1884, OR: We just keep finding Lord’s Prayer translations; here’s a home-brewed one
We’ve found many Jargon translations of the Christian “Lord’s Prayer”; here’s one that was obviously cooked up at home.
An Oregon hand-scripted version of the Lord’s Prayer, pre-1876 (image credit: Old Oregon Photos)
The highly unusual spellings, and the Settler style of speaking, reveal the following one’s origin in “an old Oregonian’s” cabin…
A few weeks ago we published the Lords
prayer as taken from Gill & Co’s Chinook
Jargan [SIC]. A friend, an old Oregonian gives
us a diffurert rendition as follows : Pesica
papa clasca mit lite sothly close ilahe, mica
mommoke sothly cauqua okoke ilake ; pot-
latch nesica sum pe sum nesca supalille, wake
cumtax nesica mosacha, kanqua nesica wake
nesfca clatawaw mosocha iscum nesica siaw
mosacha.
— from the Albany (OR) Democrat of June 20, 1884, page 3, column 3
I’m not going to go into a detailed analysis of the creative grammar there. I will advise not emulating it.
