[IX]
The Normans were a brilliant and enterprising race; but what before all things (says Freeman) "distinguished them from other nations, was their craft." This was manifest in everything, at all times, and everywhere—in statesmanship, in war, in traffic, and in the trivial interactions of social and domestic life. Craft was no more characteristic of a Norman king in the past than of a Norman trader in modern times. It is as distinctly racial as the commercial "cuteness" or cleverness universally attributed to the American people of to-day. Lord Wolseley may have noted this trait when he said of our people, "They are a race of English-speaking Frenchmen." He may have observed, too, even during the War between the States, that Americans were at times exceedingly profane in their speech, just as in the olden time it was said that the Normans were "peculiarly fond of oaths." Camden tells us that when Carolus Stultus made over Normandy to Rollo, the rude ingrate refused to kiss the king's foot. When urged to do so he viciously exclaimed, "Ne se, by God!" "Whence"—adds the chronicler—"the Normans were familiarly known as Bigodi or Bigods." At every other word, he says, they swore by God. For a like reason, at a later day, the English were known throughout Europe as the English "Goddams." All of us know how terribly the army swore in Flanders. The profane tendencies of the race seemed to have been stimulated by war. "Then, the Soldier," says Shakespeare, "full of strange oaths." Was it not one of our innocent Bluegrass girls who declared that up to the close of her "teens" she believed the familiar phrase "damned Yankee" to be a single word? But it was the Conqueror of England and the founder of the Anglo-Norman race that swore the greatest oath of all. When the merry burghers of Alençon were hurling insults from their walls upon the burly son of Arletta and upon her sire—the tanner of Falaise—the infuriated Norman swore an oath which lights up the page of history like the flare of a conflagration—"By the splendor of God!" he exclaimed as he swept to his wild revenge. The profanest Kentuckian in his palmiest days never rose in his profanity to such a plane as this. He preferred the direct and trenchant speech of that Virgin Queen who helped to shape the destiny of our common race. "Do as I say," she said to a recalcitrant prelate, "or by God I will unfrock you!" Even her stately ministers were not safe from the fire of her Anglo-Norman wrath. In the royal council-chamber she sometimes fell to cursing like a very drab. In certain Virginian circles profane swearing seemed to have been proscribed except in a softened or attenuated form, such as "Jeems' River," as an ejaculatory substitute for a very blasphemous phrase. Thomas Jefferson did not regard profane "expletives" as a very rational or philosophic mode of speech; but George Washington, though puritanically truthful, would sometimes infuse into an imprecation the spirit and effectiveness of a prayer. We have all heard of Stonewall Jackson's "teamster" and the moving quality of his profane speech; but Jubal Early never allowed the words to be taken out of his mouth in this way. He did his own swearing, and, presumably, did it well. Swearing or fighting by proxy was not his forte. Judged by military results, Jackson's was probably the better method. As a tactical incentive upon the firing line nothing could be more effective than one of Early's oaths; but for general strategic purposes, nothing could surpass the effectiveness of the deadly imprecations that lurked in Stonewall Jackson's prayer. This was a Cromwellian modification of the Anglo-Norman oath. In the good old Commonwealth of Kentucky there seems to have been a relapse into the simpler forms of profanity—Anglo-Norman and Early English. The historian Collins tells us that one of the pioneer Governors having refused to notice the "challenge" of a truculent upstart, the fellow threatened to "post him a coward." "Post and be damned," said the old soldier, "you will only post yourself a damned liar!" The retort was profane, but it was in punctilious accord with the spirit and habits of the time. Better still, it was more effective than a "gut-shot" at short range. As a rule, the Kentuckian had an instinctive aversion for puritanic oaths. That consecrated phrase, "Jeems' River," had a brief career in this State. The last person to use it, probably, was an elderly, smooth, genial, charming gentleman at the bar who was for many years the judge of a local court in the good old County of Fleming. He was in many respects a marked exception to the common rule.[5] It might have been different had he left the Old Dominion at an earlier date. What brandy is for heroes, strong oaths were for the pioneer. Not mere dicer's oaths; nor the mauldin imprecations of a sot, nor the rounding touches of a raconteur; but good, honest, English oaths, such an oath as that which settled the insistent Corporal Trim—the generous and daring oath that our Uncle Toby swore when the young Lieutenant lay sick of a fever. "'He shall not die, by God,' cried my Uncle Toby." And the accusing spirit that "flew to Heaven's chancery with the oath" had the grace to blush when he gave it in. God bless our Uncle Toby; he was the Uncle Toby of us all, and is as fresh in our remembrance as the good old uncles who told his story and praised his virtues and swore his oaths by the family fireside in the auld lang syne. Tradition throws a strong light on one of these old Kentuckians who denounced with suggestive picturesqueness of phrase a ruthless master who had sold and separated a family of hereditary slaves:—"He is the damnedest scoundrel between hell and Guinea!" the old gentleman exclaimed, giving in effect a touch of lurid or local color to his imprecatory speech. But when one of his own negroes—a broken, helpless creature—was accused of marketing for his own benefit the products of the farm, he gently answered, "Ah, well, I am not sure that, after all, the old slave is not taking his own!" As one recalls that kindly speech, with its reminiscent touch of Uncle Toby, he recalls, likewise, the sentiment of a famous line from a foreign source tenderly adapted to a modern taste—
"Mais où sont les nègres d'antan?"
Where are those dusky bondsmen of the past? They mingle their dust with the dust of them they served: and resting in old country graveyards, in the peace of immemorial graves, they await the Morning Light and the Master's Call.
"OUR BEAUTIFUL SCANDINAVIAN."
Among the most popular of the well-trained African servitors of the mid-century days in the Bluegrass was our versatile drudge, Ben Briler, one of the most active and useful functionaries of that old-time tavern life.
"Ben Briler swept the poker-room—
And gathered up the 'chips';
Was 'mixer,' bootblack, cook, and groom,