Transcripts: Southern Appalachian English

Rebecca Queen

(Cherokee, Swain County, North Carolina) was 70 when interviewed.  She had a third- or fourth-grade education and was a farm housewife.

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I don't know nothing about South Carolina.  I never could recollect, just can barely recollect, heared about my father moving from there to Transylvania.  And we lived there till in the time of the Confederate War, the last year of the Confederate War, and I remember that, the war.  I come to Jackson County and I've been in Jackson County ever since, and it's changed a bit till now, but I'm still here yet.  Now iffen you folks now knows anything about when the Confederate War ended, why you can tell just how long I've been in Jackson County and in Swain.
[Tell about how you got ———]
Well, I, I don't know, but I guess we've been a-livin' on Indian Creek about fifty year.  I never knowed nothing, only just work hard and live hard all the time.  But we tried to live honest.  Well, that's about the best place ever I did live until I lived on Indian Creek and
[Tell about farmin' up there.]
Well uh, we raised cattle and corn and made lots of stuff while we lived up there.
[Tell about them families that lived up there, what they done.]
Well, they done just like the rest of us did.  They worked hard and tried to live, and they's severalxx families, they was about, they was about thirty-three families [that] lived up there.

Was about thirty-three families lived there on Indian Creek when we lived up there, and they all worked and tried to make a living by hard work, the way we tried to live, and had a good time.
[Well, tell us ——

They never had no fellowship there.  They didn't have frolickin' up in there much.  Sometimes they'd gather up a crowd of them and have a little praise.  They never had time to have frolic.  They just had to work too hard.