And much of the blame belongs to the clumsy, hacky salesmanship of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Chairman Gary Cohn, who fumfered his way through an awkward White House press briefing.

The seer man revealed that the comess (conflict, trouble, confusion) this man was experiencing was linked to cuckoldry (perhaps his own; this part of the story was left vague), explaining that the neighbors had worked obeah” on him and his family,put[tin] graveyard dirt and many other things in a buried heap" under the outside stairs.

So while during the writing process, I described my task as somewhat Brysonesque, it is a journey through Southern culture rather than a more conventional traveler's guide. Because, unlike Bryson, I actually got out of my car and chatted with folk.

In the early Middle Ages, ‘mother tongue’ was largely ‘a pejorative term to describe the unlearned language of women and children’ (Haugen 1991: 82). This reflected the low status of women in society and contrasted with Latin, the more prestigious ‘father tongue’ on the continent.