This is all from a Cowboy Poetry site that is inhabited by Baxter Black.

Barbara asks:

When we were in Missoula, Montana last month, we had dinner with a couple who lived there. We got to talking about songs about Montana and I sang "I Ride an Ol' Paint" for them. I had learned that song forty years ago in grade school. I seem to remember that the teacher explained what "the fiery and the snuffy" meant, but that explanation didn't sit well with our new Montana friends. I searched all over the internet for a site that might tell me, but the only one I found with footnotes said only that snuffy meant "snuff colored, or reddish-brown." Can you tell me who is right? Our friend from Montana said that fiery and snuffy referred to two different colored dogies and I think I remember my teacher telling me that it referred to the names of two locomotives waiting to take the cattle to market after the roundup. Thanks.


We told Barbara:

In the Songs of the Wild West, with commentary by Alan Axelrod, fron the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1991, the author says "...fiery (another term for paint) and the snuffy (a buff- or snuff-colored horse)..."

A pard weighed in:

Regarding the meaning of "the fiery & snuffy" have always meant (to me) that the ones prone to spooking & snorting (the fiery & the snuff-y) are just LOOKING for an excuse to stampede. Seems
perfectly obvious! And therefore, you would want to "ride around them SLOW."

Hope this helps


Don