CHAPTER XXXI

“GULLA” AND THE BACK COUNTRY

The most extraordinary negro dialect I know of is the “gulla” (sometimes spelled “gullah”) of the rice plantation negroes of South Carolina and of the islands off the South Carolina and Georgia coast.  I believe that the region of Charleston is headquarters for “gulla niggers,” though I have heard the argot spoken as far south as Sepeloe Island, off the town of Darien, Georgia, near the Florida line.  Gulla is such an extreme dialect as to be almost a language by itself.  Whence it came I do not know, but I judge that it is a combination of English with the primitive tongues of African tribes, just as the dialect of old Creole negroes, in Louisiana, is a combination of African tribal tongues with French.

A Charleston lady tells me that negroes on different rice plantations—­even on adjoining plantations—­speak dialects which differ somewhat, and I know of my own knowledge that thick gulla is almost incomprehensible to white persons who have not learned, by long practice, to understand it.

A lady sent a gulla negro with a message to a friend.  This is the message as it was delivered: 

“Missis seh all dem turrah folk done come shum.  Enty you duh gwine come shum?” (To get the gulla effect the sounds should be uttered very rapidly.)

Translated, this means:  “Mistress says all them other folks have come to see her.  Aren’t you coming to see her?”

“Shum” is a good gulla word.  It means all kinds of things having to do with seeing—­to see her, to see him, to see it.  Thus, “You shum, enty?” may mean, You see him—­her—­or it? or You see what he—­she—­or it—­is doing, or has done?  For gulla has no genders and no tenses.  “Enty” is a general question:  Aren’t you?  Didn’t you?  Isn’t it? etc.  Another common gulla word is “Buckra” which means a white man of the upper class, in contradistinction to a poor white.  I have known a negro to refer to “de frame o’ de bud,” meaning the carcass, or frame, of a fowl.  “Ay ain’ day” means “They aren’t (ain’t) there.”

A friend of mine who resided at Bluffton, South Carolina, has told me of an old gulla fisherman who spoke in parables.

A lady would ask him:  “Have you any fish to-day?” To which, if replying affirmatively, he would answer:  “Missis, de gate open”; meaning, “The door (of the ‘car,’ or fish-box) is open to you.”  If he had no fish he would reply:  “Missis, ebb-tide done tack (take) crick”; signifying:  “The tide has turned and it is too late to go to catch fish.”  This old man called whisky “muhgundy smash,” the term evidently derived from some idea of the word “burgundy” combined with the word “mash.”

Here is a gulla dialect story, with a line-for-line translation.  A train has killed a cow, and a negro witness is being examined by a justice of the peace: