jig/gig

[Wilson Gray]

I saw "Hair" the musical (the Los Angeles company). But I <blush>
didn't go to see it for the music. if a number from the play didn't
subsequently make it to the Top 40, then I have only the vaguest
memory of it. Besides, back in the day, a song like that would have
been extremely embarrassing and by no means funny, despite the fact
that it was meant as satire, and I would not have wanted to hear the
words and I would also have wanted to forget them as quickly as
possible. As was noted in "The Boys in the Band":

No matter how you figger,
It's hard to be a nigger.
(But it's even harder still
To be a Jew.)

-Wilson

On 9/19/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: jig/gig
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> On Sep 19, 2007, at 7:04 AM, Jim Parish wrote:
>
> > Wilson Gray wrote:
> >> Surely, "jig(aboo)" = black, colored, Negro, African-American, etc,.
> >> etc., has not been
> >> resurrected?! I don't think that I've ever heard it in the wild. I
> >> know it only from literature and the movies. Or am I mistaken in
> >> assuming that it ever died, in the first place?
> >
> > I heard it used around 1970, by a person who had been born in the late
> > 1940s. I haven't heard it since, though.
>
> even back in the 60s it sounded rather quaint:
>
>
> Colored Spade (from Hair -- opened on Broadway in 1968)
>
> I'm a
> Colored spade
> A nigra
> A black nigger
> A jungle bunny
> Jigaboo coon
> Pickaninny mau mau
>
> Uncle Tom
> Aunt Jemima
> Little Black Sambo
>
> Cotton pickin'
> Swamp guinea
> Junk man
> Shoeshine boy
>
> Elevator operator
> Table cleaner at Horn & Hardart
> Slave voodoo
> Zombie
> Ubangi lipped
>
> Flat nose
> Tap dancin'
> Resident of Harlem
>
> And president of
> The United States of Love
> President of
> The United States of Love
>
> (and if you ask this man to dinner you're gonna have to feed him:)
>
> Watermelon
> Hominy grits
> An' shortnin' bread
> Alligator ribs
> Some pig tails
> Some black eyed peas
> Some chili
> Some collard greens
>
> And if you don't watch out
> This boogie man will get you
> Booooooooo!
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >
> > Jim Parish
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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