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Ole Mars an' Ole Miss

Chapter 15: MARS PINCKNEY’S ’SIMMONS
By Edmund K. Goldsborough
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About This Book

A series of rural sketches and vignettes captures life on Maryland's Eastern Shore through vernacular narration that blends humor, folklore, sermons, songs, debates, and doggerel. The pieces portray seasonal work, gardens, hunts, church meetings, and domestic scenes, offering varied portraits of community customs, beliefs, and speech. The book alternates short stories and comic pieces with reflective sermons and lyrical descriptions of landscape and household life, using archly rendered dialect to evoke characters and local color while shifting between playful anecdote and earnest moral reflection.

MARS PINCKNEY’S ’SIMMONS

De chickens all hab gone ter roos’, de milkin’s almos’ ober;
I heah de hooppo-will’s loud song, de rabbits in de clober,
De ’possum gittin’ out ub bed, de coon he ’gin ter wake,
An’ one, er bof, in Haylan’ Branch, I specks ter obertake.
Da ain’ no moon, de stars is brite, de ’simmons ripe an’ sweet—
De ve’y night fuh Traveler ter sent uh varment’s feet;
Befo’ de roostus crow hit’s day, an’ ’fo’ de Bob White stir,
I no I’ll heah de lubly tongue ub meh dog Traveler.
Jes’ ez I harked him in de branch, an’ wa’k ’long de parf,
I seed de bushes moobin’, an’ I heahd uh leetle larf;
’Twuz den de dog cum ter de tree an’ made uh monstus fuss,
An’ what wuz in dat ’simmon tree wuz wuss dan scanalous.
At fus’ I tho’t hit wuz uh owl, but coon dogs don’ tree owls,
An’ Traveler wuz too skeer’d ter bark, ’twuz jes’ uh stream ub howls;
So den I look up in de tree, an’ settin’ ’pon uh lim’,
Wuz uh cunnin’ leetle niggah, sorter hummin’ ub uh hymn.
I saw ’twuz leetle Ezzy feedin’ on dem ’simmons ripe—
De night befo’ he’d tole “De composation ub de snipe;”
He al’ays spressify hissef in sech uh cutesome way
Dat ev’ybody lubbed him, an’ bleebe what Billy say.
So I didn’ wan’ ter ’stress him, but meck bleebe I did,
An’ said, “Fum Caesar’s quarters hencefof you is fuhbid;”
An’ den dat leetle roscal say he didn’ cuh fuh me,
“Dese is Mars Pinckney’s ’simmons, an’ Mars Pinckney’s ’simmon tree.”
I tole him ef’n I had uh ax I’d cut de fruit tree down,
An’ ef he fell an’ breck he neck when he struck on de groun’
Hit wouldn’ ’stress me any, kase you t’ink yo’sef so wise,
An’ you de sort ub niggah dat de Babtis’ chuch dispise.