Learning Not to Curse: Swearing, Testimony, and Truth in ’s The Interesting Narrative

Regan, S. (2013). Learning Not to Curse: Swearing, Testimony, and Truth in Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative. Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 54(3), 339-357.

Published in: Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation

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Download date:30. Sep. 2021 Learning Not to Curse: Swearing, Testimony, and Truth in Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative

Shaun Regan

The Eighteenth Century, Volume 54, Number 3, Fall 2013, pp. 339-357 (Article)

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ecy/summary/v054/54.3.regan.html

Access provided by Queen's University, Belfast (26 Aug 2013 14:47 GMT) Learning Not to Curse: Swearing, Testimony, and Truth in Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative

Shaun Regan Queen’s University, Belfast

You taught me language, and my profit on’t Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language! —­William Shakespeare, The Tempest, 1.2.362–641

My employer, unhappy for himself as well as others, was as horrible a swearer as I ever met with . . . I was resolved to reprove my master when a proper opportunity offered. I said to him, “Dear sir, don’t you know that the Lord hath declared, that he will not hold them guiltless who take his Name in vain? And that all profane swearers shall have their portion in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone?” —­Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher. Written by Himself (1798)2

In the Narrative of his life (1772), the second known example of the Anglophone (ex), describes the early stages in his ac- quisition of the English language. Decked out in servant’s livery in the New York home of his master, Vanhorn, Gronniosaw recalls that although he oc- cupied a “very easy place” in the house, “the servants us’d to curse and swear surprizingly; which I learnt faster than any thing, ’twas almost the first English I could speak.” It was not long, however, before Gronniosaw was persuaded to desist from such profane usage of his recently acquired tongue, a change oc- casioned by the “correction” of an “old black servant,” Old Ned, who informed him that “there was a wicked man call’d the Devil, that liv’d in hell, and would take all who said these words, and put them in the fire, and burn them.” As Gronniosaw confesses, “This terrified me greatly, and I was