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IN THREE PARTS APPENDIX 1273
The words are said to mean:
A man is coming, a man is coming!
A man is coming, come, a man is coming!
. . . It's a little fellow I love.
Is he come? Is he come?
[At this point the little boy would pretend to faU back.]
Oh, there comes a man!
Come, come, come!
He stinks, but I love him.
I just love him.
He stinks awful, but I love him just the same!
In the latter part of the song are the baby-talk
words: tcAx'^! tcAx''! with which the little boy used to
pretend to scare his mother as he pointed to spiders
and bugs. An adult would say Xox! in pointing out
something dangerous that a child should not touch.
Unfortunately, a dictated version of the words was
not obtained, and those of the first line were hard to
hear on the tape.
A xasix xasix xane kawgul' tcanayu—?- (he comes)
[tcAUAyu] stinker
B 'ixcixan xan XAnkayu—I love you, love, love
(a bit)
B 'ihtcan tcan tcanayu—You stink, stink, stinker
C 'ixcixan xan XAnkayu
D 'ihtcan tcan tcanayu
E tcAx'^ tcAx"^ tcAx^'kayu—Scare, scare scare (a
bit)
E tcAx" tcAx^ tcA^'^kayu
E' tcan tcan tcanayu
F 'ixcixan xan xAnkayu
G 'ihtcan tcan tcanayu
Pet Songs for Three Little Girls, by Minnie Johnson
1952, 5-1-B (a, b, c); recorded by Minnie Johnson on
September 9.
These three short snatches of song, composed by the
singer about 1935, are interspersed in a long recorded
account (in Thngit and English) of how the singer and
her second husband, Charley Johnson, adopted these
three little girls as their grandchildren.
Of these songs, Minnie Johnson said: "So I get the
song for aU of them. Sometimes I get the whole bunch
together. They all dance like growing up young trees.
They're just shaking like a leaf, the way they dance
[to the songs] I compose for them. [Now they are all
grown up, big girls, and] they don't want to hear these
songs anymore ..." She hoped that this recording
would not offend them.
Song A (23 seconds), for Esther, the oldest, uses the
child's baby talk 'sAmbAda' for 'Somebody is coming
in.' The words were transcribed from the tape, and
can also be heard as 'cam-pa-ta ca,' etc. The pattern
of the words is:
A B C D
B C D
B C
The melody is: A B C D E G F G H .
Song B (17 seconds), for Rosemary, uses the expression
'dd cana,' which the singer described as "a love
word" meaning " 'good-for-nothing'—wouldn't let me
change your diapers." (It is derived from da! 'behave!')
As heard on the tape, the vowels of each syllable are
clipped by glottal closure, as in Atna Athabaskan
speech. By text and rhythm the structure is:
A B A B
A B A B
By melody, however, the structure is:
A B C D
A' D
A" D'
which McAllester terms "a tour de force of variations."
The third song, C (21 seconds), uses the word
t6ikina "my little lover," the pet name for the smallest
child, Audrey.
By text, the structure is:
A B
A B
A/ [talks]
A B
A [talks]
By melody it is:
A B C
B C/ [talks]
C D E [talks]