“‘I’m well enough as I am,’ are words one doesn’t often hear.”—[Louisiana.]
209. * Mo va pas prêté vous bâton pou cassé mo latête. (Je ne vais vous prêter un bâton pour me casser la tête.)
“I’m not going to lend you a stick to break my head with.”—[Louisiana.]
210. Moin ainmein plis yon balaou jòdi là qu’taza dimain. (J’aime mieux un balaou aujourd’hui qu’un tazard demain.)
“I’d rather have horn-fish to-day, than mackerel to-morrow.”[86]—[Martinique.]
[86] “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” The translation is not literal. The tazard or thazard, although belonging to the scomber family, is not a true mackerel. Balaou is one Creole name for l’aiguillette de mer, hornfish [?].
211. Moin pas ka prend dithé pou fiève li. (Je ne veux pas prendre du thé pour sa fièvre.)
“I don’t propose to drink tea for his fever.”[87]—[Martinique.]
[87] Or better still: “I don’t intend to drink tea just because he has the fever.” In other words, “I don’t intend to bother myself with other people’s troubles.”....The tea referred to is one of those old Creole preparations taken during fevers—the tisanes of the black nurses: perhaps the cooling sassafras, or orange-leaf tea administered to sufferers from dengue in New Orleans.