North Carolina Two - Text
Subject is white female, fifties, born and raised in Manteo, North Carolina,
where the recording was made by Paul Meier in 1999. She is the wife of a crab
fisherman and lives right on the edge of the Sound. Her dialect is very strong
and owes, by her own testimony, much to her association with the people of Wanchese,
another town on Roanoke Island.
Running time 00:4:47.
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I was born and raised right here in Manteo, and I grew up here, and I went to school with local children and on the island and I graduated and we all talk alike. But the bridge going over to Nag's Head was there and of course we went back and forth, but when I went to school the children from across the sound had to come across every morning on the ferry. And um, they, when we had any kind of activity at night, they would have to spend the night with somebody over here in order to go. It's that English accent. Uh, my father was in the University of Virginia and the woman that was in the um, head nurse she said "You talk so near like they do from there," And but I'm, I want to keep it. I don't know because I've never been to England um but I would like to go sometime.
My husband's people, they have their coat of arms. They're strictly um English. His mother was a Stowe and his um father was a Peele now well that, I don't think, I don't know whether that was English or not, but his, his mother's people came from England. And I was a Russell, and my grandmother was a Journagan(?), and there was a Lord Journagan a few years ago in England. So I mean, I know we're all kinda, English you know, our ancestors. My little grandson was sitting here one night and a commercial came on TV and it was the pig man over on the beach and he said "You got to stop and get some barbecue," and Lyle said, "Who ever heard of barbecue?" said, "It's barbecue." So I mean, it just, we're all, you know, talk alike. Now in Ocracoke they talk real fast. You have to really listen. And Rudolph is from Hatteras but he lost a lot of his because he was in service and he traveled a lot. And when we go anywhere, people say "Oh, I know where you're from!" I'm the one that gets blamed and he's from further that way than I am. But I went to school, now, the children from Wanchese have a real heavy brogue just like, what, as bad as me or worse, but see I went to school with ‘em. And uh, I have a girlfriend that lives in Greensboro and she's lived there for years, and she still has it, so you don't get rid of it. My son that's, he does that every year, he has um crab pots, or they're, er, they're peeler pots and he catches em and brings them in and he has to sort them. The green ones are not he has to put them in different sheds and as they ripen, the come out of their sheds. And that's what we have soft shelled crabs. Well, now my husband was a party fisherman. My son-in-law is a sculptor. He lives in Florida, and he made that boat and give it to Rudolph one Christmas that was his boat. And uh, he caught marlin and sailfish and all kinds of stuff like that. Now my little grandson, or he's not little, he has been catchin’ some beautiful trout and stuff in the um, sound. He has nets that he's been catching. And um he just living up here and my son's home's right next door to me. But now my son also hard crabs but um now there's another run of peelers it’s gonna come. This years been the worst peeler season that they've had and so then we're hoping that the next run, there’s usually two runs that we're hoping it will be better, but um we have possums and raccoons and stuff like that but we don't have any deer. No but I'll tell you what, when my son was just a little feller I looked out and all I could think about, oh me! I saw all these things in this little creek, and it was porpoises and all I could think about was sharks and I screamed for him I thought he was, you know, right that minute, you don't think you just think "My child's out there." And it was porpoises. There was about five of ‘em. That was the worst sight. It scared me until I found out what they were.