Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [449]
BOIS CHANDEL: candlewood—a pitchy wood suitable for torches.
BOKOR: Vodou magician of evil intent.
BOSSALE: a newly imported slave, fresh off the boat, ignorant of the plantation ways and of the Creole dialect.
BOUCANIERS: piratical drifters who settled Tortuga and parts of Haiti as Spanish rule there weakened. They derived their name from the word boucan —their manner of barbecuing hog meat.
BOULETS ROUGES: red-hot shot.
BOUNDA: rectum.
BOURRACHE: curative herb.
BOURG: town.
BOURIK: donkey.
BWA DLO: flowering aquatic plant.
BWA FOUYÉ: dugout canoe.
BWA KANPECH: canapeche tree.
CACHOT: dungeon cell.
CACIQUES: Amerindian chieftains of precolonial Haiti.
CALLALOO: stew with an okra base; gumbo.
CALENDA: a slave celebration distinguished by dancing. Calendas frequently had covert Vodou significance, but white masters who permitted them managed to regard them as secular.
CANAILLE: mob, rabble.
CANZO: intermediate level of initiation and commitment in Vodou.
CARABINIER: rifleman; also a popular dance admired by Dessalines.
CARMAGNOLES: derogatory expression of the English military for the French Revolutionaries.
CARRÉ: square, unit of measurement for cane fields and city blocks.
CASERNES: barracks.
CASQUES: feral dogs.
CAY (CASE): rudimentary one-room house.
LES CITOYENS DU QUATRE AVRIL: denoting persons of color awarded full political rights by the April Fourth Decree, this phrase was either a legal formalism or a sneering euphemism, depending on the speaker.
CHAUDIÈRE: cookpot.
CHICA: bawdy dance.
CLAIRIN: cane rum.
COCOTIER: coconut palm.
COCOTTE: girlfriend, but one in a subordinate role.
COLON: colonist.
COMMANDEUR: overseer or work gang leader on a plantation, usually himself a slave. COMMERÇANT: businessman.
CONCITOYEN: fellow citizen.
CONGÉ: time off work.
CONGO: African tribal designation. Thought to adapt well to many functions of slavery and more common than others in Saint Domingue.
CORDON DE L’EST: Eastern cordon, a fortified line in the mountains organized by whites to prevent the northern insurrection from breaking through to other departments of the colony.
CORDON DE L’OUEST: Western cordon, as above.
CORPS-CADAVRE: in Vodou, the physical body, the flesh.
COUI: bowl made from a gourd.
COUP POUDRÉ: a Vodou attack requiring a material drug, as opposed to the coup à l’air, which needs only spiritual force.
COUTELAS: broad-bladed cane knife or machete.
CREOLE: any person born in the colony whether white, black or colored, whether slave or free. A dialect combining a primarily French vocabulary with primarily African syntax is also called Creole; this patois was not only the means of communication between whites and blacks, but was often the sole common language among Africans of different tribal origins. Creole is still spoken in Haiti today.
CRÊTE: ridge or peak.
DAMBALLAH: Vodou deity associated with snakes, one of the great loa.
DEBAKMEN: Debarkation, landing.
DEMOISELLE: Miss, damsel.
DÉSHABILLÉ: a house dress, apt in colonial Saint Domingue to be very revealing; white Creole women were famous for their daring in this regard.
DESSOUNEN: the separation of the loa mêt’ têt–spirit master of the head—from a person undergoing the transformation of death.
DEVOIR: duty, chore.
DIVERTISSEMENT: diversion.
DJAB: demon.
DOKTÈ-FEY: leaf-doctor, expert in herbal medicine.
DOUCEMENT (DOUSMAN): colloquially, “take it easy.”
DOUCEMENT (DOUSMAN) ALLÉ LOIN: “The softest way goes furthest”; a famously favorite proverb of Toussaint Louverture.
ÉBÉNISTE: woodworker.
ÉMIGRÉ: emigrant. In context of the time émigré labeled fugitives from the French Revolution, suspected of royalism and support of the ancien régime if they returned to French territory, and often subject to legal penalty.
ERZULIE (EZILI): one of the great loa, a Vodou goddess roughly parallel to Aphrodite. As Erzulie-Jé-rouge she is maddened by suffering and grief.
ENCEINTE: pregnant.
ESPRIT: spirit; in Vodou it is, so to speak, fungible.
FAÏENCE: crockery.
FAIT ACCOMPLI: done deal.
FAROUCHE: