(Courtesy Ryleigh Madison Music)
One of my new heroes, although I guess she is technically a heroine, is Ryleigh Madison Bunch.
I don’t know her personally, but I know several members of her family. Miss Ryleigh auditioned on American Idol the other night. That would be intimidating enough for almost any high school sophomore, but facing down folks who could have a profound effect on her future, Miss Ryleigh was all grace, manners – and accent.
She had to phonetically spell the name of her hometown to help the judges understand what she was saying. Before it was over, they were steadfastly on her side. Indeed, I’d question anyone who wasn’t a fan of Miss Ryleigh after that audition.
Far too often, Southern accents, especially rural Southern accents, are mocked, lampooned and ridiculed. Although I didn’t particularly care for him, the late Lewis Grizzard had a point with which I wholeheartedly concur: God talks like we do.
To her credit, Miss Ryleigh handled the judges perfectly. She was polite, she was firm, and she was grateful. She said please, thank you and sir. She was also enough of a Southern lady not to refer to the female judge as m’am, since too many ladies don’t understand the term as an honorific, rather than an assumption of age.
My own accent has always been something of a conundrum; some Northern Neck of Virginia sneaks in, although I was born in North Carolina and speak a whole lot of Southeastern North Carolina. Indeed, the latter dominates, as was proven during a trip to England years ago.
I was somewhat disgusted with the rooming house where I was staying, and since we would be leaving in the early morning from another such hostel, I gathered my stuff and began hiking across the city of Oxford at 10:30 on a Sunday night. For some reason, there were no cabs available at that time.
I was plundering along when out of the shadows two shady looking characters came up and offered to help.
I assured them I was capable of handling the bags myself (which I was) and assured them that if I had any cash in my pocket, I’d happily have paid them for their help (and I truly didn’t have any in my pocket at that moment. It was hidden elsewhere.)
Those two homeless-looking fellows were better ambassadors than many a paid employee of any Chamber of Commerce, even though one didn’t speak.
“You’re a cracker, aren’t you?” the talker smiled. “Met your type during the war. Where are you from?”
I told them I was from North Carolina, then added that I was from a small town near Fayetteville and Fort Bragg for a reference. For a moment, I thought they were going to invite me home.
Whether he told the truth or not I cannot tell, but my garrulous friend claimed to have served alongside American paratroopers in World War II, and to have gone to Bragg for training a few years after the war. He mentioned enough familiar ground that I was reasonably sure there was some truth to his story.
Before it was over with, my two new friends were hauling my luggage, showing me a short cut, watching my back, and waiting in the freezing night air with me on the stoop of Mrs. Scott’s boarding house. Their good will was reinforced by the bottles of adult beverages I couldn’t take home, but even without the addition of liquor, Neil and his buddy wanted to hear me talk.
A few hours later, we were waiting in Gatwick Airport for our badly delayed flight, and I noticed how a fellow kept giving me a quizzical look. He finally stood up and came over to where our group.
“Are you from Sampson County?” he asked.
Turned out the stranger I met halfway around the world was from a crossroads about three or four miles from where I learned to walk and talk. He knew where I lived as a child. He read the newspaper my father worked for at the time. There was even a slight chance one of my sisters had turned him down for a date in school.
Our Southern accents carried through the babble of a dozen languages as snow packed against the windows of London’s lesser known airport.
A few years later, through an odd set of circumstances, I found myself in a small city in Iowa. Most of the folks there were if not rural, no more than one or two generations off the farm. Yet they loved hearing me talk. My business partner and buddy who took me on the trip had a slightly less pronounced accent than mine, but those wonderful Iowan folks wanted to hear him talk as well. He joked that he could have gotten a date with the prettiest girl in town by reading the phone book aloud (and he may have, but that’s a column for another day).
I take pride in my accent, as I think all Southerners and North Carolinians should. Our accents are a melting pot of Scotland, Ireland, and the resultant Scots-Irish; Wales and multiple parts of England; then just a pinch of Spain, Germany and France. Throw in the Native American words we now take for granted, and the occasional Gullah or Geechee pronunciation, and the language of Carolina is as diverse as our landscape.
I tend to growl and change the channel when I hear actors mimicking what they think is a Southern accent; like sweet iced tea, fried chicken and pecan pie, our accents are just one Sunday biscuit shy of being considered holy. My friends from New York, California and elsewhere don’t seem to be as proud of their accents, although I know a few who will fight you out of pride in their particular dialects and vernacular. I regularly have to be reminded of the difference between you and youse, where we Southrons use the simpler, more elegant y’all.
I grew up with the city of Fayetteville being pronounced Fedvul, Clinton as Clinnon, Burgaw as BUR-gaw, Atkinson as At-KIN-Son, Lagoon as Lay-goon, and yes, Whiteville as Whyt-ville.
I sincerely hope Miss Ryleigh continues on and wins American idol, if for no other reason than so folks can realize we don’t talk funny in the rural South — we just talk right.
We speak with the accent of heroes.
