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Many words, too, have been introduced which the blacks think are English, and the English think are native. Such, for example, as piccaninny, and, as far as these outside blacks are concerned, boomerang is regarded as English, their local word being burren; yet nine out of ten people whom you meet think both are local native words.
This important commencement and finale to the repast having been duly administered, they proceeded to the range of buildings before mentioned, in one of which they found the lady in the straw, sitting up, and showing her white teeth at her master's approach, as if nothing very particular had occurred. "Well, Mattee, how are you?" said the planter. "Where's the piccaninny?"
'Missis, we hab um piccaninny tree weeks in de ospital, and den right out upon the hoe again can we strong dat way, missis? No! And truly I do not see that they can. This poor creature had had eight children and two miscarriages. All her children were dead but one.
Very far back, when he was little more than a piccaninny, and long before he was ripe for the ceremony which made him a "young man," he recalled how his tribe had been perplexed by a story which had come to them, by a tale of strange happenings brought from other tribes somewhere away in the far distance.
On the seventh week we arrived at Barbadoes, saw Lady Rodney, Sally Neblet, and several more of the true Barbadian born, drawling, dignity ladies, who entreated in no very dignified manner to “hab de honour for wash for massa captain.” I gave the preference to the relict of Lord Rodney, as she was the oldest acquaintance, and remembered me when I was “a lilly piccaninny midshipman.” I paid my respects to the Admiral, Sir Alex.
The Major was too easy-going to feel any distress at this reflection. He merely remarked to himself whimsically that, "the piccaninny would astonish them!" meaning the companions to whom she was about to be introduced, and decided then and there to take her straight to her destination.
"Eh! what dat? say dat again, sar," replied the woman. "Chrononhotonthologus." "Eh! dat real fine name for piccaninny," cried the woman, with delight in her countenance. "Many tanky, sar. Chroton-polygarse." "No, no," replied Newton, laughing; "Chrononho-tonthologus." "Es, hab now Hoten-tolyglass." "No, that's only part. Chronon-hoton-thologus." "I see very fine name Proton-choton-polly-glass."
Lured by the prospect of beholding something for nothing, most of his consistent patrons temporarily had deserted him to flock out into the roadway and witness the passing by of the Sin Killer's cohorts. Two infatuated lovers, country darkies, sat with arms entwined in a rickety wooden chariot. Here and there a piccaninny clung to the back of a spotted wooden pony or a striped wooden zebra.
"This is unfortunate, certainly," said Willem; as he gazed at the dead body. "The blacks will think that we killed the woman, and will ever after have an opinion of white men they should not have. We must take the child to the kraal, and give it up to them. We can tell them that the woman died of her own folly, which is only the truth. Hand the piccaninny to me."
'I didn't know how she might take it. It's the mother of those poor little Scotch children come to see the place. Wants to put up a gravestone or monument or something, poor lady! Then I knew where I had seen the stranger boy's face. It was the image of his dead brother's face in the picture, the white piccaninny that carried the Mashona baby. I whistled softly.
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