(Singing): "Tech (touch) me all round my waist!
Don't tech my water-fall!
Gay gal setting on the rider fence!
Don't tech my water-fall!"
"Clothes gone to wash this morning. (Can't go today.) Clothes gone.
"I been here so long—I ax Jesus one day carry me next day! Can't make up my bed. Like an old hog sleep on a tussick." (I always heard it 'Toad on a tussock'—and you?)
(Four lean cats prowled about sniffing around the woodpile where a boy was scaling some pale, dead fish.)
Visitor: "Aunt Ellen, how could you cook on the flat?"
Aunt Ellen: "Dirt bank up. Fire make on dirt. Big pot. Cook. Fry meat. Come PeeDee get off flat. Bake. Bake. Iron oven. Stay PeeDee week. Bake. Pile coals on oven top." (Another slave told of scaffold—four posts buried and logs or planks across top with earth on planks. On this pile of earth, fire was made and on great bed of coals oven could be heated for baking. 'Oven' means the great iron skillet-like vessel with three legs and a snug lid. This oven bakes biscuit, pound cake, and some old timers insist on trusting only this oven for their annual fruit cake. It works beautifully on a hearth. Put your buttermilk biscuit in, lid on and pile live-oak coals on top. Of course only the ones who have done this a long time know when to take the lid off.)
"Dirt camp to stay in—to hide from Yankee." (Her gestures showed earth was mounded up.)
Visitor: "Like a potato bank? A potato hill?"
Ellen: "Dat's it! Pile 'em! Gone in dirt camp to hide we from Yankee. Have a Street Row of house. Yankee coming. Gone in dirt camp.
"I been weave. My loom at door. Six loom on dat side! Six loom on dis side! I see 'em coming. Hat crown high as this." (She measured off almost half of her walking stick—which had a great, tarnished plated silver knob.) "And I tell 'em 'Yankee coming!' I talk with Abram Lincoln own son Johnny and, bless your heart I glad for Freedom till I fool!"