336. Voyé chein, chein voyé lakhe li. (Envoyez le chien, et le chien envoie sa queue.)
“Send dog, and dog sends his tail.”—Refers to those who obey orders only by proxy.—[Trinidad.]
337. Yo ka quimbé[143] chritiens pa langue yo, bef pa còne yo. (On prend les Chrétiens par la langue, les bœufs par les cornes.)
“Christians are known by their tongues, oxen by their horns.” (Literally, are taken by or caught by.)—[Martinique.]
[143] Quimbé is a verb of African origin. It survives in Louisiana Creole as tchombé or chombo:
Caroline, zolie femme,
Chombo moin dans collet.
[“Caroline, pretty woman; put your arm about my neck!”—lit.: “take me by the neck.”]
There are other African words used by the older colored women, such as macayé, meaning to eat at all hours; and Ouendé, of which the sense is dubious. But the Congo verb fifa, to kiss; and the verbs souyé, to flatter; pougalé, to abuse violently; and such nouns as saff (glutton), yche or iche (baby), which are preserved in other Creole dialects, are apparently unknown in Louisiana to-day.
In Chas. Jeannest’s work, Quatre Années au Congo [Paris: Charpentier, 1883], I find a scanty vocabulary of words in the Fiot dialect, the native dialect of many slaves imported into Louisiana and the West Indies. In this vocabulary the word ouenda is translated by “partir pour.” I fancy it also signifies “to be absent,” and that it is synonymous with our Louisiana African-Creole ouendé, preserved in the song: