Swamp Yankee
Swamp Yankee is a colloquialism that has a variety of meanings. Generally, it refers to Yankees or WASPS (northeasterners with colonial ancestry) from rural Rhode Island and nearby eastern Connecticut. While the term "Yankee" alone connotes urbane industriousness, and the term "Swamp Yankee" signifies a more countrified, stubborn, independent and less refined subtype.
History
The origins of the term "Swamp Yankee" are unclear. The term "Yankee" originated in the mid-1700s, and the variation "Swamp Yankee" seems to have developed shortly after this period. 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 1600s.
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."
Usage
Ruth Schell's 1963 article, "Swamp Yankee" in American Speech goes into detail about the characteristics and usage associated with the term. She claims that it is used predominantly in Rhode Island, eastern Connecticut and occasionally southeastern Massachusetts, 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."
Schell continues, "[t]he term is most frequently applied to older people and is often preceded by old. Sometimes it is shortened to swampy [or swamper]...[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...where in the evening 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."
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 professor, Richard Peterson.
Today, the term is still used in Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut and often connotes the northern equivalent of the southern term redneck. In 1993, the 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 Bosquet often parodies the "Swamp Yankee" in his cartoons.
Examples of use
- Swamp Yankee Days Festival in Ashaway, Rhode Island
- "Swamp Yankee"- a Rhode Island band
- Swamp Yankee - A Swing/Latin Music album
- Rhode Island Swamp Yankee Striped Bass Classic
- Description of a Rhode Island Swamp Yankee by novelist Margaret L. Carter
- List of Swamp Yankee characteristics
Sources and External links
- Excerpt from Legendary Connecticut by David Philips
- Ruth Schell, "Swamp Yankee," American Speech, 1963, Volume 38, No.2 (The American Dialect Society, Published by Duke University Press ), pg. 121-123. accessed through JSTOR
- Hans Kurath, Linguistic Atlas of New England, II (Providence, R.I.), map 450.
- Captain Harry Allen Chippendale, Sails and Whales (Boston, 1951), pp 105-6.
- Philip Jerome Cleveland, It's Bright in My Valley (Westwood, N.J., 1962), p. 30.
- "Sayings of the Oracle," Yankee (August, 1962), p.12.
- Joseph Bensman; Arthur J. VIdich, "The New Middle Classes: Their Culture and Life Styles," Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol.4, No. 1, (Jan., 1970), pp. 23-39.
- Richard A. Peterson; Paul Di Maggio, "From Region to Class, the Changing Locus of Country Music: A Test of the Massification Hypothesis," Social Forces (University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 499.