Radio Script #94
Little Talks On Common Things
January 28, 1951
An interesting subject is Indian place names. It is difficult to be certain of the meanings which the Kennebec Indians attached to various places. As a rule they never had names for any large area or extent, either of land or water. There never seems to have been one name for all of the Kennebec River. They had different names for spots and places along its banks. Champlain in 1605 was the first to hear the Indian word which he put into English as Quinaibequi. It was the Indian’s name for the narrow, windy passage from Bath to Sheepscot Bay on the lower reaches of the river. For the Indians’ frail canoes this was a place of danger, where the water boiled and eddied with the tides. Hence to the Indians it was the abode of the sea monster, Quinaibick sea monster in Chippewa.
When the English came they named the whole river Sagadahoc, but for some reason, above Merrymeeting Bay Champlain’s name stuck. When the Indian wars wiped out most of the settlements on the lower part of the river, the name Sagadahoc faded out and the new settlers came to use the name Kennebec to designate the whole river. There was long a tradition that the word Sebasticook is a comparatively modern Indian corruption of the French pronunciation of St.. John the Baptist’s place, or the place where lived an Indian who had been baptized by a French Missionary and christened St. John the Baptist. Apparently Kingsbury, the author of the standard history of Kennebec County, believed that story, for he printed it as fact in his history.
Students of the Indian languages know better. They are familiar with the word element SEBES, which recurs in numerous place names, and always seems to indicate “almost through”. Sebasticook thus obviously meant a route to other waters by a short carry. This version of the word is supported by the fact that the stream we know as the Sebasticook was part of the canoe route, with carries, from the Penobscot to the Kennebec and thence on to Quebec. Ticonic is probably an old Indian plural of the word for stream (ticus), and probably in this region originally designated the junction of the Sebasticook and Messalonskee with the Kennebec. The most probable meaning of the word Messalonskee is “much clay”. Cobbossecontee is a compound of the Indian words kabbasch (sturgeon) and Kahnti (plenty). Just as Cobbossecontee means plenty of sturgeon, so Damariscotta, a corruption of the older Madamascontis, means plenty of alewives.
Some of us are interested in the different names given to the same thing in different parts of the English speaking world — as, for instance, pail and bucket, spider and frying pan, hay rack and hay wagon. Do you know what they call a rummage sale in Great Britain? I didn’t until I recently saw the expression in that favorite Scotch newspaper of mine, the Peebelshire News. It seems that September is the favorite month for these sales, and one issue of the News in that month advertised no less than five jumble sales. One announcement said: “A jumble sale is to be held in the Masonic Hall, Peebles, next Saturday. The secretary will be grateful to those who care to present gifts or jumbles.”
Both words, rummage and jumbles, have appropriate origins. The verb rummage means to search thoroughly, and the first meaning of the noun was a thorough search. By extension it then came to mean articles turned up as a result of a search, then to mean articles turned up as by-products of a search for something else. It was only a step to the present meaning of miscellaneous articles or odds and ends.
It is possible, however, that the expression rummage sale comes from a different source. The French word “arrumage” was the term for goods stowed in the hold of a Ship, and the term rummage sale seems to have first been applied to the sale of unclaimed goods at a Wharf or warehouse. The origin of the word Jumble is even more interesting for it is one of those words we call a telescope or a blend — the subtle combination of two older words.
Jumble is a combination of join and tumble, and its first meaning as a verb was just that to join something together in a tumbled, confused mass. The modern dictionaries therefore give as the first meaning of Jumble, to mix in a confused mass; throw together without order. The noun easily came to mean a confused mixture or medley,· a hodgepodge or a mess.
Well, take your choice. Our British cousins prefer jumble sales; we like ruIlJIllage sales. But you’ll probably find the same kind of cast-off garments and old furniture, whichever word you use.
The PeebelShire News informs me that they have been having quite a controversy to determine Which is the oldest church bell in Scotland. Yetholm church claimed a bell in continuous use since 1643. That brought a quick response from the people of Eddleston, in PeebleShire, who proudly pCinted to the still legible inscription of the bell in Eddleston church. The inscription was in low German and can be roughly translated, “I was made in the year of our Lord 1507”. That aroused the good folk of Manor PariSh, also in Peebleshire, Who said they could prove they had the oldest bell in continuous use in all Scotland, for the Manor Church bell bears an inscription Which reads: “In honor of Saint Gordian in the yea~ of our Lord 1478.” The town of Crail thought their neighbor Yetholm exceedingly presumptuous to brag about a bell cast as late as 1643. Why, right in Crail, they said, were two bells older than that one cast in 1620, the other in 1614. What is more, said Crail, their 1614 bell hangs in a church tower that was built in the 12th century.
Now by what right do I drag into this program remarks about church bells in Scotland? Because I think it is time we gathered some information about old bells of the Kennebec Valley. I know about the Paul Revere bell at Colby College, but I would like to know the stories about the bell in the Waterville Baptist Church, in the Universalist Church, and in other churches and schools up and down the Valley. For instance, what became of the bell in the Unitarian Church when that building was torn down? If you listeners will help with information, we can have a program soon on old bells of the Kennebec.
The lot of the prisoner of war has never been happy, but probably not until World War II did it reach diabolical depths of unspeakable horror. The prison camps of Germany and Russia, especially those in which they imprisoned their own citizens were scenes of infamous terror. Never was man’s brutality toward man so grossly revealed as at Dachau and Schlongarten. But even 85 years ago it was no picnic to be a prisoner of war. A lot has been written about the suffering of northern prisoners at Libby and Andersonville, and much of it was perhaps exaggerated. We ought to be impressed, therefore, as Waterville folks were impressed in 1864, by what a Waterville man wrote about his life in Danville Prison.
Abner Small was only a boy when the war broke out, but with other Waterville boys he enlisted in the Third Maine Volunteers. So distinguished was his service that he rose to the rank of Major of the 16th Maine and became that famous regimentis- historian. Major Small fought in the bloody battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, and well into the long campaign in the Wilderness, until he was captured in August, 1864. His impressions of life in Danville Prison are neither exaggerated nor bitter. They are simply revealing. He wrote:
“OUr quarters were so crowded that none of us had any more space to himself than his body occupied a strip of bare, hard floor, six feet by two. We lay in long rows, two rows of men with their heads to the side walls, and two with their heads together along the center of the room, leaving narrow aisles between the rows of feet. The wall spaces were greatly preferred, because there a man could sit up and brace his back against the wall during the long day or longer night.
“When I was captured I was the proud possessor of ·a new staff uniform ornamented with gold lace. Five months later my most intimate friends would not have recognized the ragged tramp Who sat naked on the floor of Danville and robbed the legs of his trousers in order to reseat them. OUr nerves were worn ragged; the slightest provocation would cause a quarrel. I saw two cavalry officers come to bloody blows over a few rusty cans.
“There were attempts to escape and. even we who did not make the attempt were in danger because of those who did. When the cry ‘Turn out the guard’ resounded through the prison, I was never more conscious of being in the presence of death. The fear in battle is nothing compared to the glimpse of eternity when one looks into the black muzzle of a gun held by a prison guard.
“As our money gave out we sold anything we had to get more. Boots, spurs, watches, rings, jack knives, buttons were all commodities of trade. Then When we got the debased Confederate currency in exChange for these possessions, we were again Cheated by the outrageous prices of those permitted to sell to us at the prison gates.
“It is hard to keep decent.· Some of our men are almost stark naked, and all of us are alive with vermin. Most of all we dread the dysentery of whiCh many of .our men have already died. Life becomes more and more unbearable, and our only hope is for a general exChange of prisoners between North and South.”
Not since the Civil War has the civilian population of our country seen war at first hand. We have not had the tragic experience visited upon so many civilians in Europe in both World Wars, nor have we known the awful helplessness of Koreans twice driven from their homes within a few months. It is well to remind ourselves of what some American families in our own Southland suffered in the 1860 IS.
Dolly Lunt was a Maine girl who went south to Covington, Georgia to teach school. There she married a planter, Thomas Burge. When Sherman I s Army made its devastating march from Atlanta to the sea, she was a widow managing her own Georgia plantation. ·Her diary records what happened when the invading army reached her home:
“My yards were full of soldiers. To my smoke-house, my dairy, pantry, kitchen, and cellar, like famished wolves, they came, breaking locks and tearing down partitions. The thousand pounds of meat in my smoke-house was gone in a twinkling –my lard, butter, eggs, preserves all gone. My fat turkeys, hens and chickens grabbed up, my young pigs shot down in the yard. They took everything all the horses, even my old mare Mary, now too old and stiff for work, and my dear old buggy horse, Old Dutch, who has so many times quietly waited at the block for me to mount or dismount. And they took all my Negro boys, who have faithfully served me through all this terrible war.
“Even the Negroes I cabins have been rifled of every valuable. I was not personally molested, but almost everything I owned was taken away — all the last clothes, the~recious tapestries, the fine paintings ripped out of their frames.
“As night came on the sky all around was lit with the flames of burning buildings. Dinnerless and supperless as we were, it was nothing to the fear of being driven out homeless to the dreary woods. I did not go to bed for I knew I could not sleep. I kept walking to and fro, watching the fires in the distance and dreading the approaching day, knowing it could only be a continuation of horrors.”
The United States Post Office Department has a proud record for the prompt and regular delivery of mail. We take this splendid service so much for granted that we forget it took a long time to develop and perfect the system to its present efficiency. Editor Drew of the Rural Intelligencer, down in Augusta in 1855, was peeved because he got so many complaints from subscribers about his paper’s late arrival or sometimes complete failure to arrive at all.
So on April 21, 1855 he published the following editorial:
“We assure our friends in Livermore that copies of our paper for the various post offices in that town are mailed in the Augusta post office every Friday before noon, in season for the train that leaves here for Portland and Boston at ten minutes before one o’clock. We can do no more than commit the papers to the post office in season. If we could jump into the bag with the papers, we would see where the delay arises, and would appear as an angry spirit to the postmaster who does not do his duty.”
Year: 1951