The speech of the cracker is a mixture of Old English provincialisms, local slang, and a variety of home-invented words, including 'Heifer on my haslet', meaning 'Well, I'll be damned!" Orthodox 'cussing,' however, when occasion seems to demand, attains a scope and degree of inflection originated from the limitations and hazards of his existence, and so he may delare that 'I done drunk outa fruit jars so long I got a ridge acrost my nose.'
With more embellishments, there is the cattle-country story of Burwell Yates and the syrup kettle. 'One time,' the tale goes, 'Yates loant his syrup kettle to Bill Stevens down at Ox Pond. Bill kept the kettle for three years, so finally Yates drove down to get it. Bill's wife warn't goin' to let him have it and took to squalling, so Yates grabs him a cypress shingle, gets after her, and takes the kettle anyway. When Bill Stevens hears this he takes down his shot gun, straddles his hoss,and sets out for Canoe Creek to see Yates. When Bill gets there, Yates is drivin' a nail in a porch post to hang up a bridle. Bill throws up his gun and pulls the trigger,and the load cuts a staple fork out of Yates' ear and ruins his hearin'. A year later one of the Partins from Fort Christmas is a huntin' for stray cattle, but none of the boys admits they'd seed any till Elmer Johns asks about their mark. "Staple fork in the right ear," says the Partins. "That's different,"says Elmer. "They's a old deef bull with that mark ranging up around Canoe Creek."'
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