Your compiler overheard a parishioner after church the other day saying to another, “Bless your biggol’ heart!” Hearing that warmed his own heart, for there sit two good Southernisms side-by-side in a single phrase.
First is, “Bless your heart,” which originally and correctly is used as an expression of sincere empathy, and which your complier believes is distinctly Southern – he cannot imagine anyone from Los Angeles, Brooklyn, or Peoria saying it. But one has to be mindful of context, for there is the sincere usage of the phrase, as well as a cynical utilization.
A funeral home visitor might say, “Bless your heart, you and your siblings took such wonderful care of your mom these last several years as her memory and mobility left her.” That is a wonderful illustration of the original usage of the phrase – it truly means, “May you be blessed for a job well done.” Another way is if someone has “gotten into a fix,” as we Southerners say when things are not going to suit for someone – when through no fault of their own seem to have a spell of having hardly anything go their way. Most of us, when experiencing such times, will try to laugh our way through them to keep from burdening those around us, but someone might say, “Bless your heart,” in a sympathetic way which also shares in the comedy of the situation.
But there is another way of saying it – a way your compiler never witnessed until he was middle-aged, and which he believes came to be in our mostly graceless day and time. What he is referring to is using, “Bless your heart” cattily, to mean, basically, “What an idiot!” In this manner it is almost always used in the third person – bless his or her heart – but it is as far from an expression of unfeigned empathy as vermin are from humans. While your compiler believes that usage is a rather recent and somewhat crass construction, he is willing to concede that such usage can be quite effective and vivid. So he truly understands why it has become common; however, he personally prefers and employs the original usage and prays that it will not be altogether forgotten or abandoned in rise of the newer, coarser, less kind usage.
The second Southernism in that church-house phrase I heard the other week was, “biggol’,” a common Southern adjective for things ranging from humongous down through huge and large to perhaps merely ample. But perhaps those adjectives do not impart the right degree of emphasis in speaking of a particular thing. “Biggol’” will almost always do the trick in such cases.
One might see, “Stone Mountain is the largest exposed outcropping of granite in the entire world,” but that would sound rather stuffy if spoken by someone other than a park tour guide. “That’s a biggol’ hunk of rock right there,” is more along the lines of what a Southerner might actually say in casual conversation.
If there is a moral to this story, it is to keep on blessing hearts — the right way, of course. You will get a biggol’ reward for it someday. But for folks who decide to keep using it in the unkind way; well, bless their hearts!
