“Then,” asked Dr. X., “should you have transmitted through one who spoke another language you would have used their tongue?”
Patience answered:
“I pettiskirt me so that ye know the me of me. Yea, and I do to take me o’ the store o’ her that I make me word for thee.”
“Pettiskirt” is a common expression of hers to mean dress, in either a literal or a figurative sense. The answer does not mean that she is limited by Mrs. Curran’s vocabulary, but is an affirmative response to the question.
The word “put” in the preceding answer is one that requires some explanation, for it is frequently used by her, and makes some of her sayings difficult to understand. She makes it convey a number of meanings now obsolete, but it usually refers to her writings, her words, her sayings. She makes a noun of it, it will be noticed, as well as a verb. In the foregoing instance it means “tale,” and it has a relation to the primary meaning of the verb, which is to place. The words that are put down become a “put,” and the writer becomes a “putter.” To a lady who told her that she had heard a sound like a bell in her ear, and asked if it was Patience trying to communicate with her, she answered dryly: “Think ye I be a tinkler o’ brass? Nay. I be a putter o’ words.” Further to illustrate this use of the word, and also to throw an interesting light upon her method of communication and the reason for it, I present here a part of a conversation in which a Dr. Z. was the interrogator.
Dr. Z.—“Why isn’t there some other means you could use more easy to manipulate than the ouija board?”
Patience.—“The hand o’ her (Mrs. Curran) do I to put (write) be the hand o’ her, and ’tis ascribe (the act of writing) that setteth the one awhither by eyes-fulls she taketh in.”
By this she seems to mean that if Mrs. Curran tried to write for Patience with a pen or pencil, the act, being always associated with conscious thought, would set her consciousness to work, and put Patience “awhither.”
Dr. Z.—“How did you know this avenue was open?”
Patience.—“I did to seek at crannies for to put; aye, and ’twer the her o’ her who tireth past the her o’ her, and slippeth to a naught o’ putting; and ’twer the me o’ me at seek, aye, and find. Aye, and ’twer so.”