LXII.
They like to complain of their little ailments, as thus:
|
Wednesday morning before day, Wednesday morning before day, Wednesday morning before day, me ma'am, me feel me head a hurt me. |
If a man happens to hurt himself, he sends or brings the most exaggerated account of the accident. If it is a cut on the hand, he "nearly chop him hand off." If there is a trickle of blood, "the whole place running in blood." In my early days in Jamaica my boy Robert came rushing up with gestures expressing the utmost consternation, and gasped out "Rufus hang!" Rufus was the pony. "He dead?" I asked. "'Tiff dead!" was the reply. We were doing a piece of important planting in the garden, and I said "Well! as he's dead there's nothing to be done, and we'll go on with this job." Two or three hours later, to my surprise, I saw Robert carrying grass towards the stable. "What are you doing with the grass, Robert?"
"It for Rufus."
"But Rufus dead."
"No! he don't dead again," which meant that he was still alive. When I went to see, I found him rather exhausted with his struggling—he had fallen on the hillside and got entangled in the rope—but not very bad, and by next day he had quite recovered.
This kind of exaggeration enters into all their talk. Once, travelling in a tram-car, there was a slight accident. The car just touched the shaft of a passing carriage and broke it. One man said to his neighbour, "See dat? de buggy 'mash to pieces."