"Winter's name is Hawkins" in Langston Hughes

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:45:56 -0500, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>This is from Literature Online. It's in the poem, line 422. Date?...I'll
>probably check out the Chicago (Daily) Defender at NYPL's Harlem library
>on Saturday.
>
>Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967. [Author Page]
>ASK YOUR MAMA 12 MOODS FOR JAZZ  95Kb , [from The Collected Poems of
>Langston Hughes: Arnold Rampersad, Editor: David Roessel, Associate
>Editor (1995), Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.] [Durable URL for this text]
>Found 1 hit(s).
>HORN OF PLENTY 10Kb 10Kb
>...¢ WHERE WINTER'S NAME IS HAWKINS           ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ AND NIAGARA...

_Ask Your Mama_ was published in 1961, and I don't see anything to suggest
that "Horn of Plenty" was published separately at an earlier date.

Perhaps George Thompson was thinking of an earlier Hughes work?  HDAS
cites _Negro Folklore_ (1958) by Hughes and Arna Bontemps ("Hawkins: The
wind, wintertime, cold weather, ice, snow. In February, Hawkins talks.")

The earliest "Hawkins" cite in HDAS is from 1934, in the _Baltimore Sun_:
"Hawkins is outside (is coming)."  Perhaps this is what the Cassell
Dictionary of Slang is referring to.  Is this the only cite from the '30s
for "Hawkins" or "Hawk" found so far?


--Ben Zimmer