Toni L. P. Kelner

To Be Southern, or Not To Be

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I've always heard that the way Appalachian Mountain folks speak is as close to Shakespearean English as you're going to get without a time machine, and a whole lot closer than the way actors at the Royal Shakespeare Company talk. (Maybe that's why I put so much Shakespeare quoting into my Laura Fleming mysteries.) But the truth is, even folks who are mighty fond of the Bard can have a hard time following every thing he says, so I thought this quiz would help translate Billy's words into the kind of English regular people use. At least they talk like this where I come from.

See if you can match up the Southern expressions with Billy Shakespeare's versions:

1.) I didn't just roll into town on a head of lettuce.		My heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand.
2.) She can't write her way out of a wet paper bag.		Whose large style agrees not with the leanness of his purse.
3.) You can call me anything, just don't call me late for supper.		He speaks an infinite deal of nothing.
4.) He's got a champagne appetite, and a beer budget.		Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; the thief doth fear each bush an officer.
5.) I'm as stubborn as a mule.		This is a very false gallop of verses; why do you infect yourselves with them?
6.) He could talk the hind leg off of a mule.		I know a hawk from a handsaw.
7.) She's running around like a chicken with her head cut off.		I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.
8.) He was as jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.		Anger is like full-hot horse, who being allow'd his way, self-mettle tires him.
9.) I'm so mad I could spit!		That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet.
10.) It's hotter than the hinges of hell.		Hot blood begets hot thoughts.
11.) Mad as a wet hen.		Trying to put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.