Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'

Subject: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Kudzuman
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 03:00 PM

Anyone know the meaning of this word? Bugger-boo as in Sandy Boys:

Do get along, sandy boys
Do get along, do
Do get along, sandy boys
Away from the bugger-boo

Is this like to bogey man or something entirely different. Thanks in advance Catters.

Kudzuman

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Allan C.
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 03:02 PM

According to Webster...

Etymology: origin unknown
1 : an imaginary object of fear
2 : BUGBEAR 2; also : something that causes fear or distress out of proportion to its importance

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Allan C.
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 03:03 PM

Oh, and they spell it, bugaboo.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 03:05 PM

Allan beat me to it - but I found:

Bugaboo:
1. An object of obsessive, usually exaggerated fear or anxiety

2. A recurring or persistent problem

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: fretless
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 04:10 PM

Recorded, also, by Tommy Thompson on the first Red Clay Ramblers album. And he spelled it Buggerboo.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: fretless
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 04:15 PM

Or maybe Boogerboo (the Web listings aren't consistent and I don't have the album here at work). It's Folkways 31039 (1974) in any case.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Fay
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 04:18 PM

Damien Barber informed me recently that 'The Foggy Dew' is a variant of Boggy boo also. I scoffed at first, but It makes sense if you re listen to the song.

fay

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: sian, west wales
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 05:13 PM

You might also refer to the Welsh (and other Celtic) words for an impish spirit - bwgan. Bwgan brain is scare crow in Welsh. It's from whence commeth Shakespeare's Puck, as well as 'bug' as in Millenium Bug, and I think Pucca (or was it Pukka - wasn't that what Harvey the Big Rabbit was?)

sian

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Allan C.
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 05:23 PM

...not to be confused with the Hawaiian word for hole, puka, made famous by the One Puka Puka.




I shall not be out-digressed!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 06:12 PM

Check out the Foggy Dew variant in digiTrad called The Bogle Bo (or Bugaboo.) Makes more sense than most versions of this classic song.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Gareth
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 07:10 PM

sian, west wales - I have scarecrow as "bwbach y brain" = (lit) little boy without a brain against the Crows (Brwn)

Alt depending on if you is North or Swelsh -

"hudwg"= ghost, or 'bogyman'

Just a thought !

Gareth

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Kudzuman
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 07:40 PM

Thanks! You guys are all great. Thanks again for the info!!

Kudzuman

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Stewie
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 07:40 PM

See also the extensive note by Gershon Legman at pp 262-263 of 'Roll Me In Your Arms', the first volume of Vance Randolph's 'Unprintable Ozark Folksongs and Folklore'. Legman comments: 'Not being able to understand what the "Foggy Dew" may mean, since it means nothing and is merely a mishearing or mispronunciation of the original "Bugaboo", meaning ghost, numerous writers and popular anthologists have exerted themselves up to the limits of absurdity to imagine meanings for it'.

Legman also notes that the song in the DT referred to by Dick above [John Bell's manuscript - '"The Bogle Bo" meaning ghost or hobgoblin'] was recovered in Northumbria about 1815. It was found by 'Frank Rutherford, the leading student of that region's folksong, and was first printed in A.L. Lloyd's "Folk Song in England"'. He continues: '... the late 18th or early 19th century "The Bogle Bo" [is] the oldest text. Note, however, Shakespeare's bawdy punning, in Falstaff's farewell to Doll Tearsheet (King Henry IV, Part II, act II.iv, 412, Quarto text only: 1598), "Keep close thy bogle-boe"'.

It is interesting that in his 'The Horn Book', which I think predates Lloyd's 'Folk Song in England', Legman refers to 'The Bugaboo' as meaning demon or devil. Like Lloyd, Legman rails against Robert Graves for his absurd theories on the subject, but also castigates James Reeves:

Mr Reeves ... hacks together conflated and conglomerated texts from the Sharp MSS - meticulously preserving the original punctuation however - and informs the astonished folklore world that when Sharp records that the three milkmaids 'waiv-ed their milkpails to and fro', this is a hidden reference to semen. Or spends thirteen pages discussing 'the dew' in the title of 'The Foggy, Foggy Dew' without appearing to be aware that the title is simply a corruption of 'The Bugaboo', meaning demon or devil; thus leaving the fog just as thick as ever. This is perhaps analysis, but it is not the kind of analysis that is wanted now. Actually, it is nearer to the old witchcraft idea that sexual folklore is somehow 'mysteriously' obscene. To paraphrase Mark Twain on the 'Sweet Singer of Michigan': Sigmund Freud, if he could read it, would be glad he was dead. [Gershon Legman 'The Horn Book' pp 258-259 Jonathan Cape, London, 1970 - copyright Legman 1964].

In his note in 'Roll Me In Your Arms', Legman credits Lloyd with discovering 'the real meaning of the title and the true original of the song'. Later in his note, he comments: 'After all, as the great George Lyman Kittredge, the greatest ever of all annotators of folksong, admonished the shocked and astonished Professor Arthur P. Hudson: The text is the thing. And the tune too'.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 09:40 PM

Legman is, as usual, part of the way there, but inaccurate. For a more considered analysis of The Foggy Dew and its antecedents, see Robert S Thomson, 'The Frightful Foggy Dew', in The Folk Music Journal (EFDSS, London, vol. 4 no. 1, 1980, 35-61).

The earliest known form of the song is The Fright'ned Yorkshire Damosel, Or, Fear Dispears'd by
Pleasure); this is in the DT, posted by Bruce Olson:

Fright'ned Yorkshire Damosel

It was printed in 1689. The term itself is much older. Although cognates appear in the Celtic languages, English forms such as "bogle" do not derive from them (though forms such as "puck" perhaps may); so far as can be told, the element bo or bog (which also occurs in Slavic languages, among others) is pre-Indo-European. My one-time English language tutor, John Widdowson (founder of NATCECT) made a particular study of the root word (Thomson quotes him on the subject); it belongs particularly in constructions relating to scatology ("bog" as in "toilet", for instance; although "bugger" is usually considered to derive from "bulgar", an analogy is not unlikely) to deity ("bog" being the slavic word for "god") and to fear ("bo!" as a word typically used to shock). That combination suggests considerable antiquity, insofar as conclusions of the sort can ever be made of language.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Stewie
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 11:14 PM

Malcolm, many thanks for that info. Legman cited an article in a 1958 journal of the EFDSS, but curiously seemed unaware of the article you cite. Clearly, he was wrong in referring to the Bell MSS as the oldest text, but his main point stands - and, it seems, closer to his earlier stipulated meaning of 'devil' rather than 'ghost' in light of the text posted by Bruce.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 19 Feb 04 - 11:37 PM

Legman was writing ten years or more before the paper I mentioned was published, so can't really be blamed for not knowing about it! The piece in JEFDSS 1958 (vol. VIII pp 152-153) was a set recorded by Peter Kennedy from Harry Cox (Norfolk); Bert Lloyd and Patrick Shuldham-Shaw added comments which both appear to be wrong in the light of later scholarship, though Lloyd was, it seems, the less mistaken of the two; neither was aware of the 17th century broadside.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Stewie
Date: 20 Feb 04 - 12:37 AM

Malcolm, Legman's edition of 'Roll Me In Your Arms' was published in 1992 and therefore he should have been aware of the article. His introduction cites several post-1980 publications, including Norm Cohen's abridged 'Ozark Folksongs'.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Metchosin
Date: 20 Feb 04 - 01:35 AM

In British Columbia there is a mountain range called the Bugaboos which apparently got it's name, when one of the first climbers in 1910, complained during the ascent that it "was a veritable bugaboo" from a "mining term used by prospectors to describe a dead-end lead".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Meaning of 'bugger-boo'
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 20 Feb 04 - 02:12 AM

Sorry, Stewie; I misunderstood your reference and thought you were referring to The Horn Book. I haven't seen Roll Me in Your Arms, and must correct that lack at the earliest opportunity. Legman should certainly have known of Thomson's paper, but I get the impression that he (Legman) tended to jump to conclusions a little too readily. His comments on The Ball of Kirriemuir come to mind in that connection.