Under the present regime neither the white nor the coloured man has any rights which the black is bound to respect. CHAPTER IX. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. There are two languages spoken in Hayti, French and Creole. French is the language of public life and of literature, whilst Creole is the language of home and of the people. President Geffrard, among other eccentricities, used to extol the Creole as the softest and most expressive of languages, and his countrymen are unanimously of his opinion; but no Frenchman can accept as a language this uncouth jargon of corrupt French in an African form. No doubt, African languages, like those of other savages, are very simple in their construction, and the negroes imported into Hayti learned French words and affixed them to the forms of their own dialects. Mr. J. J. Thomas of Trinidad has published a very painstaking grammar of the Creole language as spoken in that island. I gather from it that this patois is much the same as that spoken in Hayti; but in our colony it holds the position of the Saxon in the Norman period, and interpreters are required in our law-courts to explain the language of the people. It shows also that in the French colonies of Martinique and Guadaloupe, as in our French-speaking colonies, wherever the negroes attempt to speak French, they do so in the same way that the Creole is spoken in Hayti. I may add that the patois of the inhabitants of the interior is so corrupt and African, that those who can converse freely with the negroes of the coast are often puzzled when they visit the mountains, and require an interpreter. As this Creole language is spoken by about a million and a half of people in the different islands of the West Indies, it merits the attention which Mr. Thomas has bestowed upon it; and I would refer those curious on the subject to this elaborate work, in which everything possible is done to raise the status of a patois which remains still, in my opinion, but an uncouth jargon. There is naturally no Creole literature, but there are many songs and proverbs, some of which may serve to show the kind of language spoken by the Haytians. The only songs which I can quote are written by persons familiar with the French language, and therefore do not sufficiently represent the pure Creole. The proverbs, however, are genuine, and are therefore the reflex of popular ideas. Moreau de St. Méry, who lived in Hayti during the latter part of last century, quotes a song written about the year 1750, which, though often reprinted, I will insert here, with a translation made by a Creole some years later. St. Méry has all Geffrard’s admiration for the Creole language, and thinks that the inarticulate sounds, which cannot be rendered on paper, are the most admirable part of the language of the Haytians, and perhaps it may be so:-- CREOLE. FRENCH.