Local expressions from Bygone Times
in the Piedmont and Lower Shenandoah Valley
by Eugene Scheel
A Waterford historian and mapmaker.
Having spoken to hundreds of people native to the Virginia Piedmont
and Tidewater regions, certain local expressions and words, not found
in most slang dictionaries, have come up again and again. As several
of these sayings and words are fast vanishing, I thought it wise to put
a few in print with their meanings and usage.
African American sayings
"You ain't really dead 'till old Mr. Groundhog comes knocking
on your door."
Blacks and poor whites were usually interred in a thin
pine box. When it disintegrated, the resulting earthly cavity became
a perfect burrow for groundhogs.
"Lay-by time" --
This expression initially referred to Christmas
and the following few days, when slaves didn't have to work. The number
of lay-by days was often determined by a burning gum log in a slave quarters'
fireplace. The log took a long time to burn. Some masters afforded their
slaves lay-by time until the New Year. After slavery, lay-by time came
to mean a prolonged period of rest taken by black farm hands.
"The truth is the light if it's told in the dark."
This sentiment,
also the title of M.T.W. Cruise's 2007 history of her forebears in slavery
and post-Civil War Culpeper County, echoes similar sayings I've heard
through the years from older African Americans. Life in bondage was often
so torturous that it could be spoken of only in secret.
Agriculture
Black gold
Angus cattle, which are black and usually sell for higher prices than other breeds.
Blackjack
A heavy soil, full of clay. In wet weather you'll sink in it up to your
ankles. In dry weather it will be hard and cracked.
"In the dirt"
A crop that has been harvested but not cleaned.
"Low-water crops"
Millet or sorghum are examples; they
can survive well on annual rainfall of less than 35 inches. (The Virginia
Piedmont's average is about 42 inches.)
"Junk hole"
The refuse dump on a farm. There were no area
landfills before the 1950s.
Oreo
Dutch Belted Galloway cattle, which have a white stripe around their middle.
"The days in May are never long enough."
This saying, or variants
of it, refers to the time-consuming harvest of hay, which has to be cut,
raked and left in the field to dry before stacking or baling, and the
cultivation of corn by hand.
"Skim farming"
A slipshod agricultural operation that nets
poor yields.
"Thrashing"
An unabridged dictionary will note that thrashing
is a 10th-century English spelling of "threshing" -- the separating
of wheat, other grains and seed crops from chaff and straw. Yet the old
pronunciation remains almost universal -- unlike the thrasher, which
was gradually superseded by combines in the 1920s through the 1950s.
Civil War
Fiddler's green
In polite language, "a house of entertainment"; in reality,
a bawdy house, announced by a fiddler playing outside the entrance.
Grass widow
The wife of a Confederate officer away from the plantation for a long
time. In later years, it was applied to a farm wife whose husband was
often absent.
The war
When used in a historical vein and without reference to a specific war, "the
war" means the Civil War. The once-popular term "The War Between
the States" had largely gone out of use by the Civil War centennial
of the early 1960s.
Driving
The hand or giving the hand
A gesture of raising one hand from the steering wheel as an approaching
vehicle nears on a country road. It signifies a greeting, and if your
vehicle is not usually seen on that road, it means that you have a
purpose for driving there. It's especially important to use the hand
if you have an out-of-state license plate, and it's mandatory if you
have a D.C. license plate.
Stepping on bear paws
Driving too close to the side of a country road.
Education
"Stops"
Recitation used to be an important part of learning
English, and the teacher would be a careful judge of a student's ability
to provide the proper inflections, or stops, for periods, colons, semicolons
and commas.
"Stovepipe academy"
A school of one or several rooms that
refers to itself by an aggrandized name to attract students but whose
status is belied by the metal stovepipe sticking out from the roof. The
early public schools at Aldie and Middleburg were called stovepipe academies.
Geography
"Buffalo wallow"
A pond that becomes miry during periods
of little or no rain. On a farm, an unreliable source of water. "Buffalo" does
not refer to the beast (extinct in Virginia by the 1750s) but to any
large animal that might want to cool off.
Down the country
The term by which western Loudoun County and Leesburg area people would refer
to eastern Loudoun and western Fairfax County before the 1960s. These areas
had few people and only one town, Herndon.
Fresh
An abbreviated term for freshet -- the flash flooding of a small stream,
usually fordable with ease.
Grits line
An imaginary line between two types of country restaurants specializing
in breakfast of eggs and bacon or sausage. In one you automatically
get fried potatoes with your fare; in the other you get grits. In the
1960s, the grits line was north of the Potomac River, between Baltimore
and Washington. Today it has moved more than 70 miles south, somewhere
south of the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers, between Fredericksburg
and Richmond.
"Stony lonesome"
One-room stone jails with pyramid roofs
were common in towns where rock abounded. Local magistrates would dole
out sentences for misdemeanors, and if a miscreant couldn't pay, he was
incarcerated at night. He was let out during the day so he could work
and make restitution. Some might recall seeing stony lonesomes in Middleburg
and Purcellville; they stood through the 1950s, well past the era of
fine-imposing magistrates. The jail
in Waterford is a survivor of the
genre.
"There are more Joneses (or substitute any
surname) than white people."
This expression, not derogatory, was prevalent in backwoods
and mountain hollow areas where one family was dominant. I first heard
the phrase in the panhandle of Frederick County, after I commented about
seeing the name Orndorff on many mailboxes and businesses.
"Pig path"
A term for a back road that is impassable or
nearly so, or a little-known route.
Pud
An unnamed wooded islet in the Potomac River, too small to farm.
Punkin
When prefacing a place name, punkin means remote. Bluemont was called
Punkintown in the early 1800s, and Paris was called Punkinville. There's
a Punkin Corner in Prince William County. Country-and-western buffs
may recall the song "Aaron Slick From Punkin Crick." Punkin
can also mean small: "He's just a little punkin."
"Upper county" or "lower county"
Before the invasion
of newcomers in recent years, natives and old-timers in the Piedmont
counties did not want to refer to "north" because of its Civil
War connotations. So they used the terms "upper" and "lower." The
name Lower Loudoun Little League is an example. "Lower" and "upper" were
particularly common terms in elongated counties such as Loudoun, Fauquier,
Prince William, Rappahannock and Madison.
"The right side of the Rappahannock"
That meant either
Culpeper County or Fauquier County, depending on which of the two places
the speaker hailed from. One also heard people speak of "the wrong
side of the Rappahannock," referring to the other county.
Goodbye
If the Lord is willing and the creek don't rise
A sentence that follows either somebody's saying goodbye to you or was
prefaced by "I'll see you if…" The first phrase refers
to one's being alive at a future date; the second is an allusion to
the few area bridges in the 19th century.
Native Americans
We-sort or We Sort of People
Descendants of the Conoy and Piscataway Indians in the Point of Rocks
area of Loudoun and Maryland.
Occupations
"Drummer"
A salesman from the city who usually peddled
dry goods and hardware in the country. Drummers would get off at railroad
stops, rent a horse or horse-and-wagon and hawk their wares, contained
in suitcases, at promising farms. They stopped coming during the Great
Depression. A drummer should not be confused with a huckster, a buyer
of farm produce for resale in urban areas. Hucksters had vehicles, termed
huckster wagons (even if they were autos). Huckstering lasted through
the 1950s.
"You're fishing in the wrong stream."
A way of explaining
to a political candidate who approaches you that you don't vote in his
district.
"Medicine man"
A showman who sold patent medicines (usually
laced with alcohol and sometimes termed "snake oil") along
with legitimate pharmaceuticals. His pitch was often introduced by entertainment
provided by family members. Incorporated towns often taxed medicine shows
heavily to discourage their presence.
Other expressions
"Annie off the pickle boat"
A disheveled or frowzy female.
"There's a little fire between them."
Two people who know
each other and are not on good terms.
"There you go."
You agree with what the other person has just
said and have nothing to add.
"Before I could say 'My goose . . . ' "
The speaker is recalling
how someone cut them off quickly. The expression is a holdover from the
Renaissance marketplaces of the British Isles and Europe, where the seller
of a corn- and grain-fed goose would start his pitch with the words "My
goose" and proceed to extol its virtues.
"I'm either hittin' or missin'. "
A man-to-man answer to someone
asking: "How are you?" -- meaning, "Sometimes I feel good,
and sometimes I feel bad."
"Onliest"
Used in place of "only," as in, "There's
onliest one person there."
"Waiting on"
Country people almost always use this construction
rather than the accepted "waiting for" -- a holdover from medieval
Britain, when people "waited on" royalty, in the sense of "I'm
waiting for the king to make a move."
Personal Traits
He's been to Winchester and Alexandria
Knowing something of the world beyond the Virginia Piedmont -- urbane,
knowledgeable. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Winchester and
Alexandria were among Virginia's largest cities and centers of culture
and learning.
Come-here(s)
A person or family recently moved to an area. "They were come-here's" also
implies people who have lived in the area for a short period. Through
the 1960s, a person or family that moved into the Piedmont after the
Civil War -- even the 1870s -- were often called come-here's.
Potomac fever
U.S. government officials and high-ranking military officers began to
move to the area in the early 20th century, and some had liaisons in
Washington with women (generally younger) who were not their wives.
People would say the men had caught "Potomac Fever."
Snake-bit
A person plagued with hard luck. Something always seems to go wrong when
this person tries to accomplish a task.
Politics
Smith Democrat
A person who voted for Democratic Congressman Howard Worth Smith but
then voted for Republicans on the national level. Smith represented
the 8th District, which at one time included all of Northern Virginia
and the Virginia Piedmont, from 1931-66. He was chairman of the powerful
House Rules Committee from 1955 to 1966.
Religion
Bush meeting
Any religious gathering that met in the woods. A brush arbor usually
sheltered the preacher and elders. Bush meetings were common during
the 19th century.
Hard shell or hard shell Baptists
Most Bibles before the mid-20th century had hard covers, and these Primitive
Baptists based their faith on the tenets of this book.
Religion of the mild kind
A term dating from the early 1800s and used by Baptists and Methodists
to denote the Episcopal faith, which did not have as much loud singing
as other denominations.
Tin-roof tabernacle
A small frame, one-story house of worship, sometimes not much more than
a lean-to, usually of a Pentecostal denomination. The term became prevalent
as Pentecostal churches grew in number during the early 20th century.
Roads
Corduroy road or washboard
Have you ever driven on a dirt road, and suddenly, for a stretch of a
few to several hundred feet, your vehicle bounces about? Underground
movement generated by heavy vehicles create the surface undulations,
usually about a foot apart. In the 1800s this word referred to a travelway
with logs across it, perpendicular to the road. The logs helped prevent
the road from sinking in wet weather.
Featherbed Lane
A name reserved for the roughest roads in a county. Loudoun has three
Featherbed Lanes, one an official road name north of Waterford, one
now called Quaker Lane, south of Unison, and one a former public road
east of Middleburg.
Swampoodle
The local pronunciation of swamp puddle, meaning a low-lying area of
a road where water tends to pool in wet weather. A village by this
name straddles old Route 7 a mile east of Hamilton.
Schools
Old field school
A school built in a scrub-filled field with the landowner's permission
and tended to by a teacher paid by the students' parents. Old field
schools were common before public schools opened in Virginia in 1870.
Scholar
A synonym for any student in a public or private school in the 19th and
early 20th centuries. As school was not compulsory, one's being there
assumed one wanted to learn.
Slavery
Great house or big house
The slaves' name for their master's home.
Time
Burning daylight
Squandering the daytime hours, laying around when you could be doing
something useful. As many areas of the Piedmont lacked electricity
until the late 1930s through the early 1950s, daytime was work time.
I heard the term a few days ago at the CountrySide Surgery Center.
An elderly patient recovering from an operation was asked by the nurse, "How
are you doing?" He replied, "Just burning daylight."
Copyright © Eugene Scheel
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