Notes

Snake is pronounced with an indefinite short vowel between the s and n, senake.

burn-pan hat, the tall hat of civilized towns. The pan is the usual cylindrical tin vessel used for cooking. When blackened by fire it is a burn-pan or burnt pan. It is pronounced like French bonne.

Gandelow, scotran. The meaning of these words is lost.

roguer. This word is doubtful. Sometimes it sounds like rowgard, at others like rowgod. It may mean "more roguish." The boy who gave me this story often quotes this line from a hymn:

"To break the bonds of cantling sin."

One day I asked him to point it out in his hymnbook. It was conquering. He can say it perfectly well, but he still goes on with cantling. It is not surprising, therefore, that we cannot recover words passed from mouth to mouth for generations.

womankind. Again it is doubtful whether this is a single word or two words. The article would fix it as the latter in pure English, but in negro speech it goes for nothing.

old-witch, though she was a young girl: see notes to No. IV. (Tomby).