Swamp Yankee

"Swamp Yankee" is a colloquial pejorative for rural Yankees (northeasterners with English colonial ancestry). The term "Yankee" connotes urbane industriousness, whereas the term "Swamp Yankee" signifies a more countrified, stubborn, independent, and less refined subtype. It is an old fashioned term from the 1930s through the early 1960s, and often has little meaning today.

Usage

Ruth Schell's 1963 article "Swamp Yankee" in American Speech explains in detail the characteristics and usage associated with the term. She claims that it is used predominantly in Rhode Island by the incoming minority groups (Italian, Irish) to describe "a rural dweller—one of stubborn, old-fashioned, frugal, English-speaking Yankee stock, of good standing in the rural community, but usually possessing minimal formal education and little desire to augment it. Swamp Yankees themselves react to the term with slight disapproval or indifference.... The term is unfavorably received when used by a city dweller with the intention of ridiculing a country resident; however, when one country resident refers to another as a swamp Yankee, no offense is taken, and it is treated as good-natured jest."[1]

Schell continues, "the term is most frequently applied to older people and is often preceded by old. Sometimes it is shortened to swampy.... [Swamp Yankees] were not among the religious and ambitious Pilgrims who had sailed to America on the Mayflower; but rather they were more often among the undesirables who had left England as the result of some form of misconduct and who retreated to the swamps when they arrived here." The typical swamp Yankee can be found in an old, rural general store in the evening where four or five of the immediate countryside's swamp Yankees gather and tell stories for several hours. Such a gathering has been jocularly described as a "lying contest". "The term swamp Yankee is becoming less known and may be unknown in a few generations.... Probably the best reason for its disappearance is the vanishing of the swamp Yankee himself as society moves toward urban and suburban life."[2]

At one time, "Swamp Yankees" even had their own variety of isolated country music, according to an article written by Harvard professor Paul Di Maggio and Vanderbilt University professor Richard Peterson.[3]

In 1993, playwright Arthur Miller used the term in his play The Last Yankee to refer to a New England carpenter who was a descendant of one of the Founding Fathers. Rhode Island cartoonist Don Bousquet often parodies the "Swamp Yankee" in his cartoons. Kerry W. Buckley describes President Calvin Coolidge as a "swamp Yankee" in a 2003 article in New England Quarterly, defining it as "scion of an old family that was no longer elite or monied."[4]

The village of Ashaway, Rhode Island sponsored a festival known as "Swamp Yankee Days" every September for many years. The festival featured old time and traditional fare such as clam chowder, clamcakes, and johnnycakes. Additionally, various bands played during the event, and activities included an antique tractor parade, a baked bean eating contest, cow chip bingo, a flea market, and assorted activities for kids. As of 2016, the event has been hosted in Charlestown, RI.

History

The origin of the term "Swamp Yankee" is unclear. The term "Yankee" originated in the mid-17th century,[5] but the variation "Swamp Yankee" is not attested until the 20th century, according to "Etymology Online". . Several theories speculate that "Swamp Yankees" were the undesirable, troublemaking New Englanders who moved to the "swamps" of southeastern New England upon arriving in the New World in the 17th century. It is possible that the term also meant that a person was unwanted in an unestablished town for having a relationship with an Indian. Others speculate that the original "Swamp Yankees" were colonial-era indentured servants who were paid for their service with swamp land from the farmers to whom they were indentured. Still others claim that "Swamp Yankees" had relatives who fought in the Great Swamp Fight of King Philip's War.

Another theory claims that the term originated during the American Revolution when residents of Thompson, Connecticut fled to the surrounding swamps to escape a feared British invasion in 1776. When the refugees arose from the swamps several weeks later, they were ridiculed and called "Swamp Yankees."[6]

A 1912 Metropolitan Magazine article describes the son of a New England mill owner as a "Swamp Yankee".[7] In 1921, Modern Connecticut Homes and Homecrafts describes a "swamp yankee" living in an old unpainted home in New England but caring about his beds of flowers.[8] A bowling team in a 1922 Norwich, Connecticut newspaper was named the "Swamp Yankees."[9] In 1935, the New York Times labeled "Swamp Yankees" as those driven out of a New England mill town by immigrants.[10]

Examples of use

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Ruth Schell, "Swamp Yankee," American Speech, 1963, Volume 38, No.2 (The American Dialect Society, Duke University Press ), pp. 121-123. accessed through JSTOR
  2. ↑ Schell, 121-123
  3. ↑ Peterson, 499
  4. ↑ Kerry W. Buckley, "A President for the "Great Silent Majority: Bruce Barton's Construction of Calvin Coolidge," The New England Quarterly > Vol. 76, No. 4 (Dec., 2003), pp. 594
  5. ↑ Etymonline.com
  6. ↑ http://www.curbstone.org/index.cfm?webpage=80
  7. ↑ William Burns Weston, "Jimmie Pulsifer Walks Home"], The Metropolitan, July 1912, p. 15
  8. ↑ Modern Connecticut Homes and Homecrafts: A Book of Representative Houses, Interiors, Gardens, Decorations, Furnishings and Equipment Appropriately Described and Illustrated by Several Hundred Beautiful Engravings, (American Homecrafts Company, 1921) pg. 139
  9. ↑ Norwich bulletin., March 23, 1922, Image 3
  10. ↑ "Out of the Whirlwind," New York Times, May 26, 1935

References

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