Mar 19 2009
Betsy Bugs and Other Southern Slang
In a recent post I used the term “crazy as a Betsy Bug”. One of my readers left a comment asking “what is a Betsy Bug?” Well a Betsy Bug is a Bess Beetle. In the South we also call them pinching bugs. We have our own language down here. For instance Chiggers are red bugs to us. We use the word tote instead of carry. We have yards instead of lawns and porches instead of decks. The outhouse was a parlor. We don’t have many of those any more, thank God. We still say ain’t unless there is a teacher around or we are applying for a job.
I remember going to Grandma’s house on Sunday. Before we were out of the car she would holler (yell)” have ya’ll been to bread”? That means have you eaten yet? She would cook big butterbeans, cornbread, crackling bread, fried chicken, and on the side would be hoop cheese and onion. Sometimes she would make Polk salad, but I stayed away from that stuff. It can kill you if it’s not cooked right. We would drink sweet iced tea and buttermilk. It was so good it would make your tongue slap your brains out. We were so hungry our stomach was kissing our back bone. If my cousin Butch (Wayne) was there shooting off firecrackers it would make me as nervous as a long tail cat in a room full of rockers. We love those sayings.
Well ya’ll I’m fixin to (about to) go heat up some hoecake and collards. Yummm!
LOL! Oh My Gosh! That reminds me so much of my childhood! My grandparents on my father’s side was from Louisiana and on my mother’s Oklahoma, and do those words bring back memories. We usually got beans and a whole mess of taters! HAHA.. Thanks for the memories!
I guess my Southern Roots are showing since I got a huge giggle out of the “slang” - Such memories!
I recently relocated to the South, and I’ve heard some of these terms. While I’m still not sure what some of them mean, thanks for finally enlightening me on some!!!
But I gotta know…what is hoop cheese? And what’s wrong with Polk salad?
Hoop cheese is cheese that is sold in a wooden round box. It has a strong taste. I love it but it is hard to find anymore. Polk salad grows wild and to me it is a weed. Some brave souls will boil it with a piece of fatback or ham. If it is not cooked just right it will kill you. It is supposed to taste like collards. My thinking is to just eat collards and leave the Polk salad along. Oh, and fatback is pork fat. We like to fry fatback and eat it in biskets. It is a heart attack on a plate but it is so good.
Thanks for posting about Betsy Bugs and their sanity. I’ve used that phrase all my life in Arkansas & didn’t know what it actually meant.
One request: please spell “ya’ll” as “y’all”. It’s a contraction of “you all”. Sorry to be anal retentive about that, but it always drives me just a bit crazier when I see the apostrophe after the a rather than the y. Gee, off to my therapist…