Myron Eells’s hymn book (Part 3: “Come to Jesus”)
Song #3 from Myron Eells’s little book, “Hymns in the Chinook Jargon Language“, 2nd edition (Portland, OR: David Steel, 1889):
(Here’s a link to all installments in this mini-series.)
It’s called santi in Chinuk Wawa…
SUNDAY.
No. 3. Tune, “Come to Jesus.”
1. Chaco yakwa (Repeat twice.)
Okoke sun. (Repeat once.)
Chako yakwa. (Repeat once.)
Okoke sun.2. Halo mamook
Okoke sun.3. Halo mahcook
Okoke sun.4. Halo huyhuy
Okoke sun.5. Halo cooley
Okoke sun.6. Iskum wawa
Okoke sun.7. Saghalie Tyee
Yaka sun.
Here’s Eells’s own translation from his Jargon into English:
The supplied English translation is serviceable.
I’ll only add that #5’s ‘(do not) play’ is a lovely rendering of kuli, which in the northern dialect means ‘wander, gallivant, travel’, typically for fun.
But #6 ‘get the talk’ is, for my mind, a poor English equivalent of the sense of the Chinuk Wawa, iskum wawa, ‘pay heed; pay attention’.
This is a minimalistic, but very fluent, Jargon song. It’s starting to look as if Myron Eells was rather good at achieving such a result!
