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Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 – https://tidsskrift.dk/sss DORA RICHARDS MILLER’S “RECOLLECTIONS OF A WEST-INDIAN HOME AND SLAVE-INSURRECTION”: AN INTRODUCTION INCLUDING A LINGUISTIC DISCUSSION OF HER CRUCIAN ENGLISH CREOLE TEXTS Kristoffer Friis Bøegh Utrecht University, Aarhus University k.f.boegh@uu.nl Peter Bakker Aarhus University linpb@cc.au.dk Abstract This article presents an introduction to a diplomatic edition of a manuscript written by the Caribbean-born writer and educator Dora Richards Miller (1835– 1914), finalized around 1886. The diplomatic edition is published as Miller (this issue), edited and annotated by the authors of the present introductory study. Miller’s Recollections contains an account of her memories of the 1848 slave uprising on St. Croix, which resulted in the emancipation of the enslaved population in the Danish West Indies (today’s US Virgin Islands). In addition to providing an overview of the life and work of Miller and contextualization of her Recollections, we offer a discussion of the account as a central source for Virgin Islands language history in the 19th century. The document contains a considerable number of quotations as well as the lyrics of an 1848 song in a historical form of Crucian English Creole. Miller’s Recollections can be considered, we argue, the earliest substantial source for the study of Anglophone sociolinguistic variation in the Virgin Islands. Keywords: Dora Richards Miller; 19th century; diplomatic edition; slavery; emancipation; Danish West Indies; St. Croix; Crucian English Creole; George W. Cable Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 57 1. Introduction* This article presents an introduction to a diplomatic edition of a manuscript written by the Caribbean-born writer and educator Dora Richards Miller (1835–1914), published as Miller (this issue), edited and annotated by the authors. Finalized around 1886, Miller’s manuscript, titled Recollections of a West-Indian Home and Slave-Insurrection, contains an account of her memories of the 1848 slave uprising on the island of St. Croix, which she witnessed when she was 13 years old. The uprising resulted in the imme- diate emancipation of the enslaved population in the then Danish West In- dies, that is, the three northeastern Caribbean islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix, known since 1917 as the US Virgin Islands. A summary of the main events can be found in Hall (1992: 208). On the night of July 2, signal fires were lit on the estates of western St. Croix, estate bells began to ring and conch shells were blown, and by the morning, on July 3, an estimated 8,000 people – around half of the island’s total en- slaved population – had converged in front of the Danish fort in the town of Frederiksted, in western St. Croix, demanding their immediate freedom. Governor-General Peter von Scholten summoned a meeting of his senior advisers in Christiansted, the capital of the Danish West Indies, located east on the island, which resulted in him traveling overland to Frederiksted. There, later on that same day, he then proclaimed emancipation by guber- natorial fiat. Although there were individual violent episodes, the uprising was largely without bloodshed, distinguishing it from other “late” slave re- bellions in the Caribbean, such as the 1816 rebellion in Barbados, the 1823 uprising in Demerara (Guyana), and the 1831 Jamaica Christmas rebellion (cf. Hall 1984). The sequence of events surrounding the 1848 uprising on St. Croix is mostly well documented, and there is a reasonable quantity of historical * We are grateful to the late Arnold R. Highfield (1940–2019) in whose Caribbean col- lection, now housed at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix, KFB first learned of the Miller manuscript’s existence, and to the staff at Tulane University Archives, Louisiana, for assistance with locating a copy of the complete manuscript. We extend thanks to Rasmus Christensen for help with identifying some individuals referred to in Miller’s manuscript, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on this introductory study and the diplomatic edition of the account. The work presented here is supported by the Carlsberg Foundation (Grant CF23-1162 for KFB) and by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Grant 10.46540/4256-00026B for PB). Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 58 literature (cf. Sections 2 and 3 for details). However, Miller’s detailed eye- witness account has remained unpublished in full, and is not often referred to by historians, despite the intelligence received directly from enslaved Virgin Islanders. In 1892, a heavily edited extract from it appeared in Scrib- ner’s Magazine, but under the name of the Louisianan novelist George W. Cable (1844–1925). Recently, a more elaborate version, a later copy of the original manuscript, has been located, thus enabling the editing and publi- cation of the complete account. Cable claimed that he had condensed Mil- ler’s manuscript from 15,600 to 8,100 words in his version. Our aims in publishing Miller’s Recollections – faithful to the au- thor’s full version – are, first, to make a valuable account of a pivotal event in the history of the former Danish West Indies and current US Virgin Is- lands accessible to a broad readership, and second, to provide more specific discussion of the account as a central source for Virgin Islands language history in the 19th century. From a linguistic perspective, Miller’s account is valuable because it contains a considerable number of quotations and the lyrics of an 1848 song in a historical form of Crucian English Creole, that is, the variety of Caribbean English Creole spoken on St. Croix in the co- lonial period (ISO 639-3: vic). These texts appear to comprise the earliest substantial source for the study of Crucian English Creole produced by a cultural insider with an awareness of sociolinguistic differences, and they should therefore be brought to light and examined from a linguistic per- spective as well. The remainder of this introductory study is organized as follows. In Section 2, we sketch out the historical context to establish a frame for the rest of the study. In Section 3, we present information about Dora Richards Miller and introduce and discuss her Recollections. In connection with this, we also explore Miller’s association with George W. Cable, and their in- creasingly conflict-laden relationship, as this aspect is important for under- standing the full context of Miller’s Recollections – including why Miller’s version of the account remained unpublished in her own lifetime. In Sec- tion 4, we discuss the account’s significance as a primary source for stud- ying the diachrony of Crucian English Creole, and thus the historical soci- olinguistic situation in St. Croix. In Section 5, we present some brief edi- torial remarks, outlining the decisions made based on our work with the manuscript, and we provide an overview of the individuals/characters fea- tured in the account. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 59 2. Historical context 2.1 General background The Virgin Islands archipelago is situated as part of the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. The most widely accepted ac- counts of the Indigenous history of the Virgin Islands suggest that they had been inhabited by indigenous populations, who had migrated from the South American mainland beginning around 1000 BCE, reaching the Vir- gin Islands around 400 BCE. The first European sighting of the Virgin Is- lands was by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the Americas, in 1493. On November 14, Columbus sighted and, it is generally believed, landed on an island known among the indigenous Amerindian population as Ay-Ay, which he called Santa Cruz ‘Holy Cross’ in Spanish (hence the adjective Crucian ‘of St. Croix’), later Frenchified to St. Croix.1 He subse- quently sighted and named St. Thomas, St. John, and a number of other nearby islands, and he went on to name the whole group of islands for a Christian saint (Ursula) and her group of holy martyred virgin followers. The Spanish initially claimed the Virgin Islands after this original discovery, but they never established a settlement there. Instead, in 1508, they founded a permanent settlement in Puerto Rico, located west of the Virgin Islands. During the subsequent European scramble for colonies in the Caribbean, St. Croix was claimed successively, starting in 1625, by a number of different settler groups and nationalities. During the 17th and 18th centuries, following a series of short-lived settlements, coupled with the decline (through disease, death, and forced migration) of the indigenous Amerindian population, three of the Virgin Islands (St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix) were colonized by the Danes, as the Danish West Indies. In 1917, the three islands were sold to the USA and were given their current name, the US Virgin Islands. From an economic standpoint, the Danish West Indies displayed a dichotomy: St. Thomas, settled permanently by the Danes in 1672, devel- oped into an important hub for trade and shipping, whereas most activity on St. Croix, acquired from France by Denmark in 1733 and settled starting 1 Ay-Ay was the Taíno (Amerindian) name for St. Croix, or for Salt River, St. Croix (the original meaning of the word most likely being ‘the river’, cf. Highfield 2018: 30 f.). Salt River is an area located on the north shore of St. Croix. Today’s spelling of the is- land’s name derives from the French derivation of Spanish Santa Cruz. It is pronounced /sent kroj/ in English, and as /sɛ̃ kʁwɑ/ in French. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 60 the following year, revolved around agriculture and large-scale sugar plan- tations. The colonization of St. John, the smallest of the three islands, was initiated in 1718. It progressed until 1733, when a slave insurrection took place, leading to a halt in further economic exploitation there. Throughout the remainder of the period of slavery, the economic interests of the colo- nial power were concentrated on St. Thomas and St. Croix. For a broad overview of historical research concerning the Danish West Indies, see, for example, Jensen & Simonsen (2016). For an overview of the social history of the Danish West Indies and the US Virgin Islands, see Olsen (2017), and see Highfield (2018) for additional information on the cultural history of the islands. For an example of a contemporary ac- count from the perspective of the colonizing power, see Highfield & Bøegh (2018). For further information about the Caribbean before European col- onization, see Keegan & Hofman (2017). 2.2 Slavery in the Danish West Indies The process of developing the islands in the Danish West Indies as planta- tion and trade colonies necessitated a workforce beyond what the European participants involved in the Danish colonial endeavor in the Caribbean could provide. To address this issue, the approach adopted was to import enslaved people, principally of African and African Caribbean ancestry, via the transatlantic and local intra-Caribbean slave trade. As described for example by Hall (1992: 70 ff.), enslaved people on St. Croix endured adverse conditions. The vast majority worked on planta- tions, particularly in sugar production, performing demanding tasks such as planting, cultivating, harvesting, and processing sugarcane. They were required to toil for long hours. As Hall (1992: 73) writes, until plantation hours were regulated […] in the 1830s, the workday began at 4 a.m. […]. Work proceeded until 8 or 9 a.m. with a half hour breakfast […]. Work continued until midday and was then interrupted by a break of one-and-a-half hours […]. The afternoon [work] period continued until sundown. Further, the enslaved lived in often substandard housing, sanitary condi- tions were typically inadequate, leading to the spread of diseases, and mal- nutrition due to insufficient and poor-quality food was not uncommon. Consequently, mortality rates were high and birth rates low, and there was a constant flow of new arrivals into the plantations (cf. Roberts et al. 2024). Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 61 As in slave societies elsewhere, however, as Sebro (2016: 128) writes, “the principally racial divide where black meant slave and white meant free”, was not absolute in the Danish West Indies, including St. Croix. An inter- mediate class consisting of free African Caribbeans who managed in dif- ferent ways to find space for themselves in the slave society, especially in the urban setting, by negotiating ideas of race and social position, was pre- sent as well, nuancing the above picture. In 1803, the importation of new enslaved people became prohibited in the Danish West Indies. The prohibition had been made into law in 1792, but it only took effect after a 10-year grace period. Despite hopes that the conditions for the enslaved would improve after 1792, surging sugar prices led planters to increase their importation of enslaved Africans, and census data, slave trade records, and land tax registers reveal that St. Croix planters actually ended up exacerbating mortality rates among the enslaved in this period (Roberts et al. 2024). Moreover, slave trading still continued inter- nally in the Danish West Indies (for a discussion, cf. Bendtsen 2016). Over time, however, and especially after Britain had moved to abolish slavery in 1833, the question of emancipation began to loom in the islands, especially in St. Croix, and in 1848, the increasing social unrest culminated in the slave uprising which is the subject of Miller’s Recollections. For a general study of the Danish West Indian slave society, see, for example, Hall (1992). For additional information about different aspects of life in the slave society, see Tyson & Highfield (1994), Jensen (2012), Sebro (2016), Simonsen (2017, 2019), Simonsen & Christensen (2023), Roberts et al. (2024), among other works. 2.3 The years after 1848 1848 was a pivotal year in the history of the Danish West Indies, with sig- nificant social, economic, and political implications that followed for the islands. In the years after the emancipation, however, the conditions of the working class (i.e. the former enslaved population) did not improve much. Consequently, thousands emigrated from the islands, especially from St. Croix, in search of a better life elsewhere. As a response, the colonial gov- ernment instituted strict labor and vagrancy laws aimed at securing suffi- cient labor for the plantations, thus worsening the conditions. A series of natural disasters (including five major hurricanes in the period 1853–1916), recurrent epidemics (including cholera and leprosy), and a decrease of Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 62 sugar prices globally did not improve the situation or reduce social ten- sions. In 1878, there was a culmination, in the form of widespread protest and strike – the “Fireburn” uprising on St. Croix (Jensen 1998) – resulting in much destruction on the island. The events of 1878 prompted reforms in labor regulations. In the fol- lowing years, sugar production, which had been hampered already in 1848, continued to decline in St. Croix, while St. Thomas, which was experienc- ing reduced trade due to structural and technological changes in interna- tional shipping, also faced economic downturn. During the second half of the 19th century, Denmark engaged several times in negotiations with the USA about the possibility of a sale of the islands, which was then realized in 1917. Over the course of the 20th century, the US Virgin Islands were developed primarily as a mass tourism society, advertised in the 2020s as “America’s paradise”. For further information about the post-1848 period, see, for instance, Jensen (1998) and Highfield (2009: 153 ff.). For a discussion of the mod- ern-day, postcolonial situation in the territory, see Sebro (2017). 3. Dora Richards Miller and her Recollections 3.1 Dora Richards Miller For the following notes about Dora Richards Miller’s life and career, in- cluding information about her work as a writer, we have drawn extensively on an entry in the reference work A Woman of the Century (Willard & Liv- ermore 1893: 504 f.), containing “biographical sketches […] of leading American women in all walks of life”. In addition, we have used various other sources containing bits and pieces of supplementary information (e.g. Huntington Family Association 1962: 74; Turner 1966: 241; Hoehling 1996: 40; Goad [n.d.]) as well as Miller’s own published work. Dora Richards Miller, née Richards, was born in St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, on 16 November 1835. Her mother, Philomela Huntington (ca. 1806–1846), was born in St. Croix. Her family, of British descent, was related to Samuel Huntington (1731–1796), one of the Founding Fathers of the USA, and the 18th Governor of Connecticut. Dora Richards Miller’s father, Richard Richards (ca. 1796–1835), who was from Liverpool, Eng- land, had died when she was an infant, and after his death, Dora was taken to the home of her maternal grandmother in Frederiksted, St. Croix. Her grandmother was Mary Huntington (b. 1771), née Smith, who had freed all Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 63 of her late husband’s enslaved workers, and consequently, was living under relatively modest conditions, considering her family background. During her childhood on St. Croix, Dora lived through hurricanes and earthquakes and, at age 13, she witnessed the slave uprising of 2–3 July 1848. As a consequence of this, she was evacuated with other women and children to ships offshore immediately after the events. The family lost everything, it seems, and life on the island as she knew it was forever changed, prompting her family to make her leave St. Croix and the Danish West Indies for good. It is not known when her grandmother died or if she, or others from the household, left the island with Dora. Neither point is addressed in Miller’s Recollections. While Dora was living with her grandmother in St. Croix, her mother, with the other children, had moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where she had remarried. In 1846, however, when Dora was 11 years old, her mother had died. Dora also relocated to New Orleans, in 1848, joining there her unknown (half-)brothers and sisters, to reside in the family of a married sister. After graduating from school where her school essays had attracted some attention, she was invited by the editors of a New Orleans newspaper to contribute to their publication. As a young woman, she found work as a teacher and, for a time, she provided support for a younger (half-)brother. In 1862, aged 27, she married Anderson Miller (1836–1867), a lawyer from Mississippi, and the couple moved to Arkansas. The American Civil War caused a disruption, however, and a series of more or less forced travels within the Confederacy, ultimately concluding with the Siege of Vicksburg (1863), which Miller experienced and documented in her diary that she kept from 1860. This diary was later published, via George W. Cable, and it was well-received. Miller’s husband died soon after the end of the Civil War, in 1867, leaving her with two young sons to support. Miller, who had sided with the Union in the Civil War, moved back to New Orleans, and there she returned to teaching, eventually being appointed to “Chair of Science” (i.e. school principal) in the New Orleans Girls’ High School. She continued to write, publishing in local papers, usually without her name, on educational sub- jects and other topics. She supplemented her income by doing research for the prolific Louisianan author George W. Cable and, eventually, through writing newspaper and magazine articles as a journalist, which she now Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 64 published in her own name.2 In the 1880s, Miller’s diary from the Civil War was published by Cable as “A Woman’s Diary of the Siege of Vicks- burg” (Cable 1885) and “War Diary of a Union Woman in the South” (Ca- ble 1889a), in each case with the original author remaining anonymous. Miller and Cable collaborated on other projects as well. In 1889, for exam- ple, she wrote, in collaboration with Cable, “The Haunted House on Royal Street” (published in Cable 1889b), but was again left uncredited. The as- sociation between Miller and Cable, and its consequences for her (lack of) recognition as a writer and, ultimately, the fate of her Recollections, is fur- ther examined in Section 3.3. A social progressive, later in life Dora Richards Miller was involved in the suffragette movement, and she was a prominent figure in the move- ment in Louisiana (women were granted the right to vote in Louisiana only in 1917). Miller died in her New Orleans home on 7 November 1914, just before turning 79, having outlived both of her adult sons. In her war diary (Cable 1885: 773), we can read that Miller had kept her St. Croix passport at least until the 1860s. Figure 1 presents a half-tone engraving of Miller, published in 1893, based on an undated photograph of her. 2 It is beyond the scope of this study to investigate the activities of Miller as a journalist. According to a variety of sources, she contributed articles to the newspaper Statesman during the second Cotton Exposition. She wrote for Lippincott’s Magazine, Louisiana Journal of Education, The Practical Housekeeper, The Independent, The Times Pica- yune and Times-Democrat of New Orleans, and other periodicals. Moreover, she was as- sistant editor of a newspaper published in Houston, Texas. This list is probably far from complete. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 65 Figure 1. Dora Richards Miller (source: Willard & Livermore 1893: 504) 3.2 Miller’s Recollections While living in New Orleans, Miller produced a 78-page manuscript about her youth and experiences in St. Croix, Danish West Indies, titled Recol- lections of a West-Indian Home and Slave-Insurrection. In 1892, a heavily edited extract from it appeared in print, under George W. Cable’s name. In his introduction to the text, Cable (1892: 709) writes as follows about the account: “This is a true story. But it is not mine; I take it all from a friend’s manuscript, which I have had for years and which lies before me now”. According to Turner (1966: 241), Cable’s biographer, it was Cable who had suggested to Miller that she write up her experiences in St. Croix, ac- cording to him (Turner), in 1884. There is no direct indication of a date in the West Indian manuscript, but there are some hints. For example, Miller mentions the novel Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), published in 1876. This means that the text was finalized at the earliest in 1876, when the author was around 41 years old, and around 26 years after she had moved from St. Croix to Louisiana. It might have been even earlier when she began: Cable claims to have known Miller for nearly 30 years, Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 66 dating back to the early 1860s, in the preface to Cable (1889a: 931), and in Greene & Cissel (1988: 134), Virgin Islands historian William Cissel (see more below) expresses a belief that at least parts of Miller’s account were in fact written in the 1860s. The account was finalized at the latest in the mid-1880s, probably in 1886 (cf. also our discussion in Section 3.3, and the appendices). Miller’s complete St. Croix manuscript remained unpublished until today, and the whereabouts of the original manuscript are currently un- known. The edition presented as Miller (this issue) is based on what we believe to be a faithful and fairly precise manuscript copy, possibly made many years after the original text was completed. This later copy of the manuscript (Miller [n.d.]) survives at Tulane University Archives, Louisi- ana, as part of a collection of Cable’s papers, acquired by Tulane University in 1943.3 At some point in the 1980s, Miller’s account – apparently the original source manuscript – was unearthed by William Cissel (cf. Cissel 1987; Greene & Cissel 1988: 100). We first learned of the account’s exist- ence from a partial xerox copy encountered in 2018 by the first author in the Caribbean collection compiled by St. Croix linguist and historian Ar- nold R. Highfield (now housed at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix). An excerpt of this partial copy (probably copied from Cissel, who had included part of the manuscript in a 1987 conference presentation) is shown in Figure 2.4 3 The repository can be accessed online via https://archives.tulane.edu/repositories/3/re- sources/956 (last accessed 10 December 2024). 4 The text in this excerpt, in English Creole, reads as follows: “When Meestoo Peter say / De Nager dem bin free / Nager bin so drunk so tay / Dem could’nt yerry could’nt see / Da day dem ring de bell – da day dem blow de shell / Chaw! dem bin do some ugly ting, de ting no good foo tell, / Dem kill de Buckra sheep & hog so mek one famous lunch / Me yerry say dem bin hab one Cisron full ob punch. / Dem bruk the Buckra store, dem ruin Mister Moore”. An English translation can be found in the diplomatic edition of the account (Miller, this issue). Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 67 Figure 2. Facsimile excerpt of the partial xerox copy from Highfield’s collection Highfield’s research file (dated 19 August 2008) contains the following in- formation about Miller’s account: “Miller, Dora Richards. Recollections of a West-Indian Home and Slave-Insurrection. Ms., [n.d.]. 78 pp”. In addi- tion, it has the following annotation: “Apparent firsthand account of the emancipation revolt of 1848. The manuscript was found at Tulane Univer- sity by William Cissel and presented at a conference in St. Cro[i]x in 1987(?)”. Based on a comparison with another manuscript page written by Miller, sourced from her Civil War Diary, we have found that the hand- writing in the text shown in Figure 2 is most likely hers. Miller [n.d.] – the Tulane document – which is complete, is a seem- ingly verbatim later copy of the source manuscript. It is written in pencil on lined paper. An excerpt is shown in Figure 3. The document shown in Figure 2 is clearly the older document of the two, based on the handwriting and the paper quality. Importantly, based on the available evidence, there is (notwithstanding some small typographical details, and transcription er- rors) 1:1 agreement between the text as found in the two documents. Fur- ther research is needed in order to ascertain the exact relationship between the two documents, as well as the current location of the source manuscript. The diplomatic edition presented as Miller (this issue) is based exclusively on the Tulane copy. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 68 Figure 3. The Tulane document version of the same text excerpt shown in Figure 2 We can rule out that the copy was made by Miller herself; the handwriting does not match Miller’s, and there are some inconsistencies in the spelling of place names, including the name of the town of Frederiksted (misspelled twice on p. 625), which is, of course, an error Miller would not make. The transcript has been checked because there are improvements in the text from another review, with the same handwriting. It is likely that it was an assistant for Cable who carried out the copying. Furthermore, in the title, a prefatory line, “This Island is Santa Cruz”, with a different handwriting, appears to have been added after finalizing the copy, possibly by Cable. Based on a cursory comparison of the Tulane document and three samples of Cable’s handwriting (one private letter and two letters published in Biklé 1967 [1928]: 102, 246), we tentatively conclude that the body text in the Tulane document is not in his handwriting. Miller’s story begins with an introduction to St. Croix (also referred to by its Amerindian name, Ay-Ay) and the main character, Dora. An over- all description of the island and its social conditions is provided, covering themes such as nature, sugar production, slavery, and local customs and realia in general. Also described is the growing social tension existing be- tween the different population groups, that is, the colonizers and the colo- nized. The uprising then begins and Dora experiences various aspects of it at more or less close range, overhearing and having a number of exchanges, and sharing her opinions about the different occurrences, persons involved, etc. Although the conversations in the account must be characterized as 5 The page numbers here and below refer to the Tulane manuscript; in the edition pub- lished as Miller (this issue), they are inserted in square brackets. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 69 invented, at least some of them are likely rooted in concrete memories. She claims to remember well, and considering the exciting and also traumatic nature of her experiences, this seems realistic: “The talk [about the possi- bility of an imminent uprising] had got beyond my depth so I ran out into the moonlight to take little Jeannie home, but every word said that evening sank into memory, because it was the last time we talked of these things” (Miller [n.d.]: 35–36, our emphasis). The account is characterized, especially in the beginning, by what might be viewed, from a modern perspective, as a florid, literary style. An example in illustration of this “belletristic” style can be found in the open- ing lines (p. 1): That November morning, when Columbus on his second voyage sailed into the Caribbean through the avenue of islands, he touched at one called by the native Caribs “Ay-Ay”, and carried some of them captives to Spain. The first half of this century was closing, when in the thought of the child sitting at evening by that equatorial sea, see the old Carib name that answered to assent in our Saxon speech, seemed like the eternal “ays” of God to some high spirit who had asked for the creation of such a pearl of the ocean. To the vision of the young dreamer, all that was told by poet or prophet of a possible heaven was comprehensible, as the daily transfiguration of light and color, scintillated between wave and cloud. Other parts of the text contain more everyday language, which seemingly becomes more concrete and descriptive the closer to the author’s actual memories we get. In the following excerpt, Dora looks out on a scene dur- ing the uprising where Buddhoe, one of the leaders of the demonstration for freedom in Frederiksted, is introduced (pp. 49–50): Jack dashed in from the gate – “O Miss Marcia go look! Dey’s a comin! Gin’ral Buddoe at dey head on his wite hosse”.6 We did get behind the jalousies and saw, riding at what seemed in the narrow street like an endless multitude but was really about 2,0007 men and women, a large powerful black man with a long, rusty sword clanking at his horse’s side and wearing a cocked hat8 adorned with a long white plume. Except this leader all the rest were on foot, the women having their skirts tied up in fighting trim. All carried weapons; hatchetts, hoes, cutlasses, bills. The bill was a peculiar shaped axe used in cutting down the sugar-cane. 6 Crucian English Creole: ‘Oh Miss Marcia, go and look! They are coming! General Buddhoe is at their [i.e. the procession of enslaved people’s] head on his white horse’. 7 This is a low estimate (cf. Hall 1992: 208 ff.). 8 A cocked hat is a hat with three corners that used to be worn with some uniforms. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 70 Our interpretation of the account is that it not only chronicles Miller’s own experiences but also contains elements of post-rationalization. Addition- ally, in places, it likely incorporates information from other sources. We do not have precise knowledge of the sources Miller likely used to support her memory, but it is worth noting that popular historical works about the Dan- ish West Indies, such as those authored by John P. Knox (e.g. 1852) and Charles Edwin Taylor (e.g. 1888), were in circulation before the extracts were published. A reading of Miller’s account gives rise to observations and perspec- tives that both support and add new nuances to the general depiction of the 1848 uprising in the historical literature. For example, in one scene Dora expresses fear of violence from the protesters participating in the uprising; however, an enslaved man she encounters, who initially appears frighten- ing to her when he is asking her for a drink of water, as it turns out, behaves politely toward her (p. 55). Conversely, Miller provides a notably negative characterization of the aforementioned Buddhoe (pp. 71–72), or Moses Gottlieb as his real name was, who is otherwise considered a hero in the US Virgin Islands today. Miller’s characterization of him notwithstanding, during the demonstration in Frederiksted and in the days that followed, Buddhoe apparently urged the angry crowds to stay calm and refrain from harming any of the Danish soldiers, thereby contributing significantly to keeping the uprising mostly free from bloodshed. For further information about Buddhoe and the role he played during emancipation and its after- math, see, for instance, Highfield (2018: 86). 3.3 Miller’s association with George W. Cable George W. Cable is a famous Louisiana author of many books, and the subject of several biographical studies (e.g. Butcher 1962; Turner 1966; Cleman 1996). He was instrumental in the publication of some of Miller’s works, including an abridged version of her St. Croix account. Their asso- ciation was also a crucial factor in why Miller never published her Recol- lections herself. Miller lived in New Orleans from late 1848, or not long after, until her marriage in 1862, and again from 1867, after her husband died, until her death in 1914. Miller and Cable must have met before 1862 in New Orleans, when Miller was a resident of the city for the first time, and Cable considers her “a friend” (Cable 1892: 709) in print. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 71 As touched upon in Section 3.1, when Miller was working as a teacher and later as a school principal in Louisiana, she also did journalistic work, about women’s issues, educational affairs, and events in New Orle- ans. Some of it was published under her own name, but some of the more politically contentious publications were printed anonymously. Some of her writings were edited by George W. Cable. That is the case for at least Miller’s account of her experiences as a Unionist woman in the American South during the Civil War, published in the periodical Century in 1885 (“A Woman’s Diary of the Siege of Vicksburg”) and 1889 (“War Diary of a Union Woman in the South”). In the 1885 publication, Cable wrote in the introduction: “The name of the writer is withheld at her own request” (p. 767). That is also true for an account of the occupation of her school in New Orleans by white supremacists demanding the removal of children of color, published in Cable’s book Strange True Stories of Louisiana (Cable 1889b). In the same book, Cable also republished Miller’s anonymous ac- count of the Siege of Vicksburg in a “severely abridged” version, writing as follows in the introduction: “For good reasons the author’s name is omit- ted” (p. 261). Miller’s political views could not be overtly expressed while she was working as a school principal in New Orleans, a position that she held until around 1890, after which she worked for the US Census Office (which led to the publication of Miller 1891, with Cable credited as editor). In 1892, things were different. Miller no longer was school principal, and she had more freedom of expression. In that year, Cable published an anonymized, heavily edited version of Miller’s Recollections, titled “A West Indian Slave Insurrection”, in Scribner’s Magazine, with the phrase “By George W. Cable” right after the title. This time, however, Miller had wanted her name associated with the article, probably because she was now a journalist with her own merits. In 1889, Miller had been recognized as a talented writer by The Author, a magazine for literary workers published in Boston (cf. Hills 1889: 192, cited in Goad [n.d.]). Cable did acknowledge in his introduction (Cable 1892: 709) that the account was not his, writing the following about the author: In 1848 there lived on Kongensgade, that is King Street, in Frekericksted [SIC], a little maiden named Dora. I have known her these many years, though I did not know her as a child or in the island. She is the author of the manuscript now lying before me, from the facts of which I shall not go aside from first to last, even though I have to end the story tamely without births, deaths, or marriages. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 72 When this publication came out, Miller and her associates reacted with ar- ticles in several newspapers, in which they accused Cable of having pub- lished Miller’s text under his own name, while she was at that moment a recognized journalist. An anonymous letter, signed by “a subscriber”, was published in the Times-Democrat in December 1892, accusing Cable of having used Miller’s text for his own gain (see Appendix 1). It was fol- lowed by a letter by Miller herself, expressing her discontent about the way her text had been treated by Cable, and that he had withheld her name (Ap- pendix 2). Another, rather detailed, article severely criticizing George W. Cable appeared in the Louisiana Review of January 4, 1893, under the name Olive Otis (1893), the pseudonym of Mrs. L. Jastremski, who was the wife of the editor of the Louisiana Review.9 A month later, in a periodical called The Critic, Miller and Cable exchanged public letters-to-the-editor over the issue. Cable replied to some of the accusations (Appendix 3), notably those made by Miller herself in the Times-Democrat newspaper, “[i]n response to […] certain criticisms which have applied to me in the Times-Democrat of New Orleans, and several other publications of less prominence, con- cerning my use of manuscripts bought by me from Mrs. Dora Richards Miller”. Miller, in turn (Appendix 4), replied that Cable had indeed prom- ised to credit her as the author of the text first in 1886, when he had first offered to purchase the account from her, again when in 1887, she agreed to sell the account to him, and then finally in 1892, before it appeared in print. Cable’s acquisition of manuscripts of Miller’s is also touched upon in Cleman (1996: 139 f.). It is beyond the scope of the present study to get to the bottom of this case. An inquiry of the local newspapers and the documents deposited in the George W. Cable Papers in Tulane University Archives is necessary for a full account. On the available evidence, the conflict seems to have been about authorship issues, payment, adjustments of the text, and recognition. In any event, the conflict resulted in Miller’s Recollections not being pub- lished in her version, and it also led to the end of amicable relationship between the two authors. After Miller’s death in 1914, Cable re-used ex- tensive parts of Miller’s Recollections in a novel that he published in 1918 (Cable 1918). 9 See https://www.hancockcountyhistoricalsociety.com/reference/alphabet- file.htm?page=187 (last accessed 10 December 2024). Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 73 4. Linguistic discussion 4.1 General research context In creole studies and contact linguistics more broadly, the systematic gath- ering and analysis of historical textual sources to examine the diachrony of individual creoles has become increasingly central in discussions about the historical developments as well as a typological status of creoles, as sum- marized, for example, by Schneider (2012) and Huber (2020). Through careful inspection and contextualization of written representations of ver- nacular speech from different territories and regions, researchers can re- construct earlier language stages, detect interrelationships of varieties, con- trast earlier data with synchronic evidence for comparison with the modern situation in a given territory, etc. In the context of research on the Anglo- phone Caribbean, such efforts have contributed to creating an increasingly detailed picture of the history, and histories, of Caribbean Englishes, in- cluding the region’s many localized forms of Caribbean English Creole (see e.g. Baker 1999; Migge & Mühleisen 2010; Daval-Markussen & Bak- ker 2011; Schneider & Hickey 2020). Older creole texts from Caribbean islands are generally sparse; yet, in the absence of audio recordings predating the 20th century, they are cen- tral for studying the diachrony of sociolinguistic variation in the region. For the Anglophone Caribbean in general, creolist research since the 1980s has uncovered a wide range of written representations of local vernaculars extending back more than two centuries. Examples of historical texts are included in analytical anthologies for Jamaica (Lalla & D’Costa 1990, ear- liest connected creole text from 1781, see also Avram 2015), St. Kitts (Baker & Bruyn 1999, earliest text from 1793), Suriname (Arends & Perl 1995, earliest text fragment from 1718, see also Van den Berg 2007), and Guyana (Rickford 1987, earliest text from 1797), among other locations (cf. Migge & Mühleisen 2010: 232 f.). In some cases, however, the picture of what a given variety looked like historically remains unclear or lacking in empirical substantiation. As discussed by Huber (2020: 420 f.), one dif- ficulty in accessing historical linguistic data is that the stigmatization of creoles (historically the vernaculars of enslaved people) led to a situation of uneven representation of language data. The sizes of available historical corpora vary significantly. For instance, there is a very substantial collec- tion of historical texts on the Surinamese English-lexifier creoles, whereas Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 74 documentation on many other Caribbean varieties might best be summa- rized as “less prolific” (Migge & Mühleisen 2010: 223). In the Caribbean context, the bulk of the vernacular texts dating back to the colonial period were written by cultural outsiders, typically European visitors or colonists recording their (more or less reliable) impressions of local conditions, speech forms, etc. While potentially useful as linguistic sources, such texts must be treated with caution, and they often have im- portant limitations (cf. Baker & Winer 1999). Still, even scattered evidence can be effective in the reconstruction of earlier language stages. Con- versely, there are also instances where material written by cultural insiders – people with intimate familiarity with a given territory – has survived. For St. Croix, diachronic evidence, in the form of textual samples, can be sourced from letters, novels, travel accounts, memoirs, newspapers, collec- tions of local folklore and proverbs, etc. The earliest known samples of connected textual data from St. Croix (found in West 1791, 1793) are from around the same time as those from St. Kitts, and thus the Leeward Islands altogether, but the first samples of English Creole data from St. Croix are much more fragmentary than those from St. Kitts (Baker & Bruyn 1999). Based on the overview in Bøegh (2021: 95 ff.), non-fragmentary texts in Crucian English Creole began to appear only in the 1840s (Weed 1866, a text of 820 words from 1844/45), and besides a series of anonymous news- paper texts from the late 1860s (e.g. Anon. 1867, a text of 330 words), substantial texts only started appearing in the 1880s (Westerby 1882, a text of 260 words) and 1890s (Whitehead 1932, a text of 1,500 words from ca. 1890). For a discussion of additional English Creole texts from the Virgin Islands, primarily St. Thomas and St. John, see Avram (2013). Against this background, Dora Richards Miller’s Recollections rep- resents a central source for the study of Virgin Islands language history in the 19th century. The account includes a considerable number of quotations from a variety of characters, reflecting the local vernacular. It also includes the lyrics to a topical song, approximately 530 words long, about the 1848 uprising, titled “Conversation between Martin King and Buddy Ben”, which can be dated to 1848. In total, Miller’s manuscript contains some 1,100 words in a historical form of Crucian English Creole, making it a limited but precious source. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 75 4.2 St. Croix and the Virgin Islands Already early on, the Danish West Indies had developed into a multilingual society (see e.g. Sabino 2012; Bakker & Bøegh 2021; Bøegh 2024). Nash and colleagues (2020) highlight St. Croix in a global sample of islands with notable language situations for its history of shifting linguistic influences in the post-indigenous era. The languages spoken in the Danish West Indies during the colonial period included the European languages Spanish, French, Dutch, Danish, German, and English, as well as creole languages lexically based on European colonial languages (notably Dutch and Eng- lish), and more than 25 African languages. Most of these languages are no longer heard in the US Virgin Islands. Today, the main languages spoken are English and Spanish, in both standardized and localized forms, and modern English Creole. In the contact linguistic literature, the islands are best known for the language Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, extinct since 1987, which is among the most extensively diachronically documented Caribbean creoles (see e.g. Van Rossem & Van der Voort 1996; Sabino 2012; Bakker 2014; Van Rossem 2017; Bøegh et al. 2022; cf. also the stud- ies by Appel et al., Robbe & Bakker, Stein, and Van Rossem in this issue). Various varieties of Virgin Islands English Creole, including Crucian Eng- lish Creole, were also spoken, alongside Dutch Creole (for Dutch Creole borrowings into Virgin Islands English Creole, cf. Bøegh & Bakker 2021). Crucian English Creole was widely spoken by the African Caribbean population of St. Croix in the colonial period. However, since the 1917 transfer to the USA, the US Virgin Islands have been strongly influenced by American culture and language. Crucian English Creole has gradually declined in favor of American English and other Caribbean Englishes since the mid-20th century, particularly since the 1960s, when the linguistic en- vironment of the US Virgin Islands underwent significant changes due to influence from other groups entering the territory from diverse parts of the Caribbean and the continental USA, and consequently, there has been a development in the direction of more standardized English (Bøegh 2021). At least since the 1960s (cf. Di Pietro 1968), St. Croix has been recognized as a multivarietal Anglophone speech community. However, because there was a shift in numerical proportions between distinct groups of language users over the course of the 20th century, over time a situation developed in which the US Virgin Islands are often associated predominantly with American English-oriented speech norms (e.g. Roberts 1988: 3). Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 76 Citing selective evidence from the Crucian English Creole verbal system, Holm (1989: 456) made note of “the rapidity with which decreo- lization has progressed” in the US Virgin Islands. That the linguistic situa- tion characterizing the territory has changed considerably since the US transfer in 1917, can be gleaned from historical metalinguistic commen- taries (e.g. Bøegh & Bakker 2021: 4 ff.). For example, the American lin- guist Frank G. Nelson, who visited St. Croix and St. Thomas in 1936, wrote as follows about his visit to the islands: “I was surprised to discover that everyone there except the French-speaking ‘Chachas’ of St. Thomas spoke some kind of English – ranging from Standard to a thick local dialect” (quote adapted from Van Rossem 2017: 258, our emphasis). A Danish ge- ographer, Holger Lassen, who had visited the Danish West Indies four dec- ades earlier, in 1892, reported English to be the common language; how- ever, the speech of the African Caribbean population was, he claimed, a “horrible gibberish with mixed words and scraps from all sorts of lan- guages, with its own grammar, to the utmost degree unpleasant”, and “leav- ing traces even in the speech of the [descendants of] Europeans, making pure English rare on our islands” (quote adapted from Børgesen & Uldall 1900: 47, our translation from Danish). Earlier yet, a missionary, writing in 1820, in English, characterized the language situation on St. Croix as follows: “The Negroes have got into the habit of speaking what they call English”, a vernacular “made up of English, [Dutch] Creole, and a variety of words taken from different languages of Guinea [i.e. Africa], most un- intelligibly mixed, but considered by them as good English” (Anon. 1820: 68). These various reports provide a sense of the distinctiveness of the tra- ditional “thick local dialect”. An important source for developing a diachronic, comparative per- spective on the language situation of St. Croix, as already noted, is Miller’s Recollections. The account can be considered the earliest non-anonymous work containing substantial samples of earlier Crucian English Creole pro- duced by a cultural insider with an awareness of sociolinguistic differences (the textual samples in Weed 1866 [1844/45] were recorded by a casual visitor). A reading of Miller’s Recollections makes it possible to begin to explore questions such as, how “deeply” creolized was earlier Crucian Eng- lish Creole? Caribbean linguistic situations are very often marked by a high degree of sociolinguistic complexity; the Englishes spoken in the region range from standardized varieties to intermediate ones that are somewhat Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 77 understandable to speakers of standard English, and to ones with almost no mutual intelligibility with English. In Miller’s account, there are various individuals/characters who speak with varying degrees of Creole influence. Miller had an ear for language, also accurately reproducing some Danish phrases (p. 39), and the language use as depicted in the account is funda- mentally credible and reflects sociolinguistic differences, such as varia- tions between enslaved workers and house servants.10 The “Conversation”, to be discussed below, is the longest creole text in Miller’s account and, in terms of both quality and quantity, when factoring in its age, probably the most significant English Creole text from St. Croix in the 19th century. 4.3 The “Conversation” Miller’s account features the lyrics to the song “Conversation between Martin King and Buddy Ben” (Miller [n.d.], pp. 73–75). The song is set to the tune of a Danish patriotic song from 1848, titled “Den tapre Land- soldat” [The brave foot soldier]. In Denmark, the song is best known as “Dengang jeg drog afsted” [When I left (for war)]. The identity of the orig- inal author of the text of the “Conversation” is unknown. The song is of linguistic interest as the lyrics are written in a historical form of Crucian English Creole. Although Miller’s manuscript is from a later date, the “Conversation” itself dates back to 1848 and, being illustrative of various characteristics of earlier Crucian English Creole, as well as having re- mained in use locally throughout the 19th century, this Creole song can be argued to be a key source for the history of Anglophone sociolinguistic variation in the Virgin Islands. Older songs often serve as a window into language history, as they tend to preserve conservative linguistic features. This conservatism is well known; it is discussed by Soule (2014: 11 ff.) in the context of St. Croix and the Virgin Islands in general. The “Conversation” has the form of a purported dialog between two insurgents involved in the uprising on St. Croix. The two discuss the upris- ing and its outcomes. The lyrics can be read either as a parody or as repre- senting a form of expression of resistance, or possibly both. As noted, the original author of the song is unknown. According to Miller, it was a woman. This is quite likely, as many of the local songs were composed by 10 Halberg (2024) examines a series of letters from 1871, authored by a former house servant and addressed to a Danish recipient, in which the language used is close to the non-Creole end of the spectrum of variation. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 78 women (Soule 2014). It is also likely that several versions of the song ex- isted. The version in Miller’s Recollections is probably a fairly “white” version. Miller ([n.d.]: 72–73) characterizes the song as follows: While Buddoe was yet in custody and known to be making his revelations, a young lady overheard a conversation between two negroes on the scene just passed, and put it into verse. It was set to the Danish air ‘Den tapre Land-Soldat’, and sung about the island a good deal. As an example of the dialect of the West-Indian negro in English-speaking colonies it is so accurate that it seems for that reason worth recording. Miller probably knew the author (of this version); the addition “it is so ac- curate” may imply that the text was not written by one of the enslaved. The comment also implies that Miller knew English Creole well – not surpris- ingly, as she grew up with several Creole speakers in her family’s house- hold. This is clearly evident in the story, where we hear about “old Si’Myra [i.e. Sister Myra], one of the freed slaves, who still had her home with us” (p. 17), and who “was a native-born African who could speak no English when she first came, a young girl, from the Congo coast” (p. 20). Several other Creole speakers are mentioned in the account, including “Rachel, and Tom, and Lotta, and Jule and Jack, and the others” (p. 32). The “Conversation” must have been written in 1848, as Miller left St. Croix not long after the uprising. Thus, the language reflects Crucian English Creole as heard in 1848. The melody of the song was written that same year, 1848, by Danish composer Emil Horneman, and the Danish text was written by songwriter Peter Faber. In Denmark, this song is well known, and sung even today, and recorded in several versions. The title of the original song relates to the First Schleswig War, between Germany and Denmark (1848–1852). In the Danish song, a soldier says farewell to his sweetheart. The Creole song inherited both the military content and the military melody (a march) from the Danish original, but otherwise the con- tents are quite different. It is not likely that Miller memorized the lyrics in their entirety from her youth in St. Croix; she probably had access to a manuscript copy. The song gained popularity on St. Croix in the 19th century. The Dan- ish West Indian army musician Vilhelm Bartholin Tuxen reported that their band played the melody in 1862, at the occasion of the visit of a British delegation (Tuxen 2007–2008) to the islands. It is possible that the song Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 79 received a boost in popularity among the local population in 1878, in con- nection with the St. Croix Fireburn. At any rate, when the Danish journalist Henrik Cavling visited St. Croix almost half a century after 1848, he de- scribed his tour from the harbor to his accommodation as follows (Cavling 1894: 47, our translation11): And again the parade set in motion. At the forefront your sweating author, sur- rounded by a myriad of Negro boys. Then a long tail of Negro men and women who, on the tune of ‘Den tapre Land-Soldat’ [The brave foot soldier], tuned in the popular ‘Good night my Buddy Ben’. Despite its popularity in the 19th century, the song was apparently no longer remembered in the second half of the 20th century, even though some other local songs from the same period survived. When the cultural archivist MaryJane Soule collected traditional songs from St. Croix in the 1970s and 1980s, working with Crucians born in the 1880s and later, the song had, it would appear, been forgotten, or at least it was not volunteered by any of the people recorded by her. Soule made hundreds of recordings, primarily in St. Croix, many of them of carisos and quelbés, that is, “[t]opical songs evoking social interactions, mores, and lifestyles of the period from ap- proximately 1880 to 1950” (Soule 2014: 13). It is beyond the scope of the present article to present a full linguistic analysis of Miller’s Crucian English Creole texts, but for illustrative pur- poses we offer some brief observations here based on examination of a sample of morphosyntactic features which appear in the “Conversation”, as summarized in Table 1. These features are associated with conservative or basilectal creoles in the Anglophone Caribbean context, having clear correlates in other Caribbean English-lexifier creoles. In each case, the given example represents the earliest attestation of a particular feature for St. Croix (based on the overview in Bøegh 2021: 125 ff.). 11 The Danish text: “Og atter satte Toget sig i Bevægelse. I Spidsen Deres svedende For- fatter, omgiven af et Mylr af Negerdrenge. Derpaa en lang Hale Negre og Negerinder, der paa Melodien af den tapre Landsoldat istemte den populære: Good night my Buddy Ben”. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 80 Feature Example sentence Translation Indefinite article based on the numeral one Dem kill the buckra sheep and hog to mek one famous lunch ‘They killed the white peo- ple’s sheep and hog(s) to make an infamous meal’ Object-specific 3. person pro- noun am, from him, unspeci- fied for gender or number Dem take dem bill, dem chook am […] pon long long tick […] so high ‘They took their cutlasses, they stuck them onto very long sticks, so high’ Functional differentiation of copular verbs: locative form based on there He day […] in Westen dem say ‘He is in Westend [i.e. Fred- eriksted], they say’ Combination of preverbal markers (based on been and going) conveying hypo- thetical meaning You nebber bin goin catch dem gib nagur up dem sword ‘You never would catch them giving up their swords to the Negroes’ Preverbal marker: fu- ture/modal sa (ultimately from Dutch zal, English shall) Me no kin tell de haf else yo sa dead wid laugh ‘I can’t tell you the half of it, or else you will die laugh- ing’ Infinitival complementizer based on for Me glad foo see you fren ‘I’m glad to see you, friend’ Sentential complementizer homophonous with ‘say’ Me yerry say dem bin hab one cisron full ob punch ‘I heard that they had a cis- tern full of punch’ All-round preposition da Me yerry say de na- gur bin play de deuce da town ‘I heard that the Negroes (had) played the deuce [i.e. acted like devils] in town’ Verb front-focusing construc- tion with “highlighter” da, with repetition of the verb Da grudge dem grudge de buckra foo all dim good sumting ‘A grudge is what they held against the white people, for all their nice belongings’ Serial verbs: directional con- struction with ‘run’ plus ‘go’ De West En buckra dem / Bin run go hide on board ‘The white people of West- end [i.e. Frederiksted] had run away and taken refuge on board [of a ship]’ Table 1. Selected features of earlier Crucian English Creole morphosyntax, with examples The examples provided in Table 1 underscore the close linguistic resem- blances between Crucian English Creole as depicted in the “Conversation”, in 1848, and other conservative creoles of the Anglophone Caribbean. Fur- ther examination of the texts in Miller’s Recollections will shed additional light on the diachrony of Crucian English Creole, shaped by its historical links with other Caribbean varieties, and by contact locally with Dutch Cre- ole and more standardized forms of English, among other factors. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 81 5. About the diplomatic edition 5.1 Editorial decisions The work presented as Miller (this issue) is a diplomatic edition, where the editors (KFB & PB) have added footnotes with annotations. Miller’s orig- inal spelling has been maintained throughout, but we have standardized the punctuation, for instance the placement of commas relative to quotation marks, and added a few citation signs where they were forgotten, and some commas for readability. We have also corrected a few obvious spelling mistakes, for the ease of readability of the text, but we have refrained from making further stylistic adjustments. We have maintained the author’s cap- italization, even when it is deviant from current norms. Throughout the text, we have inserted the page numbers of the Tulane manuscript in square brackets. In the important Crucian English Creole text, the “Conversation”, we have added interlinear glosses for each line, in order to facilitate lin- guistic analysis, and we have added a translation into English. The diplo- matic edition concludes with a list of references to works cited in the text and in the footnotes, added by the editors. 5.2 Who is who in the text? Most of the enslaved, or formerly enslaved, individuals, members of the family, and friends of the family are called by their first names only. Offi- cials are called by their family names and sometimes only by the first letter of their names. We have tried to identify all the people mentioned in the text. We distinguish here between family members, friends of the family, neighbors and inhabitants mentioned, and the people directly involved in the emanating conflict, both governmental/military and from the side of the enslaved, and finally a category of ‘others’. The following list accounts for the important individuals/characters in the story, to the extent that they can be identified. Family members - Dora (Richards Miller), 13 years old in 1848. - Dora’s mother, Philomela Huntington-Richards, also called by the name Pauline in the account, who had died in 1846. - Grandmother: Dora grew up in an all-female household in St. Croix with her grandmother, Mary Huntington, née Smith, and, for reasons unknown to us, called by the name Paula in the account. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 82 Grandmother is called Mrs. Paula by the personnel. Grandmother is also referred to as Mrs. H. in the text. - Grandmother’s mother, Great Grandmother, is referred to on p. 15, when Miller relates a story about her linked to a past hurricane. - Three of Grandmother’s daughters, Dora’s aunts, are mentioned in the text, all of them unmarried: Marion (Miss), also called Miss Mary Anne by the personnel, and Anna and Marcia. According to other sources, Philomena Huntington-Richards had two sisters, Martha and Anna, but Marion is not mentioned. In the text, Anna uses “my mother” about the grandmother, and must be a sister. - Si’Myra, or Sister Myra, is the housekeeper, of African origin. She preferred to stay and serve the family when Grandmother had given the enslaved their freedom. Creole speaker. Friends of the family - Jack is one of the freed servants of the family. He voluntarily guards the house under the uprising. He also informs the family of events among the insurgents. Creole speaker. - Tom is one of the freed servants of the family. He protects the house. Creole speaker. - Jack and Tom are both freed men, once part of the household, and still connected with it, but they do not live in the house. They are friends of the family. They protect the house from feared attacks. - Rachel is an enslaved woman, and known to the members of the household. Creole speaker. - Mr. and Mrs. Valberg are a Danish couple, and friends of the fam- ily. - Jeannie is Dora’s friend. - Miss Nancy and Miss Bee (Belinda) are two old maid sisters, and friends of the family. Neighbors and inhabitants of Frederiksted - Gilbert W. is a son of an intimate neighbor. The description in Ca- ble (1892: 713) is that “Gilbert, the young son of a neighbor who was an old friend of Dora’s grandmother, used often to drop in at her house”. - Mr. H. could not be identified. Lover of Christina. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 83 - Christina is the daughter of an old friend of Miller’s family. Could not be identified. - Mr. K. (possibly short for Mr. Kenyon, cf. Cable 1918: 248) is an- other neighbor. - Mrs. Dale and her daughter Kate are inhabitants of Frederiksted. - Lotta. No information in text, possibly an enslaved woman. - Jule. No information in text, possibly an enslaved woman. Military/governmental, authorities - Peter Von S. is Peter von Scholten (1784–1854), Governor-General of the Danish West Indies. He declared freedom for all enslaved, in order to prevent a bloodbath, in 1848. It was his own independent decision to proclaim emancipation and the King of Denmark had no knowledge of the episode until several weeks later. - Irminger is Carl Ludvig Christian Irminger (1802–1888), a Danish naval officer and captain on the ship Ørnen (Danish ‘The Eagle’). - Lawyer Z., also just Z., is Carl Frederik Vilhelm Sarauw (1806– 1881), Crown Prosecutor in Frederiksted. He lived at 30, Hospital Street in Frederiksted and he was sherriff or town prosecutor at the time of the uprising. He figures as Lawyer Zarrow in the English Creole song quoted by Miller. - Major G. is Major Jacob Hietman Gyllich (1795–1868), a resident of Frederiksted, of Danish descent, who served as Commander of the Frederiksted Fire Corps. Gyllich was known for cultivating pos- itive relationships with members of the enslaved population (cf. Christensen 2018). - Erminger: See Irminger. - Capt. A. is a Danish soldier mentioned on p. 53. He was a captain at the fort in Frederiksted, awaiting orders from Von Scholten. He was later deposed by Irminger. Not identified. Insurgents, enslaved - General Buddhoe is one of the leaders of the uprising, and in regu- lar contact with the authorities of the island. He had been enslaved on the La Grange Estate plantation. His formal name was Moses Gottlieb, or also Gottlieb Bordeaux. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 84 - Moses is perhaps Moses Roberts, another notable figure behind the demonstration in Frederiksted (Jensen et al. 2017: 274; Hall 1984). - Martin King is one of the leaders of the slave uprising (Hall 1984). - Buddy Ben is mentioned in the Creole song, but is possibly a ficti- tious person. - Halina (or possibly Kalina, short for Carolina) and Georgina are insurgents, both enslaved women. Allegedly, Georgina is the one who destroys the piano, according to enslaved Rachel. Others - The Priest is Father Timothy O’Ryan, an Irish Catholic priest (Tay- lor 1888: 130). In the contemporary Crucian song “Clear de Road”, still sung today, Father Ryan is mentioned and characterized in a positive light (Soule 2014: 491). - The Parson is mentioned (p. 75) together with the Priest. The Priest must have been the above-mentioned Father O’Ryan, the Parson presumably a Lutheran. Not identified. - Pastor L. convinced Grandmother that slavery should be abolished. This individual is most likely Reverend Benjamin Luckock, an Eng- lish minister who was at St. John’s Episcopal Church, St. Croix, 1832–1841 (Cissel 2011: 104). In Cable’s (1892) version, he is re- ferred to as “a clergyman lately come from England” (p. 710). - Mr. B. is a store owner in Frederiksted, possibly Mr. B. Woods (cf. Taylor 1888: 157). - Mr. S. is an owner of a plantation, North End Estate, with enslaved workers. Not identified. - Mrs. S. plays the piano. Not identified. - Mr. Moor is a shop owner. This refers to Mr. John Moore. The house of his grocer’s shop was looted during the uprising (Hall 1984: 19 ff.; Taylor 1888: 130 ff., 155 ff.). - The American Consul’s wife is a passenger together with Dora and Grandmother aboard the ship to which women, children, and the elderly were evacuated. - The Rector is the pastor in Dora’s church congregation. His speeches, preaches, or sermons are mentioned several times in the account (pp. 4, 36, 59). Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 85 References Anon. 1820. Danish islands: United Brethren. In Anon. (ed.), The missionary register for M DCCC XX, p. 68. London: L. B. Seeley. Anon. 1867. Buddy Tomas to Sissy Shanna. St. Croix Avis, 25 December 1867, p. 2. Arends, Jacques & Matthias Perl. 1995. A collection of 18th century Sranan and Saramaccan documents. Frankfurt: Vervuert. Avram, Andrei A. 2013. The distribution of diagnostic features in English-lexifier contact languages: Virgin Islands Creole. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 45(2): 206–227. DOI: 10.1080/03740463.2013.901597. Avram, Andrei A. 2015. The oldest Jamaican Creole text: A linguistic analysis. In Piotr P. Chruszczewski, Richard L. Lanigan, John R. Rickford, Katarzyna Buczek, Aleksandra R. Knapik & Jacek Mianowski (eds.), Languages in contact 2014, pp. 21–47. 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Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 93 Appendix 1: “A subscriber” writes to the Times-Democrat newspaper pointing to George W. Cable having used Dora Richards Miller’s text (Times-Democrat, 11 December 1892, p. 12) “LITERARY SPECULATION” To the Editor of The Times-Democrat: Mr. Besant has given us a strong picture of this in his novel “Armorel of Lyonesse”, but it has just been brought forcibly to the attention of your correspondent in the ease of one of our own literateurs, Geo. W. Cable. While awaiting the train to bear me back to New Orleans, I entered the news department of the well-managed union depot at Houston, Tex., for reading matter to while away the two hours’ wait, and turned the leaves of the December Scribner. A familiar title caught my eye, “A West Indian Slave Insurrection”, and the name, Dora, appearing on the pages of the ar- ticle, decided the purchase. For memory went back several years and re- called the fact that I had seen this manuscript in the hands of its author, Mrs. Dora Miller, and that she told me later, in answer to question about it, that she had sold it to Mr. Cable for $30. So, I exclaimed to myself in the Houston depot, at last Mr. Cable has published this manuscript he bought so long ago, and I sat down to read again this reminiscence of my friend’s childhood. Imagine my surprise when, instead of finding her signature, or at least the heading “edited by G. W. Cable”, it was published as if his own. It is true that Mr. Cable repeatedly asseverates “this is not my story”, yet he puts it as if it were a child’s tale he had rewritten, while I know that he received the finished manuscript of an accomplished writer, relating an in- teresting episode of her childhood, and which he has used almost word for word as I recall it. I had been cognizant of Mr. Cable’s purchasing and publishing other articles from Mrs. Miller, and of similar transactions on his part, but none so flagrant as this, for he had stated in previous ones that he simply edited them. But this antithesis was hard to comprehend — by “G. W. C.” and then the assertion “this is not my story, it is Dora’s” — “I have her manuscript before me”. And in addition I remembered saying to Mrs. M. when she told me she had sold it to him: “Do you never intend to get credit for your work”? She replied: “Oh, yes; I told Mr. Cable this must appear in my name, and he agreed to it”. Again this morning my attention is arrested by remarks in The Times-Democrat relative to this. The reviewer Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 94 in the column of “Literary Bric-a-Brac” says: “There is some of Cable’s most beautiful writing in ‘A West Indian Slave Insurrection’”. Then fol- lows a passage I remember well in the manuscript I heard read. For the subject and matter being fresh and odd, I recollect it well. Were it not that necessity compels an immediate return to Texas, I should certainly en- deavor to obtain Mrs. Miller’s manuscript to prove my assertions. Is such literary appropriation to become the fashion of the day? Are writers to spec- ulate in good articles bought from writers less notorious? Is it possible that such bold plagiarism is perpetrated by a resident of Paradise Road, Mass.? It would be another good speculation, and one in the interests of truth and justice, for some enterprising publisher to obtain and print Mrs. Miller’s manuscript. I have no doubt she has it, for I heard her say she kept a copy of every article sold till after it was in print; and Mrs. Miller is right here in New Orleans now. A SUBSCRIBER New Orleans, Dec. 4, 1892. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 95 Appendix 2: Dora Richards Miller writes to the Times-Democrat news- paper that she was the real author of the article in Scribner’s Magazine (Times-Democrat, 11 December 1892, p. 12) Mrs. Miller’s Statement. The Times-Democrat endeavored to interview Mrs. Miller, but before she could be reached the following contribution was received from her: To the Editor of The Times-Democrat: It is with pleasure one reads each Sunday in your column the able, just and often subtle criticisms on current literature which form your weekly review for The Times-Democrat. On this occasion I owe special thanks on my own account, and desire to make a correction. In justice to another, as well as myself. Last Sunday, Dec. 5, in reviewing contents of Scribner’s Magazine for December, you say: “There is some of Cable’s most beautiful writing in ‘A West Indian Slave Insurrection’”, and proceed to quote from that ar- ticle the passage beginning: “To Dora sitting by that equatorial sea”. Now that passage is not Mr. Cable’s writing at all; it is mine, as is that of the whole article, a fact which the manuscript now in my desk can prove. I sold it to Mr. Cable five years ago, and certainly he is too honorable to claim credit for that which he has not written. He has his own inimitable style, and I feel sure he would wish me to state the true facts and get the credit of my work. He has himself plainly stated in three places in the article. “This is not mine. I take it all from a friend’s manuscript, which lies before me now. She is the author of the manuscript now lying before me. This true story of Dora’s, not mine”. These quotations show that Mr. Cable has taken pains to reiterate the fact that he is not the author of the paper in question, and the words mean just what they say, for the article is published very nearly word for word as I wrote it. The tense has been changed throughout, because, of course, as the story was reminiscent it was written in the first person, Mr. Cable has rewritten it in the third. Here and there he has changed a word, here and there thrown in a sentence, and has omitted considerable matter, but the article remains substantially in both facts and language as I wrote it, as a comparison with my manuscript shows. In the passage quoted in Bric-a- Brac column but a few words have been changed. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 96 The moral drawn from the story on the last page, beginning: “Doubt- less it was easy for government to argue”, is wholly Mr. Cable’s, as my manuscript closed with the sentence he has put at the end, beginning: “Beautiful Santa Cruz still glitters, etc.”. Having been spoken to in regard to it by several persons who recog- nized me in the sketch, it has seemed best to tell the truth over my own signature. RICHARDS MILLER New Orleans, Dec. 9, 1892. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 97 Appendix 3: Cable reacts to Miller’s accusations (The Critic, 4 February 1893, pp. 63–64) Mr. Cable as an Editor To the Editors of The Critic:— In response to your invitation to answer certain criticisms which have applied to me in the Times-Democrat of New Orleans, and several other publications of less prominence, concerning my use of manuscripts bought by me from Mrs. Dora Richards Miller, I submit the following:— Except in the Times-Democrat, I find nothing emanating directly from Mrs. Miller; and as Mrs. Miller has written in the Times-Democrat, I feel it best to confine my response to what has there been printed. A com- munication to that paper is a matter of astonishment to me, as my relations to Mrs. Miller have been those of a personal friend, heretofore totally with- out a jar or any word or intimation of discontent from her upon which I might found a suspicion that our relations and transactions were not in every way entirely satisfactory. I have told her more than once or twice that in my conviction her one chance of disposing of any writing of hers as literature lay in her confining herself to the simplest recital of any experi- ences of her own that might be interesting enough for publication. It was because of this candidly-expressed conviction that, while giving her my fullest sympathy and counsel in every attempt she made to come before the public as a writer or reader, I urged her several times to write a simple narrative of her recollections of a West Indian slave insurrection which she had witnessed in her childhood. She finally sent me a manuscript of these reminiscences, asking me to buy it. I offered her a price for it which I seriously doubted I should ever realize from it, not even knowing that I should make the attempt to give it the total reconstruction which I saw it would require. But at the same time I sent the manuscript back to her, urging her not to sell it to me, nor to any one, but to rewrite it, reconstructing it so as to give it what it totally lacked, organic form, simplicity and definiteness of direction. I also wrote that I was at her service to assist her in finding a place for it in some magazine after such reconstruction; and in hope of fur- ther discouraging her from any attempt to get it published in its inchoate form, I wrote that I would not buy it at all if, after sending it in that form Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 98 from one magazine to another and having it refused by all, as it certainly would be, she should send it back to me. But this, which I had tried so hard to keep Mrs. Miller from doing, is just what she did; and she finally sent it to me unaltered, confessing that she had tried and failed to sell it, and asking if I would still give the price I had offered. I sent the price to her, receiving her grateful acknowledgment, threw the manuscript into a chest, with no definite intention of ever using it, and so completely forgot it that I was able only very gradually to recall it to mind, when, some three years afterwards, Mrs. Miller wrote to me again soliciting and receiving my aid in securing the publication of a very short paper reciting some humorous experiences of her own as a clerk in the mortgage department of the last census. This paper also was so totally unfit for publication in the shape in which it came to me that I doubt if any newspaper of any class would have accepted it as a gratuitous contribution. In preparing the episode of the West Indian slave insurrection, I found it essential to put an amount of work into it which made it almost, if not en- tirely, as great a task as if the matter had been entirely original with myself. I did not think then, I cannot think yet, that it would have been a true state- ment to call the result of this a collaboration; but I thought it just to make it very plain that the experiences were not mine — that they were taken from a friend’s manuscript; and my purpose in mentioning her by her true first name was in order to make way for securing to her any complimentary notoriety resulting from any lively interest the story might draw forth from the public reader or the critical world. It is probably very natural that Mrs. Miller, without taking pains to compare my publication with her own manuscript, a copy of which she seems to have retained, should believe that I had in the main reproduced her manuscript word for word. For I did take pains, and even laborious trouble, to introduce into my rendition the very fewest possible phrases of my own, and to build the structure, as one may say, as largely as possible out of the timber and stone supplied by the eye-witness. Thus the changes of construction would easily seem to be far less than they were, but I do not think that Mrs. Miller ought to have overlooked in her own mind, or in her public utterance, the enormous condensation of her manuscript from fifteen thousand six hundred to eight thousand one hundred words. This condensation, moreover, was made not in order to get my article within any Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 99 prescribed limit of space, but purely as a necessity of literary excellence, and because everything left out was better left out than left in. In order to show how sweeping a reconstruction was necessary, I ap- pend a partial list of my pages and of those of hers which they comprise:— G. W. Cable. Mrs. Miller. Page 1. Page 8. Page 2. Page 9. Page 3. Pages 10, 11, 12 and 13. Page 4. Pages 14, 2, 3and 1. Page 5. Pages 4 and 5. Page 6. Pages 7, 8, 15, 16 and 17. Page 7. Pages 18, 19, 20 and 21. Page 8. Pages 22, 23 and 24. Page 9. Pages 25, 26, 27 and 28. Page 10. Page 29. Page 11. Pages 30, 31, 32 and 33. With this I submit, as a sample of the styles of Mrs. Miller’s manuscript and my revision, a quotation from the former and my rendition of it. G. W. Cable: “We need not say that nature had her rudenesses as well as her graces. There were sharks in the seas and venomous things, tarantu- las, serpents, scorpions, ashore; and there was the hurricane. Every house showed appliances of defence against this visitant. Every window and door was armed with strong outer shutters, provided with stout bars, rings and ropes that were brought swiftly into vigorous use whenever, between July and October, the dire word ran through the town, ‘The barometer is falling’. Then candles and lamps had to be lighted indoors, and it was a time of delightful excitement to a courageous child. At such times Dora would beg hard to have a single pair of window-shutters held slightly open by two persons ready to slam them shut in a second, and so snatched glimpses of the tortured flying clouds and the writhing trees, while old Si’Myra, one of the freed slaves who had not left the house, crouched in a corner muttering, ‘Lo’d, sabe us! Lo’d sabe us!’”. Mrs. Miller: “Every house showed arrangements for protection against these storms, which were looked for between July and October, the Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 100 twenty-fifth of that month being Thanksgiving Day if no hurricane had oc- curred, or humiliation and prayer if it had. Very little glass was used in dwellings, as it was not really needed, but stout outer shutters, as well as jalousies were on every window and door, and on the frames of these, wooden blocks were fastened with heavy screws, while the shutters were provided with iron rings. When, during the hurricane season, the dire words went through the town, ‘the barometer is falling’, then ‘barring up’ began. Stout prepared sticks of hard wood were passed through the big rings on the shutters, the ends of the sticks laid on the blocks on each side, and then stout rope was twisted around and about and securely fastened. Then, of course, candles or lamps had to be lighted all over the house, and it was a time of delightful excitement to an untimid child. Who could tell what might happen! Such high adventure as being blown about like Great Grand- mother might be experienced, or the roof, as sometimes happened, might be carried away. The only drawback was that one could not sufficiently revel in the wild weather owing to the necessity of being barred in. Much pleading would generally obtain permission to keep one window open a little by two persons holding the rings, ready to slam the shutters in a sec- ond. The flying clouds seemed to take on forms like demons of the air rush- ing to war, and the tortured trees, shuddering and twisting, looked in the lurid light like sentient creatures. Not far from us lived two delightful old maid sisters, Miss Nancy and Miss Bee — short for Belinda. Kitchens in that climate are usually built separate from the main building, and as we were a household of women, who, with their dangerous skirts, should not venture out of doors to make tea or anything else, it was the thoughtful habit of these good ladies, on such stormy evenings, to send their ancient man servant, black as the night himself, with a tray holding a pot of hot tea and thin, curly slices of their home-made bread and butter. Never since has any sort of food held for me the flavor of those repasts eaten while the tempest roared without, smiting the doors and windows, and old Si’Myra, one of the freed slaves who still had her home with us, crouched in the corner muttering, ‘Lo’d sabe us!”. I could show many instances similar to this, although it is true that some of her work was rendered with much less change, and the following will be an example — the paragraph referred to in the criticisms of the Times-Democrat and elsewhere. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 101 G. W. Cable: “To Dora, sitting often by that equatorial sea, the is- land’s old Carib name of Aye-Aye seemed the eternal consent of God to some seraphic spirit asking for this ocean pearl. All that poet or prophet had ever said of heaven became comprehensible in its daily transfigurations of light and color scintillated between wave, landscape and cloud, its ‘sea like unto crystal and the trees bearing all manner of fruits’. Fragrance, light, form, color, everywhere; fruits crimson, gold and purple; fishes blue, or- ange and pink; shells of rose and pearl. Distant hills, clouds of sunset and dawn, sky and stream, leaf and flower, bird and butterfly, repeated the splendor, while round about all palpitated the wooing rhythm of the sea’s mysterious tides”. Mrs. Miller: “In the thought of the child sitting at evening by that equatorial sea, the old Carib name that answered to assent in our Saxon speech, seemed like the eternal ‘yes’ of God to some high spirit who had asked for the creation of such a pearl of the ocean. To the vision of the young dreamer all that was told by poet or prophet of a possible heaven was comprehensible as the daily transfiguration of light and color, scintil- lated between wave and cloud. A sea of turquoise blue, ‘like unto crystal, and the trees bearing all manner of fruits’, were they not here visible reali- ties? Which was more lovely or more real, the delicate emerald of distant hills or these opaline ranges that rose from the sea in the pomp of each day’s decline? Color everywhere; fruits were crimson, gold and purple; fish were palpitating masses of orange, blue and pink; shells were of rose and pearl. Sky and water, foliage and flower, bird and butterfly repeated the splendor. Everywhere the same beauty of form, the same rainbow hues, the same golden light, and round all the wooing, whispering sea creeping to the feet in the ordered rhythm of its mysterious tides”. I trust that no hasty reader will overlook the fact that the complaint I am answering is not the charge of anonymous writers that I have swindled a poor widow and sold her manuscript as my own, but Mrs. Miller’s com- plaint that the Times-Democrat had given me credit for the beauty of a par- agraph which she said, and no doubt thought, I had simply copied from her manuscript, word for word. I have only to deny, first, that there is any thing in my article as printed that truly shifts the onus of this mistake of the Times-Democrat to my shoulders, if it be a mistake; and, second, that while I have preserved Mrs. Miller’s beautiful paragraph, which, I repeat once more, “is not mine, Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 102 but hers”, I was compelled, as the reader himself may testify, to edit it heavily. I do not think that from the beginning of the article to the end I was able to reproduce a single paragraph, or even a single sentence of any length, from Mrs. Miller’s manuscript literally as I found it. If I could have done so I would. To anonymous charges I can of course pay no attention whatever; but in so far as or her silence tend to cast upon Mrs. Miller’s demurrers me the suspicion of having kept in the shade her merits as an author, I may suggest that such an imputation will have more weight when Mrs. Miller has writ- ten four or five magazine pages exclusively, with her own pen, which a first-class magazine is willing to publish. I have been compelled to say this in great haste, dictating it while riding on the railroad train, and I trust that both Mrs. Miller and the patient reader will attribute any seeming harshness of tone to haste and not to in- tent. George W. Cable. Dryads’ Green, Northampton, Mass., Jan. 23, 1893. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 103 Appendix 4: Miller’s reply to Cable’s reaction (The Critic, 18 March 1893, pp. 167–168) Mr. Cable as an Editor Again To the Editors of The Critic:— In your issue of Feb. 4th appears a letter from Mr. G. W. Cable, re- ferring to an article written by me and signed by Mr. Cable, “A West Indian Slave Insurrection”. He states that he responds only to what Mrs. Miller has written, not to others, then I reply his letter is a curious one, full of inaccuracies and surprising as an answer to my note in the Times-Democrat that was cer- tainly courteous, imputed no ill-intent, amounted to a defence of him and gave opportunity for him to take a generous attitude. The publication was forced upon me by the recurring comment on the literary transactions between us. These criticisms came, at last, to seem to me injurious to us both, accusing us, as it were, of being in league to deceive the public. I felt that, friendly as his motives might be, his method of disposing of my work was a mistake, one I was no longer willing to have part in even were it for my interest, or, to be a cause of odium to him. The manner in which I tried to rectify the situation does not justify Mr. Cable’s ungenerous fling that, “the imputation of having kept her merits in the shade will have more weight when Mrs. Miller has written four or five pages which a first-class magazine is willing to take”. This is an ill-considered retort. My note made no such imputation but, contrariwise, tried to show that he wished me to have the merit. The effort to belittle my work is irrelevant to the question at issue, whether it is right, for Mr. Cable or anyone, to buy original matter of another, change it either much or little, and put his name to it. It is immaterial whether I can, or can not, write for a first-class periodical, but it is important whether the purchase of literary material constitutes a claim to its authorship. The changes made in my article are, in the opinion of some compe- tent critics a question of individual taste. He surely does not assume to be the sole arbiter of literary criticism. I do not pretend to competition with him but for answer to his taunt submit quotations from his printed words, his letters, and outside opinion. Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 104 When he published my “Diary of the Seige of Vicksburg” in the Cen- tury he said in his preface “I have not molested the original text” (Cent. Mag. Sep. 1885.). When about to publish in bookform this “unmolested text” with the rest of it, “Diary of a Union Woman in the South”, he says, — “At length I was intercessor for a manuscript that publishers would not likely decline” (Cen. Nov. ‘88.). From a letter comes this — “I congratulate you on the grace with which your story is told, the heroism that makes it inspiring and the love that makes it tender and touching”. Another letter states — “every one praises without stint the unknown writer of the Diary”. These opinions sound as if he then thought these pages, exclusively from my pen, “worthy publication in a first class magazine”. If I remember aright, it was the only part of the book praised in the London Atheneaum which said of it, “the Diary of a lady who was in Vicksburg during the seige is a piece of work of the highest interest, to be read only with breathless excitement so completely vivid and so simple is the narrative”. A good critic here, said in the Picayune, — “this diary proves Mrs. Miller to have unusual literary ability”. Mr. Cable’s second paragraph in the Critic article makes an incorrect statement, “I told her more than once that her one chance of disposing of any writing of hers as literature lay in confining herself to the simplest re- cital of experiences of her own interesting enough for publication”. His sole words to that effect are in a letter, — “I think your forte lies in simple, direct narrative of interesting incident”. Some critics approve such a style and it has the advantage of making an editor’s work lighter. The next inaccurate statement is, that I sent him manuscript of the Slave Insurrection “asking him to buy it”. I have his letters and copies of replies. He urged me to write it in five letters. When I wrote that it was finished and I thought of sending it to Lippincott, he rejoined, “Don’t send it to Lippincott. Send it to me”. I did. Here is the reply — “It has strange- ness, movement, color, life and human interest but it wants perspective and correlation of parts. It ought to be re-written; there are periodicals might take it as it is. Try them if you like. There is another proposition I can make, to offer you less than the material, but more than the writing is worth, then take it and make it mine, you named or unnamed. If this seems fair to you I offer $50.00” (Nov. 1886). I was unwilling to sell it if he was to make it his, had him return it and kept it a year. School-work prevented my revising Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 105 it. I sent it as it was to some magazine, (can’t recall which) it came back with signs that it had not been examined. Then I wrote Mr. Cable he was probably right that it needed revision, I had no leisure to do it and if he still wished to buy it, could have it if he would name me as author. This was his answer, — “if I re-write it, I should still feel bound to give you credit for its authorship and will gladly do so” (Aug. ’87). In Jan. 1892 he wrote to me for a map of the island. In the interval, losses and sorrows “in battallions” had come upon me; he knew the situation, and in replying I specially reminded him of the promise that my name should appear, adding, that it was now important for me to get a standpoint for myself. He replied, “I will of course give you credit in print- ing the story of the Insurrection”. Naturally, when it appeared over his name, I felt disappointed and wounded. His third misstatement is this, “Mrs. Miller wrote to me soliciting my aid in securing publication of a paper reciting humorous experiences in the Census”. That manuscript, mentioned to Mr. Cable as suitable for a Read- ing, was sent him at his request to put in Lecture form for me; his own offer. There are witnesses to this besides his letter which says, — “‘The Census as She is took’ is received and is better to publish I will find a pub- lisher”. I had not attempted to prepare it for anything. Three months later I learned on inquiry it was published in N. Y. Independant. He sent me a check for it and I sent for a copy, it was changed a little, he had put a preface over his name and mine at the end. Mr. Cable alludes to “anonymous charges”. These refer to the man- uscript entrusted to him to submit to the editors of the Century with the explanation that if accepted my name should not appear in the magazine. I certainly intended the editors should know of it. He did not show it but bought it by telegram letting me suppose it was purchased by the Century Co. He stated the true fact some months later. I felt disappointed but having a firm belief in his kindly intention did not demur for fear of wounding him. It turns out that it was an illegal transaction, “no agent is permitted to buy of his principal when he is authorized to sell” (Story on Agency Sec. 207). Of this I was then ignorant. My long reserve ought to be proof that, as he says, I thought of him as a friend and believed his actions well-meant. I considered that his reputation, probably, sold manuscripts more promptly than I could and entitled him to part profit. Therefore as long as he headed Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker Scandinavian Studies in Language, 15(2), 2024 (56–106) 106 my papers as edited by him, though I knew it destroyed my chance of gain- ing reputation for myself, I did not complain, motives of delicacy kept me silent and dictated my note to the Times-Democrat. An answer in the same spirit would have set things right. To reply by a taunt and indirect slurs, which are incorrect, confirms an interpretation of the circumstances which was not given by my note. DORA R. MILLER. 459 Carondelet St. N. O, La. March 8th 1893.