This word “plunder” is probably from Pennsylvania, as it is exactly equivalent to the German word plunder, in the sense of household effects, the original meaning of the word in German. Any kind of baggage may be called “plunder,” but the most accepted sense is household goods. It is quite seriously used. I have seen bills of lading on the Western waters certifying that A. B. had shipped “1 lot of plunder;” that is, household goods. It is here used figuratively for goods in general. ↩
“Congress land” was the old designation for land owned by the government. Under the Confederation, the Congress was the government, and the forms of speech seem to have long retained the notion that what belonged to the United States was the property of Congress. ↩
The commonest use of the word “chunk” in the old days was for the ends of the sticks of cordwood burned in the great fireplaces. As the sticks burned in two, the chunks fell down or rolled back on the wall side of the andirons. By putting the chunks together, a new fire was set a-going without fresh wood. This use of the word is illustrated in a folk-rhyme or nursery jingle of the country which has neither sense nor elegance to recommend it:
“Old Mother Hunk
She got drunk
And fell in the fire
And kicked up a chunk.”
“Peart” or peert is only another form of the old word pert—probably an older form. Bartlett cites an example of “peart” as far back as Sir Philip Sidney; and Halliwell finds it in various English dialects. Davies, afterward president of Princeton College, describes Dr. Lardner, in 1754, as “a little pert old gent.” I do not know that Dr. Davies pronounced his “pert” as though it were “peart,” but he uses it in the sense it has in the text, viz., bright-witted, intelligent. The general sense of “peart” is lively, either in body or mind. ↩
Mr. Lowell suggested to me in 1869 that this word “ ’low” has no kinship with “allow,” but is an independent word for which he gave a Low Latin original of similar sound. I have not been able to trace any such word, but Mr. Lowell had so much linguistic knowledge of the out-of-the-way sort that it may be worth while to record his impression. Bartlett is wrong in defining this word, as he is usually in his attempts to explain dialect outside of New England. It does not mean “to declare, assert, maintain,” etc. It is nearly the equivalent of “guess” in the Northern and Middle States, and of “reckon” in the South. It agrees precisely with the New England “calk’late.” Like all the rest of these words it may have a strong sense by irony. When a man says, “I ’low that is a purty peart sort of a hoss,” he understates for the sake of emphasis. It is rarely or never “allow,” but simply “ ’low.” In common with “calk’late,” it has sometimes a sense of purpose or expectation, as when a man says, “I ’low to go to town to-morry.” ↩
No phrase of the Hoosier and Southwestern dialect is such a stumbling-block to the outsider as “right smart.” The writer from the North or East will generally use it wrongly. Mrs. Stowe says, “I sold right smart of eggs,” but the Hoosier woman as I knew her would have said “a right smart lot of eggs” or “a right smart of eggs,” using the article and understanding the noun. A farmer omitting the preposition boasts of having “raised right smart corn” this year. No expression could have a more vague sense than this. In the early settlement of Minnesota it was a custom of the land officers to require a residence of about ten days on “a claim” in order to the establishment of a preemption right. One of the receivers at a land office under Buchanan’s administration was a German of much intelligence who was very sensitive regarding his knowledge of English. “How long has the claimant lived on his claim?” he demanded of a Hoosier witness. “Oh, a right smart while,” was the reply. The receiver had not the faintest notion of the meaning of the answer, but fearing to betray his ignorance of English he allowed the land to be entered, though the claimant had spent but about two hours in residing on his quarter-section. ↩
Written in 1871. ↩
The original from which this character was drawn is here described accurately. The author now knows that such people are not to be put into books. They are not realistic enough. ↩
Absurd as this speech seems, it is a literal transcript of words spoken in the author’s presence by a woman who, like Miss Hawkins, was born in Massachusetts. ↩
When the first edition of this book appeared, the critic who analyzed the dialect in The Nation confessed that he did not know what to “crate” meant. It was a custom in the days of early Indiana barbarism for the youngsters of a village, on spying a sleeping drunkard, to hunt up a “queensware crate”—one of the cages of round withes in which crockery was shipped. This was turned upside down over the inebriate, and loaded with logs or any other heavy articles that would make escape
