Negro English. 105 
At the present day it is questionable whether a Congo native would find 
anybody to understand him connectedly if he visited Guiana. I have heard a 
little African spoken on an isolated plantation on the West Coast. I have heard 
verses sung in an African dialect. But they were only scraps—a phrase or two 
from an old song which had lingered in the memory. I doubtif the singer and his 
compatriots could have carried on a conversation or an argument satisfactorily 
in pure African. 
How effectually the African dialects have been killed in the West Indies may be 
judged from the very few African words which survive in the talk of the ordinary 
Negro. 
Anansi, the great spider, we hear about from the old people. But the old peo- 
ple are “ deading out very well ”’ (as one of them put it), and the young people 
can’t or won't discuss Anansi. Putta-putta, meaning the black mud deposited 
upon the banks of rivers and pools, still bears its old African signification. Koo- 
koo and foo-foo, which from the repeated sound are probably African in origin, 
have “caught on.” Nyam is dying out. Zombis (jambies) may be seen by the 
believing at midnight, near a favourable graveyard. Ba-kara, meaning “ white 
man, survives from the Bantu or semi-Bantu languages. Mu-kara, its plural 
form, has disappeared altogether. 
Of all the islands in the West Indies (not barring Jamaica) Barbados is the most 
favourable hunting ground for the philologist. Barbados has been British,— 
aggressively British—_from the beginning. Barbados dates from 1627. My 
illustrations for the balance of this paper are drawn therefore from Barbados. 
When the African dialects fell into disuse in 1627 and after, what took their 
place ? Naturally the talk of the Ba-kara. What was that talk ? Just the idiom 
of his own particular part of England, Scotland or Ireland. The early Barbados 
planter came from the middle and south of England principally. Hawtayne was 
an Oxfordshire man ; Walrond hailed from Devon. In later days the new “ salt 
water’ would pick up a good deal from his master. There was a close 
bond between Planter and Slave in later days. Many of the slaves moved about 
the Great House. The later “salt water’ however would absorb much of 
his English,—probably most of it,—from the Creole Negro himself. But the early 
Africans,—the few, for example, who were brought along with the first settlers in 
1627,from whom did they learn English? The reply must be—from the 
white bondservant. 
White men were the first “ field hands” Barbados knew. Whites felled the 
woods, burnt the clearings, and planted the first ‘‘ staples,”—tobacce, cotton, 
ginger, aloes. White men made the bush paths which linked plantation with 
plantation and led to the Indian Bridge. Later on, White and Negro worked in 
the field together. Both were treated alike,—if anything the Negro was better 
treated. The White lived in a grass thatched hut—the “ wattle and daub "— 
like the Negro. 
These Whites came from all over the British Isles. Irishmen were in the island 
at an early date. A number of them were voluntary exiles from Ireland. Many 
had been deported under the baleful auspices of Cromwell. “ When they sub- 
mitted, their officers were knocked on the head,” wrote Cromwell after the taking 
