He Do the Police in Different Voices!!

[Saprina]

First , I want to thank you for this useful forum . I am really glad to be here among you.

Would you please inform me about this phrase?

He Do the Police in Different Voices

What does it mean?
Why " Do" not " Does" ?!!!

Is it an idiom?:crash:

You know "He Do the Police in Different Voices" was the originally title of Eliots great poem : ( The Waste Land)

This strange phrase is taken from Charles Dickens’ novel Our Mutual friend
in which the widow Betty Higden, says of her adopted foundling son Sloppy: "You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices."

I am waiting for your opinions.
Thanks a lot .

[chaplin]

I think it is just dialectal. Dickens made much use of the different, usually "lower class", dialects that existed in England, and I believe this is an example of this. The character instead of saying, "He does the police in different voices", Dickens had her say, to show perhaps how quaint or uneducated she is, "He do the police in different voices."

[barbara0207]

Yes it shows the language of lower class people, who were often rather uneducated. But that has nothing to do with quaintness or dialect. ;)