5 The late 19th century

5.1 Pontoppidan (1881)

The material in this section is from Dr. Erik Pontoppidan, a Danish physician who lived on St. Thomas and wrote an article about Negerhollands in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. Although it is rather obvious from his remarks about Negerhollands that he was not a linguist, his article is very valuable because it contains, apart from a copy of the 14th chapter of Matthew taken from Magens (1781), two other sections which were recorded from late 19th-century Negerhollands speakers of St. Thomas by Pontoppidan himself, proverbs (that were copied in Adams 1977) and an informal conversation. Here, we only present the Negerhollands texts, and we leave out Pontoppidan's German translations.

Translation

The cockroach does not have any reason to be in a chicken run.

The chicken looks for the basket, the basket locks it in.

The road is long, the ochro dries on its tree.

One finger cannot catch lice.

The blue bird says: when the rain is finished, I will build my own house.

Poor people do not have [wood] for their hearth to burn.

The chicken says: I can swear for my eggs, but not for my chickens.

In a good herd goat its bottom is outside.

The poor are not nice.

When the wind rises, then you should be able to see the hen's bottom.

A great mind makes the crab not have a head

When the guinea fowl's wings have broken, then it looks for company with the hen.

The crocodile is not afraid of die snake, the snake is not afraid of the crocodile.

The water boils for fish, the fish does not know.

The cow's horns never will be too heavy for him to carry.

The ant falls into the molasses, because he found it sweet.

The mountain cannot touch another mountain, but two people will touch

Kill the mother in front of the child, and it will eat; but kill the child in front of the mother, she will not eat, she will cry.

Wherever your bottle is, my glass is also

One man's death is another man's bread.

Each man looks for his own wife.

When a man is dead, grass grows at his door.

It is not because a cat strolls around, that it catches rats.

A crab does not walk around, it does not become fat; when it walks around too much, it will go into the pot.

Specimen of a conversation in ordinary creole.

- Morning, comrade, how are you this morning?

- Thanks, I am fine. How did you sleep last night. Did you dream something nice?

- I did not sleep well, I had pain in my tooth, but in the morning it was much better, thank God.

- You ought to go to the doctor to pull out the tooth.

- I rather wait a little longer, to see if the tooth will hurt me again, then I will go to pull it. What will you eat for breakfast today?

- I will have stewed meat with potatoes and then a cup of tea. Comrade Meria, you go to your field to go gather ochre and dig potatoes. The pumpkin has not ripened yet, until the moon is full. The parsley is not good yet for cutting.

- How are the animals coming along?

- The old cow is pregnant and will soon have a calf. The donkey has run away and gone across the mountain, I have sent the boy to go catch it. The pig is in the sty, I will go look for potato stalk for it to eat. A cow has come across the fence and has destroyed all the young plants; when I catch it, I will bring it to the fort, and make the owner pay. I will go to Taphus, I will go look for a piece of salted meat for me to throw into the pot.

- What will you have for dinner?

- I do not know. I like baked fish with baked banana; when I cannot have anything else, I eat salted meat with cornbread.

- I wonder if there is something new in Taphus; I need to go to know the news, because I come to the plantation; because we have work to do in plantation. I have to go to the field to go plant sugarcane.

- But neighbour, the pot is brewing.

- Put it on the ground until I stand up. I am going to talk with the master, but I will come and look at it myself.

- I will greet until later, I will come again.

- Goodbye.

5.2 The Magens letter

In 1914 the famous creolist avant la lettre Hugo Schuchardt published the so-called ‘Magens-letter’ in the Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Taal- en Letterkunde. This letter, written on the 23rd of February 1883 and addressed to Schuchardt, was written by A. Magens, a descendant of J.M. Magens (see Introduction and section 4.4.2). In the same volume, a translation of the letter into Dutch and a postscript were published by D.C. Hesseling. Unfortunately, we have not been able to trace the original manuscript of the letter, and we suspect that it has disappeared. At least, it has not turned up so far in the Schuchardt Archive in Graz, Austria.

The letter is an interesting example of a 19th-century free composition in Negerhollands, in which several topics of daily life are included. Notice that A. Magens admits having only limited knowledge of the language.

Proverbs

Translation

Text

My dear master doctor! I thought the best way for me to make you understand the right way the creole language is spoken is to write you in creole as far as I can. I do not know much of it but what I know I am satisfied to write. I do not know how to spell the words well, I am spelling them as I catch them, when I hear the people. I have asked a girl of an old creole family to help me, I have asked her in English what I want to say, and she says to me how to say it in creole. In this way I think I will give you a good understanding of the language. I have tried to get some books in creole but I cannot get more than a hymn book of the year eighteen hundred and thirty four and a New Testament, which does not have the date of the year. I have also searched for the

grammar, which one of my old family has written, I did not get it yet; I hope soon I will get one to send to you. I think you will be happy to hear many creole words, so I will write now all the words I have found. When we get up in the morning we say our prayer; we wash our body, comb our hair, clean our whole face, forehead, eye, nose, mouth with lip and teeth, ear, cheek, chin, throat, shoulder with arm, hand and finger, breast, belly, back, hip, the two buttocks, knees, feet and toes. Then we dry our body and put on our clothes. The women folk put on a chemise, then under-dress, stockings with shoes then jackets, bind their head with their handkerchief. The men folk put on shirt with trousers, under-camisole, then they put a hat on their head. The little children put on their little dress and nothing else. When we are ready dressing we take our hot water with sugar; the men take a dram. They like dram very much, they take it in the morning and after they eat their breakfast when it is ready. The breakfast they want is cornbread with fish, and then they take a dram again. As you see they like their dram very much. They take dram so much as they can get. As they can get to eat, they are bone lazy to work. They want to quarrel and fight against each other. This is the way of life of the poor people. The other day it was hundred and fifty years the head clergyman came here to preach for the negroes. They celebrated the day and they laid the foundation for a new church. All the high heads of the country were there, the Governor with his wife laid the first stone. All the reading and the sermon and the hymns were in English. When they celebrated the hundred year anniversary, they had read a sermon in creole. I asked the clergyman to look for the sermon of the day and he promised me to look for it for me. In the slave period before the negroes had been freed, there were many sugar plantations.

The work in the sugar plantations was hard work. The people, men and women, had to get up early at dawn, take their pick axe on their shoulder, their machete in their hand to go to the field, with the gang and the overseer after them to look to them working. Then they worked until six o'clock. The food they got was groundcorn and flour to make cornbread, and herring with stockfish. The master also gave them for cloth bombazine with ?. When they needed something else, they had to buy it of their own money. Everyone received a piece of land from their master to plant their negroe-food. They could plant beans, pigeon peas, string beans, white-beans, red-beans, black eye beans, calabash, pumpkin, ginger, sweet potatoes, cucumber, cassave. Of all the things here they cooked their soup. The vegetables for their pot they planted also: chives, thyme, parsley. The only meat they could get to eat was pork meat and goat meat. The negroes who served the master with his wife in the house, they got free food from the master's table - when the negroes had been bone impudent or lazy to work, then they got flagging with a whip or cat by the overseer. At the plantation the owner had donkeys, mules, horses, cows, sheep. The donkey with horse and bulls turned the sugar mill to grind the sugar cane, which the people had cut and which the mule brought from the field. The milk and the calf of the cow with the sheep they sold in the store. The owner also bred turkeys with chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, pigeons and peacocks; of the tail of the peacock they made fly brooms. They planted besides sugar other food, yam, green bananas, bananas, corn and many other things. The negroes on the plantation they never married, but the man and woman mated each other.

Each of the houses of the negroes had two rooms: a bed room with a front room. The roof of the house was of sugar leaves, and the side of the house was a wall. Their furniture was a bench with a table. Their sleeping place was of banana leaves. They had a closet to keep their cloth. They cooked their food before their door, they did not have a kitchen. When the negroes were ill, the owner sent for the doctor who gave them a purgative to purge them, and they had to walk into the grass. When they had pain in the breast, then they got licorice. The negroes know much about leaves to take when they feel ill to cure themselves. There is a tree, they call the pain-in-head-leaf-tree; the leaves of it they bind on their forehead for pain in the head. For pain in belly they cook sour-sop with lemon-leaf, they put a piece of orange peel inside with a lump of salt, and they put a piece of ginger also inside. Since the negroes were freed, they have changed their way of life. They have become so impudent and powerful with themselves that they believe they are as good as any people. But when they find themselves in trouble they have not spoken or managed themselves, then they have to go to ask the whites to help them. Two, three of the old negroes they still know to behave themselves for the whites with manners and politeness. I will now try to give you an impression of the people, and I will tell you what happened the other afternoon. The other night just after the shot was fired for eight o'clock I went to take a stroll downside. When I had reached as far as Main Street, I turned around to go back, and I heard a great commotion and ado. The people ran up and down the street, they were screaming, I had not understood what it was until I got at Bakawal. Then I looked inside a small house full with people; the door was open, and a woman stood at the door, screaming and crying: ‘My child is dying, my poor child is dying.’ I asked what was wrong with her. She did not answer me, she kept on screaming and crying. Then I went inside to see the girl myself. I found her on the floor rolling and screaming the same way as her mother. Then one of the women who had stood near the girl said: What a belly she has. It is better to call a doctor; he will know at once what do with her. Then her mother began to curse and damn and said: ‘you corpse, you cursed hangman, my child is a good child, she goes to church and she does not play with men, so where she will have gotten such a belly? You will not blemish my child's character, I will drag you before the district judge to clear her name. I will give you a shovel with a kick, you damned bitch.’ Then the other woman said: ‘you ungrateful boss, I told you the truth about what your child did and you do not want to believe it. You will see she will get in an hour's time a child, then you will believe it. I will get out of your house.’ ‘I will slap you ere you go.’ ‘Do as you can.’ Then she gave her the slap and they started fighting, she stripped her naked and gave her a bite in her finger and said: ‘take it there now for what you said against my child.’ The uproar was so great, they screamed ‘murder, the two women are killing one another, call the police.’ The police came and ask: What happened? and they took them in to read them to the fort. In the time they had arrived at the fort, a woman ran to beg the district judge to let the woman come see her child dying. The district judge said to the police go with her to see what the child was doing and bring her back, and get a doctor also to see the patient. So they got inside the place they heard the girl moaning; the doctor went inside and talked with her, and at the same time the child was born. Then the mother began to beat the girl, and the police and the people took her away so she would not kill the girl.

Proverbs

When a snake bites you, you will be afraid of the lizard. When you have lice, you must have nits. When you play with a dog, the dog will lick your mouth. When you throw a stone in the sky, it will fall on your head. As you spit up into the sky, it will fall in your face. In the sea there are no trees. All people watch their own business, they will have enough to do. Sweep your floor in the morning, do not watch your neighbours. A monkey knows what kind of a tree to climb, he does not climb prickle trees.

5.3 The sentences of Greider

In his large study on Negerhollands D.C. Hesseling based his observations especially on the printed texts that were available in the University in Leyden (the Netherlands). In addition, he corresponded with A. Glitsch, the head of the archive of the Moravian Brethren in Herrnhut to obtain more information about Negerhollands. A few letters have been kept in which Hesseling ordered a copy of the Herrnhut grammar of Negerhollands, a copy which is still in the Leyden University library.

Hesseling also sent letters to the Moravian Brethren in St. Thomas to obtain more information, especially about the use of the language in the beginning of the 20th century. Bishop Greider of the Moravian Brethren wrote back the following:

‘The language in its purity is now spoken by a very few old people, principally those living in the country districts. The younger generation speak a mixed dialect that is called Creole, but it contains very many English words ... Our people speak a comparatively pure English and there is no patois like in the French or Dutch islands. In fact if any one wished to study the language as it now is spoken, it would be best to do it immediately.’ (Hesseling 1905:33-34)

Hesseling comments: ‘The (...) words are not as English as they look at first sight; this appears from the translation into older Creole, in Dutch transcription (...).’ (1905:34)

In this section we present successively Greider's example of ‘Bastard Creole’, as he calls it, Hesseling's transcription, our glosses and Greider's English versions.

How are you

How are you feeling this morning?

I don't feel well this morning

We did not have communion last night.