
5 Look how long Jamaica oman ?Modder, sister, wife, sweetheart? Outa road an eena yard0 deh pon home A dominate her part!
From Maroon Nanny2 teck her body
10 Bounce bullet back pon man, To when nowadays gal-pickney? tun girl-child Spellin-Bee champion.
From de grass root to de hill-top, In profession, skill an trade, is Jamaica oman teck her time Dah mount an meek de grade.
Some backa man a push, some side-a Ma n a hole him han, Some a lick sense eena man head,
20 Some a guide him pon him plan!
1. Woman. tury. Bullets reputedly ricocheted off her and killed 2. Jamaican national hero who led the Maroons, her enemies. fugitive slaves, in battle during the eighteenth cen
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247 4 / NATION AND LANGUAGE
Neck an neck an foot an foot wid man She buckle hole0 her own; While man a call her 'so-so rib' Oman a tun backbone!3 she take hold 25 An long before Oman Lib4 bruck out Over foreign lan Jamaica female wasa work Her liberated plan! 30Jamaica oman know she strong, She know she tallawah,0 But she no want her pickney0 dem Fi start call her 'Puppa'.? sturdy children Papa 35So de cunny Jamma0 oman Gwan like pants-suit is a style, An Jamaica man no know she wear De trousiz all de while! Jamaican 40So Jamaica oman coaxin Fambly budget from explode A so Jamaica man a sing 'Oman a heaby load!'5 But de cunny Jamma oman Ban her belly,6 bite her tongue, Ketch water, put pot pon fire An jus dig her toe a grung.7 45 For 'Oman luck deh a dungle',8 Some rooted more dan some, But as long as fowl a scratch dungle heap Oman luck mus come! 50Lickle by lickle man start praise her, Day by day de praise a grow; So him praise her, so it sweet her, For she wonder if him know. 1975
3. Eve is said to have come from Adam's rib (Gen-6. Binds her belly (a practice associated with grief; esis 2.21-22). also a suggestion of belt tightening, as in hunger). 4. Women's Liberation Movement. 7. And just digs her toes into the ground. 5. A folk song often sung while working in the 8. I.e., woman's luck will be rediscovered (proverfields. bial). 'Dungle': garbage dump.
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2475
BRIAN FRIEL
b. 1929 For the renowned playwright Brian Friel, as for his Irish predecessors W. B. Yeats and James Joyce, the vexed issue of language and national identity has been a central preoccupation. His play Translations (1980), which reimagines the transitional moment when the language of the colonizer is supplanting the language of the colonized, is one of the richest late-twentieth century meditations on the role of the English language in British colonialism.
Set in 1833 in the rural village of Baile Beag, County Donegal, on the northwest corner of Ireland, the play dramatizes two key processes in the linguistic transformation of a colonized nation: remapping and education. Captain Lancey and Lieutenant Yolland, English officers in the Royal Engineers, have been sent to Ireland to help remap it with anglicized and standardized place-names. An intermediary figure, Owen, originally from Baile Beag but employed by the English as an interpreter, is helping the imperial military, as he puts it, 'to translate the quaint, archaic tongue' of the Irish 'into the King's good English.' To produce Britain's first Ordnance Survey of Ireland, ordered by Parliament in 1824, each Gaelic name is replaced either by a translated English equivalent (Cnoc na Ri becomes Kings Head) or a similar English sound (Druim Dubh becomes Dromduff). Language is crucial in claiming the land for the British crown?ridding it of ambiguity and opacity, making it readable, knowable, taxable, militarily penetrable, evacuating its linguistically embodied history and memory. After Lieutenant Yolland and the Irishwoman Maire fall in love?a cross- linguistic and cross-ethnic romance with tragic consequences?the psychic violence of this colonial renaming becomes a matter of brutal physical force. The play widens the scope of its profound reflection on naming and identity through suggestive parallels with other acts of nomination?the nearly mute Sarah's vocalizing her name, the ritual naming of a baby, Owen's accidental renaming as Boland by the English
