Songs of Jamaica (1912)
Quashie to Buccra
You tas’e[1] petater[2] an’ you say it sweet,
But you no know how hard we wuk[3] fe it;
You want a basketful fe quattiewut,[4]
‘Cause you no know how ‘tiff de bush fe cut.[5]
De cowitch[6] under which we hab fe ‘toop,
De shamar[7] lyin’ t’ick like pumpkin soup,
Is killin’ somet’ing[8] for a naygur man;
Much less[9] de cutlass workin’ in we han’.
De sun hot like when fire ketch a town[10];
Shade-tree look temptin’, yet we ca~m’ lie down,
Aldough we wouldn’ eben ef we could,
Causen we job must finish soon an’ good.[11]
De bush cut done, de bank dem we deh dig,[12]
But dem caan’ ‘tan’ sake o’ we naybor pig;
For so we moul’ it up he root it do’n,[13]
An’ we caan’ ‘peak sake o’ we naybor tongue.[14]
Aldough de vine is little, it can bear;
It wantin”not’in’ but a little care:
You see petater tear up groun’, you run,[15]
You laughin’, sir, you must be t’ink a fun.[16]
De fie!’ pretty? It couldn’t less ‘an dat,[17]
We wuk de bes’,[18] an’ den de lan’ is fat;
We dig de row dem eben in a line,
An’ keep it clean-den so it mus’ look fine.
You tas’e petater an’ you say it sweet,
But you no know how hard we wuk fe it;
Yet still de hardship always melt away
Wheneber it come roun’ to reapin’ day.
- Taste ↵
- Sweet potato (Ipomaea Batatas) ↵
- Work ↵
- Quattieworth: quattie, a quarter of sixpence ↵
- Becanse you don't know how stiff the bush is to cut, i.e., what hard work it is to fell the trees and clear the land. ↵
- Mucuna Pruriens ↵
- Shamebush, the prickly sensitive plant (Mimosa Pudica) ↵
- Terrible stuff ↵
- More ↵
- In ↵
- Because our job must be quickly and thoroughly done ↵
- The clearing of the land done, we dig the banks-kind of terraces on the steep hill-side—but owing to our neighbour's pig they cannot stand. "Bank dem " = banks. This intrusive "dem" must be tacked closely to the preceding word. It occurs again below—"row dem." ↵
- For no sooner do we mould it up, than he (the pig) roots it (the bank) down. " Down" is pronounced very short, and is a good rhyme to "tongue" ↵
- And we cannot complain, for this would 'bring confusion' i.e., cause a row. ↵
- A piece of humorous exaggeration: "When you see the potatoes tearing up the ground in their rapid growth you will run to save yourself from being caught and entangled in the vines ↵
- You are laughing, sir—perhaps you think I am exaggerating ↵
- Less than that = be otherwise ↵
- We work as well as we possibly can ↵