Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man

Subject: Origins: Knck Knack Patty Whack -This Old Man
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 03:07 PM

I am curious as to the phrase knick knack patty whack in the child's tune This Old Man. I did a search and only came up with one reference in the threads: joke with a mondegreen.

Anyway, would like to hear what anyone might know of it and also if "patty" might've originally been "paddy?" For that matter, anything anyone might know about the whole song would be welcome, too.:-)

Thanks,

kat

Subject: RE: Origins: Knck Knack Patty Whack -This Old Man
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 03:17 PM

Perhaps it is patty in America and paddy in England? Paddy is what i was brought up with, anway.(in England)

Subject: RE: Origins: Knck Knack Patty Whack -This Old Man
From: GUEST,Peter from Essex
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 03:23 PM

I'm with Greg on this. I'm sure they sung "Paddy" in Inn of the Sixth Happiness

Its a fairly standard children's counting song.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knck Knack Patty Whack -This Old Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 03:26 PM

Never heard patty- always paddy. You must have some girl scout version.

Lots of paddy versions, here's one from a 100% American site: Old Man

Origin of song? Durned if I know but you have made me curious. Will have to look.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knck Knack Patty Whack -This Old Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 03:45 PM

There are several copyrighted arrangements. One of these is "The Childrens Marching Song (Nick Nack Paddy Whack) adapted and arranged by Malcolm Arnold, 1958. For the movie, "Inn of the Sixth Happiness"
(In Levy sheet music, not shown for copyright reasons).
Pete Seeger recorded it in 1953.

Haven't found anything old yet. Supposed to be American, says the Trad Ballad Index.
Anyone have Opie? if it is older, it may show up there.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knck Knack Patty Whack -This Old Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 03:53 PM

In thread 9306, Bruce O. says he doesn't know of the song in any British Isles material.
Not found so far before the 1950s in American sources but presumed to be American.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knck Knack Patty Whack -This Old Man
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 03:57 PM

I had always heard it "paddy," too, come to think of it. Sorry, fellahs.:-) Some Girl Scout version, indeed!**BG**

I was wondering if the "paddy whack" was in anyway related to prejudice against the Irish? The rest of the info is really interesting, too, thanks a bunch!

kat

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 04:04 PM

Oh, yeah, and just who is this old man?

Subject: RE: Origins: Knck Knack Patty Whack -This Old Man
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 04:07 PM

I would think that "Nick nack paddy whack" is like "Davy Davy Nick Nack", just a very successful marrying of nonsense syllables to a memorable bit of tune. Whether in the dim and distant past there may have been some unfortunate Paddies getting whacked in an early version I couldnt say, but I doubt if that is in the minds of many of the children who delight in singing it. But it could become that way, if someone uses the internet to start a legend that that is what the song is about, and then it will become a de facto anti-Irish song. Such things gave happened.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Blowzabella
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 04:12 PM

I know this isn't exactly of any intrinsic value as a source, but I seem to recall Daniel Hagman (John Tams) singing it in an episode of 'Sharpe', set in the Peninsula Wars, in the early years of the C19th. I know that he was not just engaged as an actor but was also heavily involved with the music for the series and I would be surprised (and a bit disappointed) if it was featured without evidence of some sort.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 04:13 PM

That's certainly not my intent, greg. I know that kids nowadays, nor in my children's day or my own, had anything such thing in mind, either. I just wondered if there was a connection. I figure this lot is so good on origins, someone would know. Thanks, anyway.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 05:35 PM

Yeah, Greg, Kat has that calumny in our minds now, it was already mentioned in that other thread (9306), and Irish (part, anyway) like me are all going to take umbrage. From now on we all sing Patty- until the gals and dolls ---

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 05:41 PM

Here's the part I didn't tell ya, Q....I learned it from a leprechuan! A transplant he was, plunked right down in the middle of ol' Wyoming; one of the Remittance Men, ya know...younger bro, couldn't inherit? 'Course he shucked that green outfit; changed into tiny boots, chaps, jeans, the whole bit...took up with the rodeo and rolled out the barrel for the bulls. In between bareback ridin' and steer-wrestlin' he'd provide musical entertainment along with Tall Tales. He came to visit our Girl Scout troop one time and that's when he told us the plight of his long-suffering peoples and taught us the PC version!!

katIswearit'strue!

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 07:00 PM

Not in Opie, so far as I can see; but their index is not constucted on the most helpful of lines.

This is number 3550 in the Roud Folk Song Index. At present, only 7 examples are listed; 3 from England (1911, 1962, 1973), 2 from the USA (n.d. and pre-1948), 2 from Canada (1959, 1962). The earliest example there was noted by Cecil Sharp and a Mrs Stanton from children at East Dereham in Norfolk (September 1911); so far as I know, it has not been published. Not yet listed in Roud is Jack Jintle, learned by Anne Gilchrist from her childhood nursemaid, Elizabeth Piercy, in the 1870s (Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society,III (2) 1937 124-5), or the version in Kidson and Moffat's Eighty Singing-Games.

There are various titles: Jack Jingle, Old Joe Padlock, Old Joe Nigalock, Old Tommy Kendall... "Paddy Whack", though known as a dance-tune title since the 18th century, doesn't appear in the English versions I've seen (haven't seen the Sharp or Kidson sets) and likely derives in this context from the American set published by Seeger and popularised during the second half of the 20th century through numerous children's song books and commercial recordings.

To imagine some "anti-Irish" connotation is about as likely as another bizarre suggestion (made at the Mudcat, of course) that Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor might be racist because it featured a Brown Girl.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 07:27 PM

I said I was JUST CURIOUS, NOT implying anything. Sheesh!

Thanks for the further info.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 08:23 PM

Interesting. If the 1911 version is similar and can be dug out of MS. then we have a "no later than" date to shoot at. If these pre-Seeger versions are of this song, then it could well be from the British Isles.
Public knowledge of this rhyme blossomed with the 1858 movie.

It does not occur in Kane ed. Fouke, "Songs and Sayings of an Ulster Clildhood."

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Blowzabella
Date: 22 Oct 03 - 09:02 PM

The reference to Anne Gilchrist brings it to Lancashire as she was a member of the Gilchrist family of Sunderland near lancaster (where I was leading my guided walk tody)

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: mouldy
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 03:01 AM

Paddywhack, as far as I know, refers to the spinal cord (the springy white bit) down the middle of a cooked back-bone. I had never heard of it until my husband pointed it out in a piece of stewed lamb neck. Thus it fits nicely to the "give a dog a bone". I'm also sure I have seen it used as a name for a dog treat somewhere.

As to the rest, it more than likely is a nonsense rhyme that can be used to teach counting to children.

Andrea

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: GUEST,Davetnova
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 03:17 AM

I have heard that it originated as a Sailors busking song. Begging was illegal but by playing the bones , or knick knacks, you became an entertainer. This is why the begging reference - give the dog a bone.
Paddy and wack are both terms akin to mate or friend.
Or thats the internet rumour I've heard.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: GUEST,JOHN OF ELSIE`S BAND
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 06:34 AM

The song

"This old man, he played one"
"He played nick nack on my drum"
"With a nick nack, paddy whack, give a dog a bone"
"This old man goes rolling home"

continuing through ten verses until the old man "played ten" on some part of the singer`s anatomy or possession has certainly been sung by the folks, especially children, in Britain ever since Adam was a boy.

Also an interesting question. Why do we say someone is in a "paddy" when they are not in the best of tempers?

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 06:39 AM

Never mind the anti-Irish sentiments, there seems to me a distinct air of paeodophilia or violent child abuse about the song. Particularly as the "drum" is a euphemism for something that rhymes with it.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: GUEST,banjoman
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 06:45 AM

I always thought this song had its origins in Liverpool - hence the "Paddy" a name given to both imigree Irishmen or Catholics by the Orange Lodge - known as "Proddy Dogs"
The term "Wack" is a very old term for a friend or aquaintance in the Liverpool vernacular "Or right there wack" is still a local greeting.
I may be wrong (probably am in light of the distinguished personnages who have replied before me) buts its a good thread topic anyway.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Pied Piper
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 07:51 AM

I played at a Ceilidh for a Scottish couple in Cheshire the other week, and while I was tuning up my Pipes one of the kids asked me to play This Old Man. I obliged, the kids really loved it and I re-discovered what a great dance tune it is.
I would imagine that the tune is an 18th century Dance tune like so many other children's rhymes, but does any body know of a B part, or a related tune.
I think we take a lot of the children's tunes for granted, and don't play them in other contexts. These tunes must have been very popular in the general population to have survived this well and are the fundamental icons on which our understanding of the Trad dance form is based.
Over Hills And Fare Away is a great tune that I play regularly and I got the musical gist from John John The Pipers Son as a Kid myself.

TTFN
PP

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 09:04 AM

No evidence as yet of the song prior to c.1870 (unless the Sharp MS or the Moffat/Kidson book have further information); it may well be older, but we don't know that. No evidence either, so far, to connect it either to sailors or to Liverpool, or that the term "paddywhack" occurs in English versions prior to Seeger. Gilchrist makes the same connection with bones or castanets (both often called "knackers") as has "Davetnova".

Anne Gilchrist's nursemaid was from Wales, but could have learned the song either there or in Lancashire; not from a printed source, though, as she didn't learn to read until later. The tune is not the same as that popular now. The tune given by Kidson is, according to Gilchrist, "the Italian Montferina - a dance-tune much used for nursery-songs and games since it came to England in 1810." I don't have any information on that at present.

Subject: Lyr Add: JACK JINTLE (Manchester 1870s)
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 10:08 AM

I missed a comment made by Gilchrist which would put the date of This Old Man as sung today in the UK back at any rate to the First World War period, so we now have at least anecdotal evidence, though not yet details (see below). My earlier comments should be revised in the light of that; an American import or re-import now seems much less likely. Here is Jack Jintle, as printed in The Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society:



JACK JINTLE

(From Elizabeth Piercy, Manchester, 1870s. Noted by Anne G. Gilchrist)

My name is Jack Jintle, the eldest but one,
And I can play nick-nack upon my own thumb.
With my nick-nack and pad-lock and sing a fine song,
And all the fine ladies come dancing along.

My name is Jack Jintle, the eldest but two,
And I can play nick-nack upon my own shoe.
With my nick-nack, etc.

(As before, substituting "three" and "knee", "four" and "floor").


X:1
T:Jack Jintle
T:(An old Action Song)
S:Elizabeth Piercy, Manchester, 1870s. Noted by Anne G. Gilchrist.
B:Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, III (2) 1937 124-5.
L:1/8
Q:1/4=100
M:6/8
K:D
A|D F A D F A|D F A d2 B|
w:My name is Jack Jin-tle, the eld-est but one, And
A F F F E D|C E E E2||
w:I can play nick-nack up-on my own thumb.
"Refrain"F/ E/|D F A D F A|D F A d2 G|
w:With my nick-nack and pad-lock and sing a fine song, And
F E F E A G|F D D D2|]
w:all the fine la-dies come danc-ing a-long.


Miss Gilchrist added:

"The rest is forgotten, but the numbers probably went up to ten. In the first verse the singer, suiting the action to the word, rapped with her knuckle on her thumb; in the second rapped on the sole of her shoe; in the third on her knee, and so on. Elizabeth Piercy was our Welsh nursemaid and illiterate when she came to us at the age of seventeen. She was a good singer, but one could make no sense of some of her scraps of English songs, though she sang well in Welsh and taught me to sing songs in that language.

"This old action-song, belonging to the day before such things were introduced into the school curriculum, is here printed in the hope that it may elicit other variants which may help to elucidate its origin. It belongs to the cumulative class of which This old man came rolling home is a war-time route march specimen. The only other version I have seen of Jack Jintle is set to the tune of the Italian Montferina - a dance-tune much used for nursery-songs and games since it came to England in 1810. Mr. Kidson's version is a stick-dance, but arrangd as such by himself - many of his games being adaptations. The 'nick-nack' may perhaps provide a clue. In the ballad of Burd Isabel and Earl Patrick occurs the verse:

"The Knichts they knack their white fingers,
The ladies sat and sang,
'Twas a' to cheer bonnie Burd Bell,
She was far sunk in pain.

"This suggests some finger-trick more than mere snapping. 'Knackers' is an old name for castanets or wooden 'bones'. Strutt quotes under Fool's Dance an allusion (1649) to a person dancing the Spanish morisco with 'knackers' at his fingers.

"A variant of the same tune was known in our nursery days to a child song As Tommy was walking one fine summer day."

-Anne Geddes Gilchrist, Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, III (2) 1937 124-5.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 06:02 PM

This is really interesting. Who knew!? Thanks all!

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Blowzabella
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 06:26 PM

Malcolm - you really know how to write a post - it is clear, well thought out, interesting, intriguing, informing - academic yet in no way condescending- there must be a prize due for this surely.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 06:50 PM

Malcolm Douglas: you assume, and I think I do, that AG Gilchrist's reference to "This old man came rolling home" must be to the song we know now. But can we be absolutely sure of that, if we havent got an English version actually written or recorded. If it was familiar to Gilchrist as a first world war route march song, shouldnt there be a written version knocking around to confirm this, and that doesnnt seem to have shown up yet.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 23 Oct 03 - 07:32 PM

That's what I'm hoping for; but it isn't likely to be in any source immediately available to me, I think. Meanwhile it can only be a tentative identification. I'm not assuming that it must be the song we know, but it certainly does suggest that we now have a potentially larger time-frame to look at, and that my earlier guess at an American source for this particular form is likely to have been wrong. That was partly based on the fact that the two American examples listed by Roud both begin This old man; but so, on the other hand, does the unpublished Sharp set.

The set in Peacock's Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, incidentally, also has "padlock" rather than "paddywhack", but that doesn't prove anything in itself. The tune is rhythmically closer to the form we are used to, but whether it's melodically related I couldn't say.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: CRANKY YANKEE
Date: 24 Oct 03 - 02:33 AM

WITH A KNICK KNACK PADDY WHACK
KICK HIM WITH YOUR SHOE
THAT OLD DOG JUST PISSED ON YOU

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Oct 03 - 03:50 AM

Gees, you guys are vicious. In the other thread, I said, "I learned it with what might be an anti-Irish "paddywhack" (vice "potterack"). When we were kids, we thought it meant hitting an Irishman with a stick, not that we were bothered by that. I thought I worded my conjecture as noncomittally as I could, but Kat and I sure got jumped on. Since "Paddy" is American slang for Irishman, I think it's quite possible that some people changed it to "patty" so as not to offend - even though the original intent was most probably not an ethnic slur.

Please note that neither kat nor I condemned the song as an ethnic slur. We merely threw out the question. Kat and I are tough enough to take it, but I wonder if the ferocity of the response might tend to stifle honest inquiries or comments. Like it or not, fifty years ago, some kids in Detroit thought "paddywhack" meant hitting an Irishman. Since this is a kids' song, I think that's a worthwhile observation.

-Joe Offer-

P.S. I can't find anything in Opie - Singing Game, Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, Games with Things. Now Paddy and I will go cry in our beer.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 24 Oct 03 - 04:59 AM

A couple of observations on this interesting thread...one of those that makes the Mudcat worthwhile--thanks for starting it, kat!

The rhyming words I learned to the song (Philadelphia, early 60s) are as follows: "He played knick-knack on my..."
1 - thumb; 2 - shoe; 3 - knee; 4 - door; 5 - hive (I never liked that one, but there it was); 6 - sticks; 7 - up in heaven; 8 - gate; 9 - spine; 10 - He played knick-knack once again.

Others probably have variations, though I suspect ours came from the 1958 movie, which I don't believe I ever saw. (I know I never saw the 1858 movie!)

Regarding "paddywhack": when I was a kid, when you did something particularly egregious (among other kids, that is), the penalty was to "get paddywhacks." This meant that the others would stand in two lines facing one another. The offender would run the gauntlet, while his "friends" whacked him on the butt as many times as they could. We never thought about the derivation of the term, that was just what paddywhacks were. But I wouldn't be surprised if it originally had something do to with whacking an Irishman, or at least pretending to. My guess is that the newer version of the song substituted that word for the original (padlock, or whatever) just because it sounded good.

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: katlaughing
Date: 24 Oct 03 - 10:01 AM

You're welcome, Mark, thanks!

Joe, thanks for putting into words what I've been feeling and didn't dare post at the risk of being villified. You said, "but I wonder if the ferocity of the response might tend to stifle honest inquiries or comments." Judging by PMs I've received over the years, that is exactly what happens from time-to-time, folks feel too intimidated to ask what they think will be perceived as a "stupid" question, and, to me that is one of the least attractive aspects of the Mudcat.

kat

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old
From: greg stephens
Date: 24 Oct 03 - 05:31 PM

katlaughing: i havent noticed anyone vilifying you in this thread, i certainly havent been. That's Joe offer's word: who's vilifying who round here? seems a remarkably interesting and good-natured thread to me. is this another example of Brit irony not working in America, or American honesty seeming more angry to us than it actually is?

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: katlaughing
Date: 24 Oct 03 - 05:55 PM

I didn't say anyone had villified me, greg, merely agreeing with Joe that some people may feel too intimidated to post. And, this hick American had no problem with your Brit irony...ya didn't see me jump yer case over the child-bashing, did you?**bg**

katraisedinthewildbytheDriestofHumouredRelativesKnowntoHumankind

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 10:41 AM

Joe also used the word "vicious," Greg, but his post was surely light-hearted. It seems to me that this thread illustrates just how knowledgeable and resourceful some mudcatters are, and is way ahead of many other so-called music threads, which get cluttered with puerile banter. It's very rarely that I can add anything to threads like this one, but I do read them.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 10:46 AM

Fionn: maybe you're right, but i took Joe Offer's terms "vicious" and "ferocity of response" as genuine complaints, which I thought were a bit over the top. But you may be right, maybe he was joking. This typing out stuff into the ether is fraught with misunderstandings, especially when talking across the pond. I know I wasnt vicious, anyway, and I'm pretty sure nobody else was either.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 01:05 PM

Joe, paddywhack is a slur on Asians. In the old rice paddy---. Nuttin' to do with us micks.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 01:34 PM

First there are today songs which were 'lifted' both in Britain, and the USA, which I know are not original, because I wrote and sang em. Later I find other folks taped and rewrote parts of them. So much for where and who wrote popular songs.

The moral here is that you should take the written accounts of the origins of any song/tune with a pinch of salt. 99% of the time it is misleading and nearly always false.

The word 'whack' in the war years meant Pal, Buddy, Bro, even Dude; it did NOT mean kill. And here I have to remind the reader of the long history some here have of misrepresenting or fiddling about with folksy legends about music on this site, and the further absurd situation where these scribes use whatever reputation the site has to further their fame as experts.

The expression 'Paddywhack' - is a nonsense, it was never intended to mean anything, eventhough some folks here strive to make it appear as if it did or does.

Find that hard to believe. Ok here is a slang word I heard in Dublin Ireland used by little kids when gigling about US and Canadian visitors 'Wankies'

'Wankie Doodle came to town in a B1 Bummer'
'Bummed me ma, he did the dah, bummed me in the corner'

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 02:51 PM

Whack in the war years was also part of bushwhacked, meaning ambushed, the term found from the 1860s.

Whack meaning hit them or slay them is 18th century, an old usage.

Whack was never applied to a pal or buddy in the American Army.

There is a thread on this somewhere in Mudcat.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: katlaughing
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 06:22 PM

Here 'tis, Q: clickety

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Joybell
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 06:42 PM

"Paddy" was a well known name for Irishman here in Australia. It wasn't usually used as a derogatory sense by the time I was a child - 1950s. We did have Paddywagon - for police van. My Mum used the phrase "Paddy whack the drumstick" but I never knew what she meant.
We used "Mick", "Taffy", "Jack" or "Cousin Jack", "Scotty", "Yankie" or "Septic" - (rhyming slang for Yank - from Septic tank)and several other nicknames in the same way. I was raised in a working-class suburb of Melbourne and these names were used in a more or less affectionate sense, as they had been (except for "septic") from the goldrush of the 1850s.
Australians have a way of using reverse humour as a complement too, which may complicate the whole issue of whether or not a knickname is heard as a racial slur. My American husband was often told "Geez, you're not much good with that guitar are ya Septic!" when we played in working class pubs - which meant that they thought he was great.
I think it's important to look at which group is actually suffering discrimination as well as just the words that are used. A good example here would be the nicknames used for Aboriginal Australians which can be highly offensive.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Gareth
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 07:09 PM

What Fionn really means is he could not find anything in this thread to hang his usual "Political Correctness" and "Anti British" polemics to.

Joke on this music theme

Completely politically uncorrect.

Picture the scene -

Paddy Black's pawn shop in Liverpool.

In comes a french sailor, trying to raise cash on a bit of scrimshaw.

"Hmm," says Mr Black, " I dont think there is much demand for this sort of thing."

Just then his wife comes into the shop, she notices the dejected matelot, and views the scrimshaw.

"Oooooh !, A nik-nak Paddy Black, give the frog a loan!

Gareth - running from the bad joke only !

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 07:22 PM

Paddywhack was used for a "brawny Irishman" in England, in a lexicon of words published in 1811. Paddy for an Irishman was used as early as 1780 in print, and is probably quite a bit older (OED).
Grose lists it in his Buckish Slang and cant Dictionary of 1780 and says it derives from Patrick.

In a twist, a white man is referred to as a paddy in American Black English (Chester Himes, 1946), and later in Saturday Review, 1966, "Man, how I hate the Paddies." (OED)

Paddywhack appeared in Australian-New Zealand print in 1898- "Ah gev yon beggar paddywhack fer his sauce and he'll nut fergit it in a hurry" (B. Kirkby, Lakeland Words). Also later examples given in the OED.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old
From: GUEST,guested
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 09:27 PM

"Whack was never applied to a pal or buddy in the American Army."

Doncha mean the US Calvalry or did you just read Clancy?

What a dufus

With a whack fal da diddle


and the rest

BTW This thread belongs in the Bullshit section.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 09:54 PM

I was in the army, my father in the cavalry- never heard the name applied to a buddy.
Only juveniles who collect whackbuddy icons.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 25 Oct 03 - 10:42 PM

At least as far back as the 1930's, a "paddywhack" was a slap to the derriere---a spanking.

There's a jig (don't know how old) called Paddy Whack.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 04:09 AM

In the Bodleian, Ballads Catalogue (Harding B28(210)), is a song called "The Irish Duel," c. 1820-1824, Liverpool.

The first verse:
Potatoes grow in Limerick, and beef at Ballymore,
And buttermilk is beautiful, but that you knew before;
And Irishmen love pretty girls, yet none could love more true,
Than little Paddy Whackmacrack, lov'd Kate O'Donohoo.
With his fal de lal, etc.

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old Man
From: Marje
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 09:52 AM

This is going to make me sound (and feel) very old, but I can vouch for the song (complete with "paddywhack" and "This old man came rolling home") being in existence before Seeger recorded it in 1953, because I was taught it by my Mum in Scotland before then. '53 was the year I started school, and I knew it well before that. I think my Mum had it from some years earlier, possibly in a book, as she had been an infant teacher (that's kindergarten to you USians) and I think it was one of the songs she had taught to her classes in the 1940s.

I also think the song may have been broadcast on the BBC's "Listen With Mother" in the early 50s. This programme was resposible for the standardisation of the versions of many of the nursery rhymes and songs that many of us still know. Come on, there must be others out there who remember this!

Subject: RE: Origins: Knick Knack Patt/ddy Whack -This Old
From: GUEST,guestedagain
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 11:26 AM

"In the Bodleian, Ballads Catalogue (Harding B28(210)), is a song called "The Irish Duel," c. 1820-1824, Liverpool.

The first verse:
Potatoes grow in Limerick, and beef at Ballymore,
And buttermilk is beautiful, but that you knew before;
And Irishmen love pretty girls, yet none could love more true,
Than little Paddy Whackmacrack, lov'd Kate O'Donohoo.
With his fal de lal, etc."

Now I know Q is not American and does not live in the USA

lol