Brave Little State is the show where you, the audience, ask us questions about Vermont. And we try to find the answers.
Today, we tackle this question from Sandra Bettis of Middlesex:
“Where did ‘jeezum crow’ come from and is it just a Vermont saying?”
Join reporter Mikaela Lefrak in her exploration of this quintessential Vermont saying, as she journeys from folklore to linguistics to… the habits of crows.
Note: Our show is made for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript. Transcripts are generated using a combination of robots and human transcribers, and they may contain errors.
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Mikaela Lefrak: From Vermont Public, this is Brave Little State. I’m Mikaela Lefrak.
(Banjo music)
Despite what you might be thinking, this episode isn’t about banjo or bluegrass or anything like that. It’s actually about the phrase this tune is named after: “jeezum crow.”
Tyrone Shaw: Jeezum crow.
Tom Slayton: Jeezum crow.
Bill Mares: Oh, jeezum crow.
Mikaela Lefrak: (laughter) That was very good exasperation!
Mikaela Lefrak: Brave Little State is the show where you, the audience, ask questions about Vermont. And we try to find the answers.
A number of you have asked questions over the years about the phrase “jeezum crow” — including Sandra Bettis in Middlesex.
Sandra Bettis: So, I always thought jeezum crow was just a nice way of saying Jesus Christ, you know, a lot less aggressive, and so I said it all my life. But when my son moved out of state, when I went down to visit him, he said, “Mom, did you realize that jeezum crow is just a Vermont saying?”
Mikaela Lefrak: Thus, her question.
Sandra Bettis: Where did 'jeezum crow' come from and is it just a Vermont saying?
_
Minced oaths
Mikaela Lefrak: Sandra is right about the basics. It’s a way of saying Jesus Christ, without saying, you know, Jesus Christ. There’s a name for this.
Grant Barrett: Yeah, it’s a minced oath.
Mikaela Lefrak: This is from the public radio program A Way with Words. They did a jeezum crow segment back in 2015.
Grant Barrett: It’s like “jeepers creepers” or “jiminy cricket” or a whole bunch of those.
Martha Barnette: Yeah there’s a lot of those exclamations that start with that j sound.
Grant Barrett: There’s an alternate spelling which is — and in my research it’s a little more common — “j-e-s-u-m,” but it’s the same and it’s also from Vermont.
Mikaela Lefrak: The hosts also note that jeezum crow is used in Vermont and northern New York, but they don’t say anything else about where the phrase came from.
Now, according to the fine folks at the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest time it was printed was in 1959 in the academic journal Vermont History. But usually, new words or phrases circulate for a while orally before they’re ever set down in print.
Oral history round up
So I set off to do some research of my own. I decide to take a very scientific approach. My plan is to ask a bunch of older Vermonters about the even older Vermonters who taught them the phrase.
I start with Banjo Dan, the man behind the music we heard at the beginning of this story.
Banjo Dan: Hello?
Mikaela Lefrak: Hi, Dan, this is Mikaela Lefrak. I was just wondering if you might have a couple minutes to chat with me about your jeezum crow song.
Banjo Dan: Well, it’s a banjo tune, it’s not a song, so there’s no lyrics.
Mikaela Lefrak: Lesson one: “Jeezum Crow” is a tune, people, not a song. After that gets cleared up, I ask him where he first heard the words jeezum crow.
Banjo Dan: An old farmer up on the top of Rice Hill in Franklin, he was probably the first person I ever heard say jeezum crow. I can’t swear to that, but he may well have been. My guess is it’s been around for quite a long time.
Mikaela Lefrak: Probably true, but I’m hoping for more. Next I call up Tom Slayton, former editor of Vermont Life Magazine.
Tom Slayton: Where did it come from? Now that's a darn good question. I just don't know. I think probably from our Puritan past.
Mikaela Lefrak: He’s nodding here to New Englanders’ religious history. Maybe folks here are more likely to use a minced oath than take the Lord’s name in vain.
With that, it’s on to the next older gent in my rolodex, Tyrone Shaw of Bakersfield. He’s a retired literature professor at Vermont State University.
Tyrone Shaw: By the jumpin’ bald headed Jesus!
Mikaela Lefrak: Turns out he really likes minced oaths.
Mikaela Lefrak: I have never heard that.
Tyrone Shaw: You haven’t?
Mikaela Lefrak: No!
Tyrone Shaw: Or there’s also “crimo frickin’.” I’ve experienced all of these!
Mikaela Lefrak: I haven’t heard ‘em!
Tyrone Shaw: You’ve never heard of crimo frickin’?
Mikaela Lefrak: No! (Laughter)
Tyrone Shaw: Back to jeezum crow: Crimo frickin’, I don’t know. I just don’t know.
Mikaela Lefrak: Loves a minced oath, but doesn’t know their history.
The last leg on my tour is to see Bill Mares in Burlington. He’s a former journalist, teacher and state rep.
Bill Mares: “Jeezum crow this" or "jeezum crow that.” It just spills off the mouth, you know, like the edges of Vesuvius.
Mikaela Lefrak: As for where it comes from? He doesn’t know either. But he does point out one reason why he thinks it’s stayed mostly in Vermont.
Bill Mares: Everybody kind of talked more or less the same language.
Watch your language
Mikaela Lefrak: To tell us why, let’s bring in academia.
Danny Erker: The major geographic barriers, the mountains, the rivers, etc.
Mikaela Lefrak: This is Danny Erker. He’s a sociolinguist at Boston University. Danny studies how things like gender, class, race — and geography — affect how we use language.
Danny Erker: It's quite possible that those physical impediments plus whatever the social dynamics were worked together to transmit the phrase, and then keep it where it is.
Mikaela Lefrak: He says Vermont has lots of different types of barriers that would work to keep jeezum crow in-state.
And, he says, those barriers are more pronounced here than in other parts of New England. You might hear jeezum crow used in upstate New York or parts of New Hampshire or Maine. But for the most part, it’s really stayed in Vermont.
Danny Erker: People who study regional variation in American English, they actually tend to treat Vermont as kind of in New England, linguistically, but still different than some of the more canonically New England locales.
Mikaela Lefrak: You can learn more about that in Brave Little State’s episode about the Vermont accent.
Danny also says it’s not a coincidence that you’re most likely to hear “jeezum crow” from an older, male Vermonter, than, say, a teen girl. That’s a thing in sociolinguistics!
Danny Erker: Older men in particular, they tend to lag behind the most.
Mikaela Lefrak: Interesting. So with this specific example, like with jeezum crow, it might not — that older men are not the original users, or popularizers of the phrase, they're the ones that are holding on to it.
Danny Erker: Yeah, that their use of the form is not necessarily a hint at its origins, but rather an illustration of the resistance of that particular demographic to linguistic innovation.
Mikaela Lefrak: That is, once older men grab on to a turn of phrase, they’re very resistant to letting it go. There’s even a name for these types of guys we’re talking about: NORMs. Non-mobile, older, rural males.
The "Bird Diva" delivers
Let’s get back to Sandra’s question about where the phrase came from. In all my reporting, the best theory I heard came not from a NORM, or an academic, but from a birder named Bridget Butler, known locally as the “Bird Diva.” Bridget and I are talking crows, and she tells me, because Vermont is so far north, crows often do fill the skies.
Bridget Butler: Crows have this winter phenomenon of flocking together at night for safety. So, during the darkest times of year, it seems like there probably are a lot more crows in Vermont.
Mikaela Lefrak: And then, she hits on her theory. Imagine you’re a Vermont farmer standing in your field.
Bridget Butler: And you’ve just planted, and you’re like, “Damn crows are back again, pulling all the seed out,” right? “Jeezum crow, get out!”
Mikaela Lefrak: I have never thought of that! So it might not just be that jeezum crow is in itself a phrase, but somebody back in the day was yelling “jeezum” to a crow.
Bridget Butler: Yeah! Right? Like, I just spent all day today planting, and you’re going to get into my stuff. Yeah.
Mikaela Lefrak: The antagonism is so real, you can even shoot crows during Vermont’s two crow-hunting seasons.
Wherever it came from, the phrase “jeezum crow” sure did catch on. But then along came the internet, and people started talking the same, and — anecdotally, at least — it seems like jeezum crow’s usage is starting to drop. Danny Erker says this is happening more and more.
Danny Erker: These specific, highly local ways of producing sounds and words are the linguistic equivalent of endangered species. Right? The general state of regional varieties is precarious, is the headline.
Mikaela Lefrak: That’s right: jeezum crow is an endangered species. And it’s up to us to save it.
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Credits
This episode was reported by Mikaela Lefrak and produced by Angela Evancie, Sabine Poux, Burgess Brown and Josh Crane. Ty Gibbons composed our theme music. Other music by Blue Dot Sessions and Banjo Dan.
Special thanks to Sophie Stephens, Laura Nakasaka, Jim Stanford, Martha Barnette, Grant Barrett and Mary Danko.
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Brave Little State is a production of Vermont Public and a proud member of the NPR Network.
