Hogchokers revisited
Harry Armistead
HOGCHOKERS, POPES, AND PIGWITCHES - revisited. a celebration of colloquial names.
Been well nigh on these 20 some years now. This was well-received, in some quarters, at that time. So … here ’tis again for y’all with some changes and add-ons. Thanks to Phil Davis, Jared Fisher, Larry Riddle, and David Fleischmann for unearthing this document, lost from my files otherwise. Seen any Labrador Twisters lately? Pigwitches? Then why the hell not?
Not for ONE MOMENT should it be supposed that this is making fun of the way
people talk. I love to hear a good Eastern Shore accent. Sadly that is disappearing
as young folks move away, or get acclimated or assimilated through the services or
colleges, or from watching too much TV. Tom Horton writes that where the
Eastern Shore patois really gets used heavy is when watermen are out there talking
amongst themselves.
One of our guides, Albert Heath, spoke with such a thick accent he was almost
incomprehensible … to me. Likewise he could hardly understand us. It took us
a while, once, to realize, because of this confusion, that he’d left us off on the
wrong island. It didn’t make much difference because our respective 2 groups saw
a Snowy Owl on both Ship Shoal and Myrtle islands. Another time he couldn’t get
back to pick us up because of an extremely low tide. Finally after dark he appeared.
We headed south to collect the Smith Island crew, who had built a fire for us to
home in on. Navigating at high speed through those tortuous tidal guts in the dark
was quite an impressive feat. Albert, rest his soul, done us good.- Harry.
In an earlier post the use of the name Hogchoker, a small species of
flounder (sole), drew some commentary. It doesn't sound as if it ought to be, but
Hogchoker (Trinectes maculatus) is the genuine English name used by the scientific
community. The Sea Nettle, our common jellyfish, is also both the colloquial
name and the proper English name. The best of 2 worlds.
Here is a fanciful enumeration of other species, as it might sound like
coming from an Eastern Shore of Virginia waterman. Of course many birds
are known locally, and/or colloquially, by their "correct" names such as snipe,
Brant, loons, etc. I’ve taken a few liberties, but not many, in the name of poetic license.
Some of the colloquial names are better, sometimes much better, than the
“proper” English names. There’s a “glossary” at the end of this. Here goes.
Fasten your safety belts and put your seats in the upright position.
Time to cut loose … again.:
Yes, we got Hogchokers and other fishes, your Spot, Hardheads, Croakers, Trout,
and Rock. Puppy Drum, Alewives, Bunkers, and others. Then there's
Blowtoads, Oystercrackers, and Dowdies, too. And Doubleheads, but you can't
eat them, though some do. They’re good for bait.
Far as crabs go, it's like the Eskimos. They got all sort of names for
different kinds of ice and snow. Down here we got names for all the crab
sorts. There's busters, popes, shedders, softcrabs, she-bitties, papershells, and
doublers (the one underneath's always a softie), your ordinary hard crab,
and, of course, there's jimmies and sooks. Those are all names for the
sorts of Blue Crabs; jimmies are males, sooks females.
Now birds, that's somethin' else. Lot of them little sandpipers, we got
all sorts. The big ones, the Straight-billed Curlew, they used to shoot and eat
them. Sea Crows, too. And Curlew, as well. In the old days they'd also shoot
Calicobacks, Robin Snipe, and Sewin' Machines. And Black-breasted Beetlers.
And all them little peeps.
You want to see those sandpipers, get Filmore, or Wesley, or Shotbill to take you
in their deadrise, out to Thoms Creek ‘bout half-tide. Zoot Zoot knows how to
get hold of them, or else just go down to Buddy Boy Busterson’s depot and ask.
Ducks was commoner then, but there's still lots of Little Dippers, Clubheads
(we also call them Whifflers or Whistlers), and Southerlies, which we oftimes call
South, South Southerlies, or Pintails. Out on the ocean Skunkheads are real common
and other types of sea coots. You go real far out to sea, farther than I go for the
shad in February, you get tuna birds in summer. Never see them from
land.
Out there past the skinny water is where you get those sorts, mostly. Diver ducks.
Other places got more ponds and freshwater than we do hereabouts,
they got more ducks like Sprigs, Spoonbills, and teal. Oh, we got them, too,
but not many.
In the old days there's was but one gull in summer and that was the
Cacklin' Gull, called Soft Crab Gull, too. Now, the Winter Gulls is nestin’
on the islands as well. Time was, you’d never see a winter gull here but
in winter. All the old names, like Egg Harbor, Gull Marsh, Great Egging
Beach, and the like, that was cause they'd go out there and gather gull eggs and
they would make a good omelet or two with that. Then let' em alone to do their
business and nest again.
Big groups of gulls and strikers, Little Strikers, and Big Strikers, still nest on the
islands as well as Flood Gulls, which we also call the Scissorbill or Cutwater.
The littlest striker we call the Minnie Hawk.
What you call the cormorant, well, you know what sort of names they have,
and Shag is one of the more polite ones. No need to tell you the others.
Those are words a smart person don't say no more. Although you might say
Shitpoke, but not t'other, unless you were to say Pocomoke Goose or
Baltimore Goose. I know one thing, there's more and more each year.
In early April or late March there’s lots uh little divers, we call
Pigwitches. And in the summer there's the little heron, called Scowp 'cause of
the way they call when you jump him. Of course you know the White Crane and
the Blue Crane, the blue one sometimes called Forty Quarts of Soup or Old
Cranky. Them night herons, I believe you say, here is called the Wop or
Bumcutter cause of what he sounds like. There’s a hammock up north of
Ewell on Smith’s Island we call Woptown.
Them fish ducks, there's not much to eatin' one, but they're good to shoot
at anyway. You get the Hairy Head or French Pheasant, or Pond Snout, in the
little sloughs and ditches, up the guts, the Sheldrake or regular Pheasant out
on the bays and ocean. You know … Fish ducks. Sawbills. Those and
other diver ducks.
Every so often, when there's a big freezeup or blizzard in Jersey, or
Canada, then the woodcocks pile in here like crazy. Take Hans' spaniel out
and you'd flush one every twenty feet. Up north they call them Labrador
Twisters or Bogsuckers. Timberdoodles even. In Ninety-three we got a
real cold rain, coated all the rushes, sedges and trees with ice. Everything. The
woodcocks like to froze. Chicken Hawks was hitting them right off the grass.
Goin' down 600 woodcocks, blackbirds, Killdees, Field Larks, and Canaries was
all along the roadside shoulders. Couldn't help but hit some with the truck.
Now the bigger stuff, ‘possums, ‘coons, skunks, your haners and whistle pigs,
and of course the deers, the sump buzzards will come down and take care of
that, right on the roads. Eagles at times, too. Roadkill.
Cousin Wesley, “Sneaky Boy”, is partial to roadkill. Long as it was just some
little impact and not gettin’ squashed, he was a good judge of freshness, and
the rabbits and deer he’d eat at times. He’s that way. I suppose that makes
some sense, but, unless it’s been hunted or fished, I get my food store bought.
But once Jared and I found a 10-lb. rockfish right on the road, fallen off a truck.
He put it inside my left hip wader, but when we got to Sewards he dressed it
out into steaks. Now in that same county, mostly marsh, where else would you
find a roadkill thunder pumper, next to the road at Parsons Creek and the
Stewart Canal?
Big old Sicklebill. Never used to see him at all until the sixties. Now there's
white ones, too. In with the herons and cranes.
In September, when there's doves before the Partridge season, you can also
shoot the Sage Hens or Marsh Guineas when the tide's good and flooded.
Time was, the tradition for that was a big deal. Big shots would come from
Washington to do it. Nowsdays hardly anyone bothers, but if you breast him
out and put bacon strips on it, it is right tasty.
That's about the smart of it. And when the tide starts to slack, when she begins
to let out, that's when your Sage Hen will start to hollerin'. There's other smaller
mudhens, too, and such, about the size of a Field Lark, but you don't see
them as much as you see the Sage Hen. Railbirds. Marsh guineas. Mudhens.
You know what I mean. At low tide the Sage Hen will go after Fiddle Crabs, and
other creepy crawlies.
Also in September, and sometimes in August, you have Reedbirds, or Rice-birds
as they're also known, pilin' into the reed beds at Oyster late in the day. Other
places I know they get shot, or used to, 'cause they’d feed on wild rice, come
already stuffed. Get some light shot in Buster’s old, twist steel, side-by-side 8
- that’s a 16-pound gun - could blow away two dozen at a time. Blast the
suckers. Don’t see the old hammer action scatterguns anymore. No more
black powder shells either ways.
In the evening what we call whip-poor-wills, also called Hollerin’ Boys, will start
to call after sundown, ‘specially in June. Colored Charlie’d call them Hollerin’
Boys. Colored’s got special names for things, just as you college folks got
names different from ours. Also hoot owls and your squinch owl.
Now old Elmo, he was the good one at catching them Snapper Turkles.
Made good stew from them, Sweet meat. Add a couple of dollops of your
sherry wine to it, you’d have something.
Onlyest thing I know, there's not as much huntin' as there used to be and
that's too bad, to see that tradition dyin' out. Of course, I haven’t gone gunnin’
since I was a boy, but it is nice to see a bunch of fellas out on the
marsh enjoyin' themselves. Get away from the little old lady and cut loose
a little.
Even if you come back with nothin' to show you're bound to be better off,
but you might go proggin’ in the afternoon when the birds stop flyin’,
come up with old O. K. Davis baking powder bottles, or others’ floater decoys
got loose during a big blow. Best to look for these around the tumps and sod
banks, or in the debris by the flood tide lines.
Once Weldon found a bunch of porpoise bones, vertebrae, on the backside of
Ship Shoal next to the old watch house. Put them up on his mantel until his
Lydia objected they were next to her Evans family crystal, so he moved them
out back to the garage, where, if there’s not a Tech or other big game, he does
his carving weekends.
The big whale bones Wally found once on the beach of Cobb’s, six-foot ribs,
he painted bright silver, then put them around the old tractor tire Naomi had
filled and planted in geraniums. Don’t make much sense to me, but it’s their
yard, they can do what they want. Plain and fancy.
No tellin’ what one can find out there. Nothin’ better than a day on the marsh or
water. Least ways I see it. Right fair straight.
In memory of Lynwood Horner, waterman, our guide at Cape Charles 1965-1999.
May his very good soul rest in peace. He was always so nice to me and my
family. Machine gunner with the Merchant Marine in The War. He was as
discriminating about birds as most of us. Even when his arthritis
would seize up on him he'd go out there clammin', oysterin', or crabbin’,
or when there was a big wreck of conchs washed up on the shores
from a nor’easter. He didn’t know what it was, but he once described perfectly
a Dovekie he had seen around his boat one winter day, a description that would
have sailed right through any rarities committee review.
Also in tribute to Steve Parker, the late director of the Nature Conservancy’s
Virginia Coastal Reserve. Good humored man. Set us up in the grand
old house at Brownsville for the Nassawadox Christmas count compilation.
Like compiling at Monticello or Mount Vernon. A true gentleman. He’d hunt
black ducks and was fond of his hound. Sense of humor, too. I miss him so.
Thanks to Lynwood, Emma Greene, Charles Cook, Jeff Effinger, John Camper,
Minnie Camper, George Reiger, Marcus Killmon, Stanley Marshall, and others
for clueing me in to these old names and unusual expressions. One of the
names above I made up. Know which one? A few others I haven’t “translated”.
Didn’t wish to make it TOO easy.
Best to all.- Harry Armistead, Philadelphia.
GLOSSARY: big striker: royal tern. blowtoads: Northern
Puffer a.k.a. Swellfish, Swell Toad, or Balloonfish; "Puffers are so named because
of their ability to swell by swallowing water (or air, if they are removed
from water) so that they become globular. This habit discourages
predation." - C. Richard Robins, A field guide to Atlantic coast fishes of
North America.
black-breasted beetler: black-bellied plover. blue crane: great blue
heron. cacklin’ gull: laughing gull. calicoback: ruddy turnstone. canary: American
goldfinch. chicken hawk: red-tailed hawk. clubheads: common goldeneye. conch:
whelk. curlew: whimbrel. dowdies: toadfish. doubleheads: cow-nosed rays. field lark:
eastern meadowlark. flood gull: black skimmer. hairy head: hooded merganser.
haner: a corruption of yellowhammer = yellow-shafted flicker. hollerin’ boys: chuck-
will’s-widows. hoot owl: great horned owl. killdee: killdeer. little dipper: bufflehead.
little striker: Forster’s or common tern. marsh guinea: clapper rail. minnie hawk:
least tern, minnie means minnow. mudhen: clapper or other rail. oystercrackers:
toadfish. partridge: northern bobwhite. pigwitch: horned grebe. pintail: long-tailed duck. reedbird: bobolink. robin snipe: red knot, refers to their breeding plumage. rockfish:
striped bass. sage hen: clapper rail. scowp: green heron. sea coots: scoters. sea crow:
American oystercatchers. sewin’ machines: dowitchers. shag: double-crested
cormorants. sheldrake: red-breasted merganser. sicklebill: ibis. skunkheads:
surf scoters. southerlies: long-tailed duck, sometimes corrupted to :sudly”.
spoonbills: northern shovelers. springs: northern pintails. squinch owl: eastern
screech-owl. straight-billed curlew: marbled godwit. sump buzzard: non-existent,
my generic name for vulture. thunder pumper: American bittern. tuna birds:
shearwaters. whip-poor-will: sometimes used locally for chuck-will’s-widow.
whistlepig: woodchuck. white crane: great egret. winter gull: herring gull.
wop: night-heron.
A good source of colloquial names is Edward Howe Forbush’s Birds of
Massachusetts and other New England states (Massachusetts Dept. of Agriculture,
1925-1929, 3 volumes). For instance, this source lists 10 names for Hooded
Merganser.
However, Bird is the word: an historical perspective on the names of North American birds by Gary H. Meiter (McDonald & Woodward Publ. Co., 2020, 437p.) is perhaps the last word in this area, with, for example, 70 colloquial names for Hooded Merganser, 150 for Northern Flicker.
An excellent book, Chesapeake requiem: a year with the watermen of vanishing Tangier Island by Earl Swift (Dey Street, 2018, 435p.), has many more terms for the Blue Crab than appear in “Hogchokers”.
March 16, 2021. 2,627 words.