The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #15700 Message #2837476
Posted By: MGM·Lion
12-Feb-10 - 04:26 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Big Bow Wow
Subject: RE: Origins: Big Bow Wow
Have you a source for that 'childhood song', Q? Or a date?
You might not find phrase in 19C, but it's there in C18 in The Fiddlers' Companion ref to an Aird collection of 1782 including a tune called The Big Bow Wow: most fascinating - a tune which went, it appears, under other names, but including that one. Is that a collection Scott would have known? He was a ballad man, but was he a musician - would collections like Aird's have been known to him? Still, certainly suggests the phrase was 'in the air' in 1782 and before.
If it had been a commonplace folk=music phrase/title for so long, then Scott & the Boston/Yarmouth Harbour seamen might independently have cited/used it. & no need for all these Bow Wow Wows which have been obscuring the issue.
It doesn't however appear to have been widespread - tho the Captain Bob song is a delightful further example, if one could but establish some date/provenance for it. & whence can you cite it, Q, as 'expression for big winner or top dog'?
Steve - do you agree with any/all of this?