mammy

   This is sometimes a variant of ‘Mamma’ or ‘Mummy’, used to the speaker’s mother. There are many examples of such usage in The Country Girls, by Edna O’Brien; also in When the Boat Comes In, by James Mitchell. One of Al Jolson’s best-known songs began: ‘Mammy, how I love yah, how I love yah, my dear old Mammy.’ ‘Mammy’ was also formerly used, especially in the southern American states, to a nanny. Gone With The Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, contains a loving portrait of Scarlett O’Hara’s mammy, who is always addressed by Scarlett in that way: Mammy emerged from the hall, a huge old woman with the small shrewd eyes of an elephant. She was shining black, pure African, devoted to her last drop of blood to the O’Haras, Ellen’s mainstay, the despair of her three daughters, the terror of the other house-servants. ‘Dear Mammy’ is also found in George Eliot’s Scenes of Clerical Life, addressed to a nanny.