1905, NW WA: “Episode of the Utopia” doggerel

The connection with Chinook Jargon here is awful thin…

But klooch is indeed a borrowing into Pacific NW dialect English from the Jargon’s ɬúchmən ‘woman’.

I’ll warn you as usual, the following is genuine PNW folklore of its time, so it’s making use of racist and sexist viewpoints.

I’d kind of like to do a public reading of the doggerel we’ve collected on this website, *if* I can provide the crowd with rotten tomatoes…

You can learn a lot about our history by puzzling through folk poetry like this, though.

It might be wonderful to see new poetry get written in response to this stuff…?

The Utopia (image credit: UW Libraries)

The steamship Utopia linked Bellingham and Anacortes with Seattle.

Eplsode of the Utopia.

She was a Ferndale maiden,
And he was a Skagit man;
In woolen goods her form was laden,
Her hat was a sort of rat-and-tan.
She was a flirt from the Nooksack bottoms
Worse than the belles of the Hottentotems,
He was there with the goods so pleasing.
First we knew that man was squeezing
To his bosom this fair lady,
On the side of the boat where things were shady.

He was a bold and bad sea rover,
Wouldn’t stop when she told him to;
He was out for fun all over,
And acted like all the rovers do.
He was game and she was gamer,
Girl was lonesome, who could blame her?
Just going home to see her mother,
And he seemed like her long lost brother,
Seemed as though they liked each other
Pretty well for acquaintance new.

Stewart said stop it, so did the purser,      [steward]
Captain said things had to cease,
But this bad man kept getting worser,
None of the boys could rest in peace.
Girl was a big athletic sister,
Spry as a Klooch from the Nooksack vale,
And she says, “I give you a tussle, ‘Mister,’ “!
And then she began to hoist her sail.

Girl was strong and the man got dusted,
Never saw such a sight before,
Clothes are torn and his buttons busted,
And a dent in the hat that his father wore:
So through the night went the bang and rattle,
Flirting girl and a dead game sport,
And some of these days when we reach Seattle,
Better look out for the Justice Court.

— from the Anacortes (WA) American of February 2, 1905, page 3, column 2