The Hoosier Schoolmaster | Page 4

Best Licks" seems rather unrenderable, and I do not see how the translator could have found a better phrase for it than "L'Eglise des Raclées" though "raclées" does not convey the double sense of "licks." "Jim epelait vite comme l'eclair" is not a good rendering of "Jim spelled like lightning," since it is not the celerity of the spelling that is the main consideration. "Concours d'epellation" is probably the best equivalent for "spelling-school," but it seems something more stately in its French dress. When Bud says, with reference to Hannah, "I never took no shine that air way," the phrase is rather too idiomatic for the French tongue, and it becomes "I haven't run after that hare" ("Je n'ai pas chassé ce lièvre-la"). Perhaps the most sadly amusing thing in the translation is the way the meaning of the nickname Shocky is missed in an explanatory foot-note. It is, according to the translator, an abbreviation or corruption of the English word "shocking," which expresses the shocking ugliness of the child--"qui exprime la laideur choquante de l'enfant."
A German version of "The Hoosier School-Master" was made about the time of the appearance of the French translation, but of this I have never seen a copy. I know of it only from the statement made to me by a German professor, that he had read it in German before he knew any English. What are the equivalents in High German for "right smart" and "dog-on" I cannot imagine.
Several years after the publication of "The Hoosier School-Master" it occurred to Mr. H. Hansen, of Kj?ge, in Denmark, to render it into Danish. Among the Danes the book enjoyed a popularity as great, perhaps, as it has had at home. The circulation warranted Mr. Hansen and his publisher in bringing out several other novels of mine. The Danish translator was the only person concerned in the various foreign editions of this book who had the courtesy to ask the author's leave. Under the old conditions in regard to international copyright, an author came to be regarded as one not entitled even to common civilities in the matter of reprinting his works--he was to be plundered without politeness. As I look at the row of my books in the unfamiliar Danish, I am reminded of that New England mother who, on recovering her children carried away by the Canadian Indians, found it impossible to communicate with a daughter who spoke only French and a son who knew nothing but the speech of his savage captors. Mr. Hansen was thoughtful enough to send me the reviews of my books in the Danish newspapers; and he had the double kindness to translate these into English and to leave out all but those that were likely to be agreeable to my vanity. Of these I remember but a single sentence, and that because it was expressed with felicity. The reviewer said of the fun in "The Hoosier School-Master:" "This is humor laughing to keep from bursting into tears."
A year or two before the appearance of "The Hoosier School-Master," a newspaper article of mine touching upon American dialect interested Mr. Lowell, and he urged me to "look for the foreign influence" that has affected the speech of the Ohio River country. My reverence for him as the master in such studies did not prevent me from feeling that the suggestion was a little absurd. But at a later period I became aware that North Irishmen used many of the pronunciations and idioms that distinctly characterized the language of old-fashioned people on the Ohio. Many Ulster men say "wair" for were and "air" for are, for example. Connecting this with the existence of a considerable element of Scotch-Irish names in the Ohio River region, I could not doubt that here was one of the keys the master had bidden me look for. While pursuing at a later period a series of investigations into the culture-history of the American people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I became much interested in the emigration to America from the north of Ireland, a movement that waxed and waned as the great Irish-linen industry of the last century declined or prospered. The first American home of these Irish was Pennsylvania. A portion of them were steady-going, psalm-singing, money-getting people, who in course of time made themselves felt in the commerce, politics, and intellectual life of the nation. There was also a dare-devil element, descended perhaps from those rude borderers who were deported to Ireland more for the sake of the peace of North Britain than for the benefit of Ireland. In this rougher class there was perhaps a larger dash of the Celtic fire that came from the wild Irish women whom the first Scotch settlers in Ulster made the mothers of their progeny. Arrived