Besides folk music, one of my interests is language. For a long time I have followed The Mavens' Word of the Day, a web site that belongs to Random House, a publisher of dictionaries, among other stuff. (The site used to be called "Jesse's Word of the Day" when it was edited by Jesse Sheidlower, and, IMHO, it was better then.) The writers of this column are supposedly on the editorial staff of the Random House dictionaries.

On March 13 one the Mavens attempted to explain the origin and meaning of Jimmy crack corn, and in passing, said "I can't find any evidence of 'corn' being used [to mean 'liquor'] independently of the phrases 'corn liquor' or 'corn juice.'"

Well, there was a challenge! I immediately searched DigiTrad for the word "corn" and found four examples, and e-mailed them to the Mavens, to wit:

TRUE BLUE BILL/ "And I beat up on my old man and drank his riot corn."

ROCKY TOP/ (Boudleaux Bryant and Felice Bryant, 1967) "Corn won't grow at all on Rocky Top/ Dirt's too rocky by far;/ That why all the folks on Rocky Top/ Get their corn from a jar."

THE MARTINS AND THE COYS / (Ted Werems and Al Cameron, 1936)/ "They went out to do some killin'/ Where the Martins was distillin',/ And they found old Abel Martin makin' corn."

HAND ME DOWN MY WALKIN' CANE/ "Hand me down my bottle of corn./ I won't be home till the early morn"/ (Or "Gonna get drunk as sure as you're born")

As you might guess, I was quite excited by the possibility that I was thus able to contribute to language scholarship, and I had dreams of having my name mentioned in the next edition of the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, or better yet, the Oxford English Dictionary.

But, as it turns out, my chickens were not ready to hatch. I went to a college library the next day to check the OED, and I found that the use of "corn" to mean "corn liquor" had already been well documented. Furthermore, Random House's own dictionary mentioned it too! So what's the matter with the Mavens? Don't they read their own dictionary?

They did, however, amend the archive copy of the March 13 column by adding a brief postscript to acknowledge my contribution, so I guess I've had my 15 minutes of fame. Unfortunately, they didn't mention DigiTrad or Mudcat, although I had cited them in my e-mail.

Still, I think DigiTrad may be a useful source of examples of unusual word usage. If any of you Mudcats are interested in this, I urge you to read the OED's Appeal for Readers as well as How to Contribute. Other publishers collect data from the public too, but none is so thorough and systematic about it as the OED.

I would also like to urge those who post songs to DigiTrad, to cite a published source whenever possible, especially a date. Even if a song is "traditional," even if its author is unknown, even if it is clearly in the public domain, it is still highly useful for researchers to be able to trace the song back to its earliest publication in print.