The Mysterious Seb'n (5)

 

 

So it was that a few weeks ago when we were watching a documentary about Appalachia, that one of the residents of the Blue Ridge Mountains who was being interviewed answered my question of almost 76 years when he said, “It took ‘em ‘bout seb’n years to git it dun.”  

 

When I heard the word “seb’n” my heart jumped. “That’s it!” I thought. “He said, ‘seb’n,’ he said ‘seb’n’!”

 

I picked up my phone, hit the Google app, typed in “seb’n” and got a couple of hits. Sure enough, “seb’n” is part of an Appalachian dialect, and Nelson County is part of Appalachia in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

 

When my Daddy would say, “seb’n” (or seb’m) he was speaking the language of his childhood, he was talking Nelson County talk – talk with roots stretching across the Atlantic into Ulster and from Ulster across the Irish Sea to Scotland and England. To say that “seb’n” is not a word is to say that Bluegrass is not music, music that also traces its roots to peoples surrounding the Irish Sea.

 

Since then, I have read about Appalachian dialects (for Appalachia has many regions) and have been fascinated, realizing that I’ve heard many of the words and expressions and pronunciations over the years but never realized their roots. Some folks think that these dialects may bring us close to the form of English speech practiced in Colonial times. This reminds me of a study I read which concluded that the French spoken in Quebec is closer to the French of 1750 than that of modern France because of Quebec’s relative isolation from the home country after the Seven Years War (what we term the French and Indian War).

 

Whatever the case might be in terms of Colonial English, traditional Nelson County English now has a beauty for me that I never really appreciated nor truly “heard”. I am sorry we now live far away from those mountains and hollows.

 

Are there words or expressions you heard growing up that you’ve wondered about? Are there questions about the people who surrounded you, their language and their ways, while you were growing up? Should there be questions?

 

When we moved from the D.C. - Baltimore area to Richmond in the 1980s, one of the many changes we encountered had to do ways of doing business and of meeting people in general. In Baltimore and D.C. when you first met someone to do business you sat down and got to the point and then you left. In Richmond there was a warm-up conversation, and it nearly always had to do with, “Who are your people? What did your Daddy do? What about your Mamma? Tell me about yourself and your people.”

 

People did not want to know so much about where you were from; they wanted to know about your people. (I should also mention that in Richmond another thing folks often wanted to know was what college you attended. Where you a Hokie or Cavalier? Did you go to VCU or UR? In D.C. and Maryland, as a rule no one cared about that kind of thing.)

 

How might you describe your people? Your family and the families around you? What was your neighborhood or region like? How have things and people changed over the years?

 

I realize we may never make another trip to that honeycombed land of the Blue Ridge – but the land is etched in my heart, I can see it as I write this – and the people, the people I have known and wish I had known – it is a beautiful land, with a beautiful people, with a beautiful language.

 

One, two, three, four, five, six, seb’m, eight, nine, ten.