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Bless de Lawd! da' nyoung maussa! Ki! enty you tek wife yet? Go 'way! Bless de Lawd!" "I'm glad to see you looking so young, Kitty: your children must be grown up." "Tenk de Lawd, maussa," with a low curtsey, "I day yah yet! Dem pickny, da big man an' 'oman now. Enty you got one piece t'bacca fo' po' ole nigger?"
"Plenty whar?" "Da plenty in Sawanny. I enty fer see no crab an' no oscher; en swimp, he no stay 'roun'. I lak some rice-bud now." "You er talkin' 'bout deze yer sparrers, w'ich dey er all head, en 'lev'm un makes one mouffle,*2 I speck," suggested Uncle Remus.
Indeed, when excited and talking rapidly even those who have grown up among them can scarcely understand the lingo. "Coom, Hondree," says an old nurse to her little charge at bedtime, "le' we tek fire go atop:" in English, "Come, Henry, let's take a light and go up stairs." "Enty?"; "watermelon" is "attermillion" or "mutwilliam;" and so on.
You must stay and wait upon her." "Ha!" was the quick response of the black, with a significant smirk upon his lip, and with a cunning emphasis; "enty I see; wha' for I hab eye ef I no see wid em? I 'speck young misses hab no 'jection for go too eh, Mass Ra'ph! all you hab for do is for ax em!"
So he took the lead in the dance, and, as a song is always sung by the leader on such occasions, to which the rest keep time with hands and feet, he thus began to sing: "We are enty men, They are erith men: If each erith man, Surround eno men Eno man remains. Ta, tai, tom, tadingana." The robbers were all uneducated, and thought that the leader was merely singing a song as usual.
"Mornin', sah." "I'm sorter up an' about," responded Uncle Remus, carelessly and calmly. "How is you stannin' it?" "Tanky you, my helt' mos' so-so. He mo' hot dun in de mountain. Seem so lak man mus' git need*1 de shade. I enty fer see no rice-bud in dis pa'ts." "In dis w'ich?" inquired Uncle with a sudden affectation of interest. "In dis pa'ts. In dis country. Da plenty in Sawanny."
"What is the price of this cloth?" one trader will ask another. "Enty rupees," another will reply, meaning "ten rupees." Thus, there is no possibility of the purchaser knowing what is meant unless he be acquainted with trade language. By the rules of this secret language erith means "three," enty means "ten," and eno means "one."
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