Note 1 — NORTH CAROLINA

“Do come” and “did come” are proper enough; why not “done come”? And in point of fact, this common Southern use of “done” with the past participle has its warrant in at least two lines of Chaucer: in The Knightes Tale (1055):—

“Hath Theseus doon wrought in noble wise,”

and in The Tale of the Man of Lawe (171):—

“Thise marchants han doon fraught her shippes newe.”

If a ship is “done loaded,” why may not a carriage have “done come”? Idiom is long-lived. As Lowell said of the Yankee vernacular, so doubtless may we say of the Carolinian, that it “often has antiquity and very respectable literary authority on its side.”