Hi,
I've found a difficult word in "Eelskin"

The context is in this image:







I guess the Corncracker is a man of Kentucky, but I think I could follow here the Spanish translator of Moby Dick, who most of the time adapts into Spanish the literal meanings of composite words, with good results.

Thanks once more,

CM

"Corncracker", or simply "cracker" was technically a migrant worker who owned no property, worked mostly on farms, and who was often regarded in much the same way as an "Honest Joe" in more modern American slang. It was a particularly complimentary term in Kentucky where several political candidates defined their own suitability for high office by emphasising their appeal to the "corncracker".

"Eel-skin" on the other hand denoted a travelling trader - especially a "Yankee" trader from further north operating in southern states such as Kentucky - who had a reputation for less than honest dealings. The "eel skin" reference indicated how "slippery" they were when it came to pinning them down to an honest deal, but also probably originated through passing off eel skin as chamois or thin leather - gloves and the like made from this looked the real deal but quickly disintegrated after purchase.

Crockett was a Tennessee man, so the target audience of the Crockett Almanac was one which tended to see these states as "real America" and therefore stories within it tended to be sprinkled with as much Virginian, Kentuckian and Tennessean slang as was required to promote this notion. It was not beyond the authors to invent such slang on occasion if it "looked the part", but in the case of crackers and eel-skins it appears that these were indeed actual terms that Crockett also would have recognised and understood.

PS: Sorry CM, but I had to remove your link - it was so long that it was screwing up the display format of the page here. Was it this one?

Hello nordmann,
Your explanation is great, as always. Just one thing: what's the sense of "cracking" here —that the cracker is a grower of corn; or that he / she cracks it in order to eat it? Depending on where the emphasis lies upon I could venture a translation in one or the other sense…
Yes, absolutely, this is the print I was inserting here. I am afraid I am not to good with technologies in general. I tried the icon that says "inser image" but I don't think it worked. Thanks for displaying it properly, of course.

ComicMonster wrote:

Your explanation is great, as always. Just one thing: what's the sense of "cracking" here —that the cracker is a grower of corn; or that he / she cracks it in order to eat it? Depending on where the emphasis lies upon I could venture a translation in one or the other sense…

Hah, now that's a question .... The Merriam-Webster American dictionary suggests (I think, but it's a pay site so I can't see the whole entry) that the compound word corn-cracker was used of poor white farmers, originally of Georgia, then the residents of northern Florida, and only later of Kentuckians, and it suggests the etymology is "from the cracked kernels of corn which formed the staple food of this class of people".

But the New Georgia Encyclopedia mentions a 1760s letter written from the American colonies to Lord Dartmouth (in England) referring to the Scots-Irish settlers of the southern backcountry, which says:
"I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." The word then came to be associated with the cowboys of Georgia and Florida, many of them descendants of those early frontiersmen.

However white slave foremen in the Southern states were also called "crackers" owing to their practice of "cracking the whip" to drive and punish slaves, while whips were of course also cracked over pack animals and when rounding up cattle, and accordingly this may be an alternative route by which the cowboys of Georgia and Florida came to be known as "crackers". As such the term could ultimately derive from the Middle English cnac, craic, or crak, which originally meant the sound of a cracking whip but came to refer to "loud conversation or bragging talk" (cf also the modern Irish word craic for a good joke/fun time). In 16th century English "crack" could refer to entertaining conversation (and one may still be said to "crack" a joke and a really good joke might still be referred to as "it's a cracker"), but a "cracker" could be used to describe a loud boasting braggart (such is in the letter to Lord Dartmouth) and Shakespeare uses it in that sense in 'King John' (act II scene 1); "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?"

..... perhaps for your immediate purposes, CM, it's best to stick with the 'cracked kernals of corn as a staple food' meaning. I love these etymology/word-evolution questions but, sorry, that probably hasn't been of much practical help to you.

No, no, of course it has been of much use, for sure. I also love etimology. In fact, I think it's the best way to really understand a meaning, and no dictionary should come without it.
I would in fact stick to the fact that they eat the corns and then explain in a brief footnote the fact that it was a disdainful —scornful, would crack it best…— way to refer to poor white farmers prototypically considered honest and good americans.
Thanks Meles meles for your help. I will really need to get immersed in all these themes in order to progressively grasp the atmosphere of these days and notions and find equivalences in old Spanish culture (picaresque-Quixote…) able to suggest good renderings.

Take care,

CM

"Cracking" corn is milling or grinding it, normally as a colloquial reference to the first step in the distilling process when making liquor. It was an activity therefore heavily associated with very poor white migrant workers and black slaves on southern plantations who were "allowed" a small portion of the corn harvest to make alcohol as compensation for their labour.

That introduces an interesting factor, nordmann. It gives me an alternative to their naming or designation, and will surely allow to nuance their portrait when required.