Fakelore

Subject: Fakelore
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 11:25 AM

Over the years, I've noticed that explanations of where odd phrases originated are more products of a lively imagination than of historic or etymological research (brass monkey, posh, Jimmie Crack Corn etc.)
    As with most bits of creativity, it's probably worth collecting these.

I submit one, as solicit others.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported
by ship. It was also before commercial fertilizer's invention, so large shipments of manure were common. It was shipped dry, because
in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, of which a by-product is methane gas.
As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what
could (and did) happen. Methane began to build up below decks and the
first time someone came below at night with a lantern, BOOOOM!

Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was determined just what was happening. After that, the bundles of manure were
always stamped with the term "Ship High In Transit" on them which meant for the sailors to stow it high enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane. Thus evolved the term "S.H.I.T," which has come down through the centuries and is in use to this very day.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Pied Piper
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 11:56 AM

That's a good one, bollox but good.
As believable as many I've read here before.
All the best PP

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 12:25 PM

Untrue things widely believed might be considered "fakelore," such as the folk etymology you post; I'd add three:

-The acronym for "Fornication Under Consent of the King" does not provide our earthy word for the conjugal act. The word's recorded long before that that modern English phrase would've made sense;

-Posh did not stand for "Port Out, Starboard Home;"

-"Tip" did not come from a basket labelled "to insure promptness"

But to qualify as folklore rather than mere errors, I'd think the beliefs have to be factoids that are useful in supporting some worldview:

-"Ring Around the Rosey" has nothing to do with the Black Death (though I recognize there's a number of long threads on the subject, and mine is a partisan position); this is useful for suggesting that children are wiser, more aware and resilient than we give them credit for, or that their games have a deeper historical memory than we might credit (which things I believe to be true; I reject the equation of "myth" and "folklore" with "falsehood");

-There never was any such thing as a "droit du seigneur" or "ius primae noctis"; there may be a hint of such a thing in Gilgamesh (5000 years old); the democratic myth was fostered by Voltaire and Mark Twain;

-Einstein did not flunk math, but the story reminds us that institutions do not always deal well with the gifted.

Richard Dorson, who coined the term "fakelore," meant something a little different, and I don't mention this to be picky or pedantic, but it might make a worthwhile subject of conversation in itself. Fakelore occurs when anonymous mass-culture enterprises co-opt folk materials and sell them back to people, or invent "traditions" out of whole cloth (Paul Bunyan). Some country music surely fits this, though we'd want to be careful to acknowledge that living traditions are dynamic, and should be expected to exhibit growth, change and adaptation. And sometimes, commercially-generated stuff can enter the folk, and begin to be transmitted and adapted outside of these commercial and institutional contexts (Montgomery Ward's "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer" for example).

Best,

Adam

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Sorcha
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 12:52 PM

There is the one about railroad gauges/road width being related to Roman chariot wheels.........

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Genie
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 12:58 PM

Dick, FWIW, I'd be inclined do discredit the etymology of "shit" that you mentioned above, anyway, if for no other reason that the English word is so close to the German "scheit." The story doesn't seem to fit the German, and when there's such similarity between German and English words, the German usually came first.

Another persistent bit of historical mythology is that George Washington had wooden teeth.

Genie

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 01:28 PM

False teeth o.k. maybe not wooden, but early false teeth anyway!

I searched "Snopes" first with no joy!

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Kim C
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 01:42 PM

S*** and f*** both go back a VERY long way.

The German word is Scheisse. ;)

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 02:01 PM

And the Norwegian is pronounced the same as English but spelled "skitt".

Linn

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Strupag
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 02:18 PM

Now that reminds me!

I heard that the word kaki which describes a type of soldiers clothing material came from gaelic speaking soldier's description of the colour of the material.
The gaelic word for shit is "Cac" pronounced Kak.
Incidently, in Scotland, we almost always add an "e" making it shite.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: MMario
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 02:27 PM

Khaki-Etymology: Hindi khAkI dust-colored, from khAk dust, from Persian;
Date: 1857

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 02:54 PM

Gaelic cac does seem to have entered English, though in another context, as cack or kack; still meaning "shit"; as in the common expression "cack-handed": clumsy; left- or shit-handed.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 03:06 PM

We are still speculating about "Jim (Jimmie) Crack Corn. In recent threads or additions thereto:
1. Gimmie crack corn- give me the corn likker. Or Jim crack corn- drinking the ambrosial essence of corn.
2, Jim crack corn- the common procedure on farms of cracking corn kernels for chickens and other livestock; or the product of corn shellers, commonly used for preparing corn in the old days.
3. Jim crack corn- gossiping, telling jokes.
4. Jim crack corn- loafing or otherwise fiddling around.
5. Jim crack corn- a minstrel or Negro dance step.
6. Just a nonsensical introduction to a humorous song.

O, which side(s) are you on?

Then the speculations about the origin of Dixie, in "Dixie's Land." Also discussed at great length in threads here.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 03:29 PM

Malcolm is the Spanish word for shit. Widespread as "caca" in the southwestern U.S. Naturally, the word cacafuego (literally spitfire) means a braggart.
The OED quotes "cack" as a verb in English, to shit, from the 1400s. Often spelled cake. It attributes its origin to old German.
Interesting how German-English, Gaelic, and Spanish come together on this. Does anyone know the Latin vulgar word for it?

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 06:56 PM

Out of curiousity, would Margaret Mead's "research" into Samoan culture now be considered fakelore?

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 07:16 PM

Then there's the one about the origin of "freeze the balls off a brass monkey" that supposedly refers to iron cannon balls and the brass holder that they were stacked in on deck of the old sailing ships.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 07:25 PM

Malcolm, I left out a word- just noticed on going back to the thread. My prostrate apologies for the gaffe. Sentence should have read- Malcolm, "Caca" is the Spanish word for shit.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Peter T.
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 07:31 PM

Pete Seeger chopping Dylan's electric cable with an ax. (Though there are admittedly 30 different versions of the story).
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Sorcha
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 07:33 PM

That would have been just too good, Peter. Too bad it didn't happen.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From:
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 07:48 PM

Cluin. That one is true.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 07:50 PM

Aw, c'mon George... you can do better than that.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 07:57 PM

Myth: The word "crap" derives from the name of Thomas Crapper, the London plumber who invented the flush toilet.

Truth: See http://www.snopes.com/business/names/crapper.htm.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 08:05 PM

Well, let's go back to Snopes.com again...

The Brass Monkey thingy

I knew it! It just sounded made-up to me. You can't bullshit a bullshitter.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 08:11 PM

You gave me pause for thought for a moment there, Q, but I'm glad to know that you meant what I guessed you meant! I was also guessing about a Gaelic loan into English for cack, having only quite small dictionaries to hand at home; I ought to have remembered the Middle English. I believe that Latin caco would be the immediate source of the Spanish word; but Sanscrit also has something like caka, so probably most western language groups have forms of the word more-or-less independently from a notional "Indo-European" root.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 08:24 PM

The word billy for a pot came from Billy's Tea. Not true, billy was used for a pot many years before. Discussed in a thread on tea recently.
My grandma's from the dark ages of my childhood- Cold water will close your pores. Sulfur and molasses is a springtime tonic. Night air is poisonous. You can identify an Italian by the smell of garlic.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Abby Sale
Date: 03 Feb 03 - 11:00 PM

Margaret Mead's "research" into Samoan culture now be considered fakelore?

According to my anthropology classes in the early 60's this was an example of a deliberate scientific fraud. There are many reasons for such...money, prestige, religious charlitanery, etc, but her reason seems to have been purely the furtherance of her personal socio-political notions. Also to further the myth (fakescience) of psychocultural science.

She had a reputation for un-niceness in a number of ways.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 06:53 AM

The origins of fok music and morris dance in general. We all know they were invented by white middle class professionals in the 1960's to give us some form of identity;-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,John Hernandez
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 12:16 PM

Two years ago when I met Pete Seeger in Hartford, Connecticut, I asked him directly about the about the incident with Dylan at Newport in 1965. Pete answered that all he was trying to do was get the person at the sound control board to turn down the volume of the instruments because they were so loud you couldn't hear the words.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 03:02 PM

Henry VIII wrote Greensleeves. This myth brought up again today. See threads 3324, 6015. 31121

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 03:10 PM

But didn't he write "Pasttime with Good Company"?

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Hester
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 04:57 PM

>>>Margaret Mead's "research" into Samoan culture now be considered fakelore?<<<

>>>According to my anthropology classes in the early 60's this was an example of a deliberate scientific fraud. There are many reasons for such...money, prestige, religious charlitanery, etc, but her reason seems to have been purely the furtherance of her personal socio-political notions. Also to further the myth (fakescience) of psychocultural science. She had a reputation for un-niceness in a number of ways. <<<

Hi, Abby:

In my Anthropology classes in the 80s and 90s, the faults of Mead's work were put in a different context: her relative naivity (she was only 24 when she went to Samoa); her eagerness to please her mentors, Boaz & Benedict; her informants' eagerness to please her; and her sincere wish to both dispel pejorative notions of "the primitive" and to provide a useful framework for understanding Western intergenerational strife.

Indeed, most of the "un-niceness" in the controversy was attributed by my [male] professors to her critic Derek Freeman, who waited 'til the old girl was dead before attacking her work.

For the most part, Mead's work was seen by my professors are no worse than that of most other scholars in her field at that time. Anthropology was still a very young discipline then, and the methodologies and analytical criteria were yet to be rigorously tested and questioned.

Cheers, Hester

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Hester
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 05:05 PM

Here's an article that suggests Freeman's continuing critique of Margaret Mead is not well-founded:

Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman, and the issue of evolution.

Cheers, Hester

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Kim C
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 05:14 PM

For years, we had all heard the story of the Newlywed Game.

Bob: Where's the strangest place you've ever made whoopee?

Guest (answers vary depending on who tells the story): In the butt.

And for years, we were told this wasn't so, it was just a rumor, an urban myth. Bob Eubanks said so himself.

Last year, one of the networks ran a special on great TV bloopers. Ben Stein and Bob Eubanks were two of the hosts. During the entire program, Ben goaded Bob about this mythological episode, saying "we're gonna show it we're gonna show it" and Bob kept saying, "no way, it never happened."

Well.

The last clip was from the Newlywed Show. And sure enough... Bob asked, where's the strangest place you ever made whoopee? And one woman looked at him quizzically and said, "I dunno... in the ass, I guess." (of course they bleeped out "ass")

So there it was. It really happened.

Bob said in all those years, he must have just forgotten...

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Peter T.
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 05:23 PM

As I say, there are many variants of the Dylan story, including the one from the horse's mouth.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Fakelore: Giving the Finger
From: Hester
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 05:24 PM

As a Robin Hood enthusiast with a background in Linguistics, one of my favourite spurious folk etymologies is this hilariously clever one:

Giving the Finger

"Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be
impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore a soldier would be incapable of fighting in the future. This
famous weapon was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew" (or "pluck
yew"). Much to the bewilderment of the French, the
English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle finger at the defeated French, saying, "See, we can still
pluck yew! "PLUCK YEW!" Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'F', and thus the words often used
in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought
to have something to do with an intimate encounter. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird".

Cheers, Hester
P.S. My archer friends tell me that one glaring error in the account is that English longbows were generally made of Spanish yew, not English yew, as the native variety had too many knots to make it suitable. And, as a linguist, I would point out that native English speakers have absolutely no difficulty pronouncing the consonant cluster "pl".

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 05:35 PM

Naive anthropologists have been taken in by their informants in several cases. The person being interviewed may have been trying to please, to mislead and cover up, or made up a good yarn for the hell of it. "Unlettered savages" told stories for the entertainment of their fellows and some were pretty good at it.

How many old folk singers lied when they told the song collector that they got a song from their grand mammy who got it from her grand, etc.? Unless there is verification from other sources, their story is just just that.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: greg stephens
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 05:35 PM

The problem with that is that the English gesture involves two fingers, not one.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 06:11 PM

Two fingers? I'll drink to that.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Gareth
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 07:11 PM

Errrr !!! - Obviously some of yew are still affected with "Fakelore"

Agincourt ? Cressy ? Poitiers ?

??? English Archers ???? English Yew ????

Us South Welsh have some national standards - And that included fighting for whoever promised the best pay, and opportunity for loot, and, ahem, other fringe benefits - we did not waste our efforts on burning, unlike the Vikings.

Litle known fact - Glendwr and his occupying army was driven out of South Wales, Morganw and Sengenydd, by the South Wales Archers.

Gareth - Who has all his fingers !!!!!!!!!!!!

PS Please excuse the linguistic pun.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 09:21 PM

The early 20th century folksong collectors sometimes got caught out, too. Many of them thought it only fair to pay their sources for their time and trouble; but not all of them had the social skills needed to make friends of the old buggers at the same time. Cecil Sharp was good at it, and, though he rarely had any spare money, would send little presents of tobacco and sometimes copies of a book in which an informant's song had been published; that sort of thing. He was remembered with affection by many of his sources long after his death, and nobody took the piss out of him.

I think it was Dr George Gardiner, though, who paid on a "per song" basis; and realised, after a while, that some of the old fellows were making stuff up when they ran out of genuine songs. He was quite upset by that; but many of them were dirt poor (and living in workhouses, which weren't abolished till a bit later) and you can't blame them for being a bit inventive in the circumstances.

It still happens, though nowadays the misinformation tends to be spread either by people whose memories aren't too good ("my old sainted mother, god bless her, used to sing that one to me when I was a wee child back in the old country"; of a song written ten years or so ago) or by performers who have got used to being looked up to and tell lies in order to bolster their importance ("my old sainted mother, god bless her, used to sing that one to me when I was a wee child back in the old country"; I can think of one glaring example discussed here a few times, though I've promised to leave that one alone until the person in question is dead, as apparently he takes badly to being challenged) or by performers who will say anything that pops into their wee heads in order to make their act more entertaining (the Fureys, for example, will trot out any old nonsense if they think it will go down well; which would be fine except that people actually believe them).

Regrettably, people will tell lies, and some will think themselves clever when others, who have no particular reason to disbelieve them, accept the lie as truth. Folklore studies are full of examples of that. The trouble is that the lie is often more interesting and romantic than the truth (jacobite songs, for one) and few people enjoy having their romantic illusions shattered.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,fox4zero
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 12:01 AM

Hester

That is the funniest thing I have read in ages! Talk about LOL!

Larry

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 03:40 AM

The Latin word is cacare, to defecate. See "World Wide Words" for more details, and for any other etymological conundrums that may be bothering you.

For what it's worth, words were very seldom coined from acronyms before the 20th century.

Steve
P.S. Sorry about all the big words: I'm having one of my sesquipedalian days.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: hacksawbob
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 08:14 AM

Always known Kahki to be imported via the British army in India from a local dialect (not sure which one.)
Shit'ucks or shite'ucks is a curse that my dad, a British army man, frequently used. It is apparantly a bizare rhyming slang twist on Kite Hawks, a bird of prey found in the Far East. These were apparantly not liked for their stealing of food.
Having lived in Hong Kong for some time I have not once known one of these fish-hunting birds of prey to come within half a mile of me, let alone steal food like a seagull might. What is more strange is that my dad found it far more acceptable to say Shitocks in front of his kids rather than the inoffensive Kite Hawks. Another one he has taken to of late is "Fester me Doglets!"
BTW Don't let the truth spoil a good story.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Nerd
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 11:57 AM

I remember a story about Peggy Seeger hearing someone in Ireland humming "The Shoals of Herring" (which Ewan MacColl wrote. When she asked about it she was told it was a very old Irish air called "The Shores of Erin." I don't know if this is true, but it's just the sort of thing Malcolm is talking about. I've also noticed that the Fureys in the 1960s and 70s tended to view everything through the lens of the Irish/English conflict, proposing some pretty ridiculous origins for their songs. Haven't seen them in ages, nor have I read any sleeve notes of theirs...

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Schantieman
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 12:08 PM

Looks like we're drifting into the mondegreen thread!

Steve

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Hester
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 02:44 PM

Greg wrote, re: the "pluck yew" gag:

>>>The problem with that is that the English gesture involves two fingers, not one. <<<

Not to mention that you need both those fingers to draw the bowstring, not just the middle one.

Cheers, Hester

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 03:15 PM

Just realizd that the American "two fingers" may not be known in England. Two fingers means a shot of whiskey (about 1 1/2 ounces).

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Strupag
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 06:39 PM

I was citing Cac/ Kaki as an example of Fakelore.
Anyone I was really dissapointed to learn the truth of Thomas Crapper.
Now where's these carrots? It's dark here tonight!

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 03:22 AM

Re: crap[per]. if it's any consolation ... "crap" is Old English (Anglo-Saxon) for "chaff", which is the stuff you throw away after separating grain from cereals; by extension, it can mean any form of rubbish/garbage. I think "Crapper" came to be synonymous with "lavatory" ["bathroom", if you're sensitive!] because Mr C's name was blazoned on the cisterns that he made; the same way we can say "the hoover", "the frigidaire", "the ford". Not sure if that's metonymy ... but, anyway, "crap" "is what you do in" or "what goes in" the crapper; and the "rubbish" sense of "crap" had already grown to include the "shit" sense.

Looks like another S-day!

Steve

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 12:08 PM

There are still toilets made by the Crappers in use to this day, though they're getting rather old.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 01:24 PM

Crap: from old Dutch krap. Madder, especially the commercial product obtained by grinding the inner part of the root. =French crappe, dating from 1513. English use in print from 1721, discussing crap madder production from 1676 to 1679.
Crap: thieves cant for the gallows Vaux, Flash Dictionary, 1812. Hence, to hang.
Crap: Scottish for crop.
Crap, obsolete Scottish, to creep.
Crap, to defecate, from 1898 in print, English origin.
Crap: rubbish, first in print in 1898, Wright in English Dialect Dictionary.
Craps, crap: a "table game," 1885. (Dice gambling to most of us).
Crap: carnival talk for a cheap prize. Origin unknown.

So, Steve Parkes, are you also guilty of perpetuating Fakelore?
Maybe not. Where did you find the use of crap for chaff? Chaff from Old English ceof, from old German kaf. Caff (chaff) used for rubbish 1400 or before in England.
Chaff: light, jesting talk, from about 1800.
Chaffer: merchandise, cheap goods. English usage from 1225 in print. Now could other words have developed from this?

Neither the OED or Webster's has crap defined as rubbish before 1846, and that is only in the American Webster's.
But-
Crappy, rubbishy: from Swell's Night Guide, 1846. "Which of us had hold of the crappy end of the stick?" This is American usage, but where did it come from? Not likely from madder, and predates the crapper.
These definitions (chaffer, crappy) suggest a line of usage not yet recognized by the word sleuths. The old Scottish word crap for crop suggests another possibility. Would a "bad crap" develop into a word for rubbish?

OK, boring to most people, but I like word history.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Kim C
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 01:37 PM

If it's not Scottish it's CRRAAAAAAAAAAP!

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 01:48 PM

Sheesh!
If it's not Irish, it isn't a folksong!

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 02:30 PM

I very much doubt a Scottish connection in this case. Relating to the "crappy end of the stick", there's a common British expression, to get (or pick up) "the shitty end of the stick". I wouldn't know if there's any direct relation with the American phrase, but it would be a possibility.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Frankham
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 05:34 PM

Folklore vrs Fakelore,

It's really hard to separate folklore from fakelore. Much of what goes for folk scholarship is speculative because there really are no original tunes or ideas. Much of the creativity of songwriters comes from sources they encounter. The courts could conceivably be filled with copyright suits if the key term "access" were invoked.

It's easy to take a song and change it. There seems to be an emphasis on the importance of originality of "intellectual properties" these days.

The collector of folk music assumes the mantle of authority. Things keep coming up. Lomax collects "Home on the Range" in a bar from a black informant. It turns up earlier in a newspaper poem as "A Home, A Home". Who knows where the poet got it?

History is replete with misinformation that is taught in the public school system. Why not folklore? The interesting part of this for me is that the songs contain lyrics that have an emotional and accessible appeal. Some of the references may be questionable as fact but who cares what interpretation you give it as long as it communicates the essential important ingredients that give an insight into the lives of the people who sang them? Doing "Waltzing Matilda" as a waltz might be over the top but Jimmy Gimme Crack(ed) Corn (liquor?) doesn't mean that the song's intent isn't clear. The informants who sing the songs from the collector might make up all kinds of stuff or not.

Where I'm going with this is that lets not lose the beauty of a song by quibbling over minutae. And allow for meanings to change in a song or folktale in adaptation to different times and places. That doesn't mean that you have to waltz to "Matilda".

Frank

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 09:30 PM

Fakelore usually passes into folklore.

If it sounds plausible, or even interesting, people will pass it on as fact. Then the source really doesn't matter anymore.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 12:15 AM

Fakelore, for the most part, is a branch of folklore. I recall when, in 1953, I was in Kentucky with Margo Mayo. She was tracking down a song which capped a classic story:

There was an orphaned boy named Mart Hayes who was raised by relatives who he detested. He vowed to kill his foster father whan he grew up. At age 19 he made good on that vow, and (after some incidental adventures) was arrested and put into the county workhouse. He flatly refused to work, and was beaten for his attitude. Finally, the jailers put him in a pit with a pump, and flooded the pit--pump or drown!

Mart, stuborn to the end, drowned. The night before, he was reputed to have written a song titled "Farewell to Sweet Beaver (Creek)", which became a traditional song in the area. And that song was what Margo was trying to find.

I won't even try to count the number of honest folk who not only knew the ballad of Barbry Allen, but who knew the lady personally. Which only goes to show that there can be a huge difference between folk truth and historical truth.

Well, in a rural hamlet called Salt Lick, we located an elderly man named Pearl Coburn, who knew it and sang it into our tape recorder.
Satisfactory end of story.

Except..several months later I found the same song (with a couple of place names changed) in a Lomax book published several decades before the incident had occurred.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Gareth
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 02:53 AM

Mmmm ! Carrotts, and seeing in the dark.

A bit of fakelore - with good intent.

Actually this started/was enhanced in WWII as a "cover story" to camuflage the developement of airborn "RADAR" or RDF as it was known then, equiping the nightfighter squadrons of the RAF.

Succesful Pilots such as Cunningham and Braham publically atributed thier sucess to a High Carrot diet. There was a dergree of plausability in this, tho I suspect the only people taken in were the British public.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 03:22 AM

Well, Beta-carotene is essential for good eyesight!

Or it it? Q: I seem to recall looking up "crap" in the OED (the full 30-ish volume job) maybe ten or so years ago. On the other hand, I'm a dab hand at DIY false memories, and may have conflated it with some other word(s). But, hey, trust me--I'm a Folk Singer!

Steve

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 03:52 AM

Carrots are reaaly essential for good eyesight. Or have you ever seen a rabbit with spectacles?

to cack: German equivalent is kacken, still in use today.

Wilfried

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Schantieman
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 04:02 AM

Carrots contain lots of beta carotene which is metabolised into retinol, essential for vision in dim light & therfore useful for fighter pilots. However, (a) it's a vitamin (A) which is not usually in short supply (b) even if you do take in less than you need you've probably got several months' worth stored in your liver and (c) RAF fighter pilots were amongst the best-fed individuals in the country during WWII and so would NOT have been short of a lot!

Getting hold of the wrong end of the stick derives from ancient Rome. In the netty (latrine) they used to use sticks with one end wrapped with cloth to erm, clean themselves after erm, defaecating. Clearly there was a right and wrong end of the stick to hold!

Steve

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 04:41 AM

The shitty end? We used a long stout stick in the kybo at camp to knock the pile over when it gets too high. Then sprinkle some lye on it. And sing (to the tune of "Downtown"):

When you are sleepy and it's time to go peepee
There's a place to go ... Ky-bo!
When you are droopy and it's time to go poopie
There's a place to go ... Ky-bo!

Listen to the rhythm of the froggies in the toilet
Even though it's smelly I am sure you will enjoy it
The lights are not
On in there, but forget all your worries
Forget all your cares in the...

Ky-bo!
Isn't it fun to go?...
Ky-bo!
Tell everyone you know...
Ky-bo!
Relax and just let it flow...
Ky-bo!

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 08:30 AM

Talking of sticks ... the expression "carrot and stick" these days means the use of both an incentive (the carrot) and a disincentive (the stick) to persuade people with; but the original term referred to tying a carrot to a stick so it could be dangled in front of a horse/donkey/mule to get them to move while trying to catch it: no disincentive involved.

Steve

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: HuwG
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 08:58 AM

Schantieman, quite correct regarding Vitamin A. Its association with fighter-pilots may derive from some disinformation put out by the RAF in late 1940, as night-fighter pilots at last started shooting down German raiders.

Partly, this was due to their being equipped with fighters which catch up with German bombers (i.e. the Beaufighter. Its predecessors in service, the Defiant and the Blenheim, were sluggards). Mainly however, this was due to the installation of Airborne Intercept (AI) radar in the fighters. This was a major breakthrough, and to throw the Germans off the scent and prevent them developing countermeasures, the RAF announced that their night-fighter pilots were all guzzling carrot juice. They made much play with one ace, "Cats-eyes Cunningham".

In fact, unless the night was unusually clear or the Germans had been careless with their preparations and maintenance and were showing exhaust flares or cabin lights, night fighter pilots simply pointed themselves at the "blip" on the radar oscilloscope display and fired when the Radio Intercept Operator said "200, 100, oh sh*t ...".




I may be wrong, but swallowing concentrated carrot juice by the sinkful is very harmful. Vitamin A is poisonous in large quantities, and either it or some other constituent of carrots is carcinogenic over long periods of time.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 10:50 AM

I think it was in the early '70s that a story appeared in the Croydon Advertiser about a local man who had gone overboard with the carrot juice; he consumed enormous quantities over a longish period of time, and eventually went a bright orange colour. Ultimately, it killed him.

Of course, like many newspapers, the Advertiser was occasionally caught out by urban myths.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Gareth
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 02:18 PM

I've dug up the BBC tribute to Group Captain Cunningham who sadley past away last year - It expands on the "Carrot" misinformation and how it entered folklaw - Click 'Ere . Cunningham was a childhood hero of mine.

I've also dug up some basic information on the Bristol Beaufighter which might be of interest to 'Catters Click 'Ere

Gareth

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 02:42 PM

An organist relative was telling me about the first organ, the first keyboard instrument, used in entertainments by the ancient Romans. I thought he was having me on until he referred me to a web site demonstrating the hydraulis, invented by an Alexandrine, Ctesibus, in the 3rd century BC, and that became popular in the major amphitheaters. This rather upset my idea that the musical instruments of the Romans were on the primitive side.
The video and audio is here: Hydraulis

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Schantieman
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 02:56 PM

Vitamin A is certainly toxic in large quantities....

With regards to carrots, yes you can eat so many of them that your skin will turn yellow. One carrot (7 1/2" long) has 2025 RE of vitamin A, which is 203% of your Daily Value. One pound of carrots has 1276% of your RDA for vitamin A. So since you have eaten more than 3 carrots in a day (> 34,000 IU), you have probably saturated your body's ability to store vitamin A over a short time and so it is showing up as an orange tint on your skin. I would suggest you decrease your carrot consumption and increase other low vitamin A vegetables.

This from href="http://www.dietitian.com/vitamina.html"here

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Schantieman
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 03:00 PM

Oh bugger.

Why can't I ever get the blue click maker to work?

As I was saying,

Levels above 100,000 IU of vitamin A are considered toxic (hypervitaminosis). Loss of hair can occur with megadoses of vitamin A. Excess carotene can cause your skin and the whites of your eyes to turn yellow. I have seen a patient with a jaundice look to their skin and eyes because of excess carotene intake from supplements. Generally, carotene will turn the skin yellow when the intake is above 20 mg per day (about 34,000 IU).

And so on.   A Google search for "Vitamin A" toxic turns up several more.

This one doesn't say what it does, but I imagine it interferes with steroid metabolism in liver cells.

Just eat normally!!

Steve

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 03:18 PM

Sometimes it's just a name............

I was looking for some other info and ran across several sites dedicated to their love for the "Porky" series of movies. Okay, I liked them a bit so I peruse the first place and find them saying that the actor who played Porky, Chuck Mitchell, was once married to Joni Mitchell. It's true she was once married to the folksinger Chuck Mitchell, but, uh..........wrong Chuck Mitchell. Gave me a laugh but I got to checking the other "Porky's" sites and the ones who gave actor backgrounds ALL said the same thing. I doubt this ever becomes much of a piece of fakelore, but it qualifies.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,fox4zero
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 11:38 PM

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 11:50 PM

Carrots are hazardous enough, but be sure never to eat a Polar Bear; or at any rate not its liver. They are able to store very large quantities of vitamin A (they have to, where they live) and that organ is seriously toxic for such as we, though the huskies may be able to handle it. There's even a musical connection; Andy Irvine wrote a song about it once. Not one of his more successful efforts, I thought, but it contained the memorable line

The soles of my feet became detached...

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,fox4zero
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 11:55 PM

The yellow coloring of the skin from the excessive ingestion of carrots is not quantifiable, but rather due to individual differences.
In carrotinemia, there is actual pigmentation of the epidermis, and if you shave off a sliver of the keratin layer, you can observe its yellow color. Pathologic hypervitaminosis A is almost always caused by the ingestion of large amounts of Vitamin A capsules.

Avitaminosis A also causes marked thickening of the keratin layer, and hypervitaminosis A will cause thinning of the keratin layer and reduce keratin plugs in the oil glands. That is the basis for the action of the systemic cystic acne medication, Accutane. The same is true of the topical retinoic acid preparations. There are other very
potent vitamin A derivatives which will reduce the keratin layer to the point that the skin is moist to the touch due to serum seepage.

Sorry, got carried away by old memories.

Larry Parish

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,fox4zero
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 12:01 AM

I think it's toxic amounts of vitamin D in polar bear liver. We try to keep the amount of polar bear liver in our Liver Pate to a minimum.

Larry

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 12:31 AM

Could well be D, indeed. It's pretty late at night where I am, and the lore can get a bit faker than usual in the small hours when the deadlines loom. I do try to keep off the polar bears, anyway; just to be on the safe side. And carrots don't have such big teeth.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Mockingbird MacGillickutty
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 12:52 AM

The ostrich does not bury his (her) head in sand or any other damn soil. Has anyone seen the photos. Ostriches are not at all shy. They let us view their mating habits-red legged horniness and all. Why would there be NO photos of thie so often called upon image.
Vincent Van Gogh (Americans and French shall never ever get the pronunctiation right) Lost his ear in a drunken homicide attempt by his near-equally mad as a monkey pal, Paul Gaugin, an avid swordsman and invenerate liar who, having stashed the incriminating evidence summoned the Gendarmerie, then lied about the whole thing. Vincent, of course was 3 sheets to the wind, as usual and could only recall sharing a few bottles of absinthe with his so-called friend before passing out-as he did almost every day and night of his adult life. What bloody sorry kooks.
Bats are not blind. Sight , next to audiolocation (sp?) remains a strong suit of the night predator.
Black Betty (Whoa, Black Betty, Flam de Lam) is a stiff leather torture instument applied to the backs and shoulders of recalcitrant Texas slaves. Somehow, emancipation was withheld from these out-of-touch victims due to gaps in the word-of-mouth chain untill June 14, 1865. Texas fat cats always hold sway, especially with the disenfranchised.
Finally, for now, there is absolutely no truth to the matter of whether President (by Supreme Court appointment-type unelected president) can indeed read. He can and does not. Hail to the Chimp
All for now, your devoted Mockingbird MacGillickutty

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Mockingbird MacGillickutty
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 01:06 AM

In 1965 at Newport (festival) (THE 1965 NFF) Joni (about 17 years old at the time) could not for the life of Bean tune her damn Epiphone 12-String, while onstage for her set. She was subsequently booed from the proceedings forthwith. Too bad. Charly Parker was booed, Mickey Mantle got a taste of the rasberries a few times. Joni! Did she give up? Not at all, went on to marry C. MItchell (Too old to have done anything in "Porkies" except to skip it sensibly) and then she reigned as Ms Truly dedicated Folkie/ Intellectual poppie. Which field of endeavor passed with Milton Okun and Rich. Farina
Stop watching stupid teen flicks and stay home to practice your hootenanny.
Your devoted Mockingbird

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Mockingbird MacGillickutty
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 01:19 AM

Jopni don't cotton no "porkies" ! Who would even try to lie about that.
Joni is a Mockingbird-type. Let her retire in peace you mean buggers!
Yor devopted MacGillickutty

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 01:16 PM

van Gogh only severed the lobe of his left ear, not the entire ear. Half-mad, probably from drink, he presented the lobe to a woman in a brothel. Finding Vincent in the street,in a weakened condition, a policeman took him to the hospital.
Gauguin sent a telegram to Theo, Vincent's brother, informing him of the occurrence and Vincent's hospitalization, and left for Paris.
Vincent had other attacks of madness, one in which he imagined he had been poisoned. Later he agreed to be admitted to an asylum, and was removed from Arles.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 08 Feb 03 - 01:56 PM

Guest Q--'two fingers' is only 1 1/2 oz in the right sized glass, after all. My great-uncle used to say he didn't want much to drink, just "two fingers in a rain barrel."

True or not, I like the 'brass monkey' thing. Case would have been better presented with the addition of the fact that the youths who carried powder and shot from the magazine to the guns were "powder monkeys."

Anyway, my own fav. fakelore is the tale that some local yokels saved a beautiful old tree from removal by a county crew that was about to widen a road by saying that it was historical. They said it was the famous 'hanging tree' upon which the great bandido (supply any plausible Mexican name here) was strung up on. So the road was widened on the other side.

Now actually that's a double-header, because of course now not only can it not be proven that there was such a Mexican bandit, it also cannot be proven that the people said there was.

Re. the origins of folk--hey, there are after all Edison cylinders in the Library of Congress with recordings made of Leadbelly et al considerably pre-1960, so lets not get totally carried away.

I'm waiting for mention of the fact that on his way to execution, convicted Lindberg kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann pulled a note from his pocket that read, "I confess to sinking the Titanic. Signed, Jack the Ripper."

CC

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 09 Feb 03 - 02:17 AM

The "brass monkey" thing wouldn't work too well anyway. You'd have two types of metal and sea water makes a pretty good electrolyte. There'd be a slow weld. Definitely too much corrosion anyway.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Mad Tom
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 01:58 AM

Polar bear meat: Is perfectly fine for human consumption. I've eaten several generous servings myself.
Polar bear *liver* (OTOH) gives you Avitaminosis, hence the practise of Inuit hunters disposing of the livers so that the sled dogs would not eat them. Even so, I've heard of old-timers eating very small quantities of polar bear liver. There is also the risk of trichinosis in raw polar bear meat, just like there is in raw pork.
See also Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami: Polar Bear Nutrition
Bonus polar bear trivia: Their skin is black.

Speaking of Inuit - The Inuvialuktun (Western Arctic Inuit) word for feces is "annak" (or something like that). I suppose it sort of rhymes with "cack". If you say it with a very slightly different emphasis on the "nn", it means something totally different, I forget what.

Carrots: When my son first started on baby food, he didn't care for any vegetable except carrots. He started getting an orange tinge to his skin, so we started blending the other veggies in. We were worried about jaundice until the nurse clued us in.

nit-pick: RADAR vs. RDF
- Radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) uses reflections of a high-frequency radio beam to determine the distance and direction of an object.
- RDF (Radio Direction Finding) involves listening to a radio receiver with a directional antenna to determine the direction of a radio transmitter (not a passive reflector, as in the case of radar). Actually, one receiver narrows it down to two directions (180 degrees apart), so you would normally coordinate with a second remote receiver to get the ...uh... coordinates. Alternatively, you could use a single mobile receiver and move it between readings, but if the transmitter is also mobile it could be difficult to triangulate the source.

Bonus Radar trivia: Early (wartime) radar equipment had only one colour for all the wiring (red, I think) and the components like capacitors and resistors did not have any markings on them to indicate what type they were. All that to make it difficult to reverse-engineer if it was captured by the enemy. Oh yeah - the radar equipment cabinets were wired with explosives, ready to destroy it at a moment's notice. Must have been real fun being a radar technician.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 02:24 AM

I had heard that there was a theory that the Franklin expedition had to turn to eating local meat when their supplies ran out/went bad and that some had died from eating the liver of the polar bear. More fakelore?

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 06:53 AM

Sounds like it, Cluin -- how would anyone know?

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 06:56 AM

"how would anyone know?" Autopsy?

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Santa at work
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 08:21 AM

RDF Radio Direction Finding may well be what you define, but nonetheless it was used as a British cover name for radar well into WW2. The words actually describe either activity. The term radar was not adopted until the US joined in, together with replacing the term ASDIC by sonar. (ASDIC = Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Commitee, or some such - the pingy thingy that detects objects underwater.)

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Schantieman
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 12:21 PM

RDF is certainly distinct from RADAR now - or was until a few years ago when GPS made RDF redundant. There are still a few RDF stations about, I believe.

Usual theory on Franklin's lot is lead poisoning from canned food.

Main danger from polar bears is when they're still alive - you tend not to be!

Steve

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 12:59 PM

Analyses on a Franklin Expedition corpse showed a high lead content, from the poor quality canned goods carried on the expedition. This could have been an important factor in the deaths ("Frozen in Time").

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Strupag
Date: 10 Feb 03 - 07:52 PM

A typical marine radar emits high frequency radiation at a power of around 10 Killowatts while a mobile phone mast has a typical output of around 100 Watts.
Don't build your schools beside piers!

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: fox4zero
Date: 11 Feb 03 - 12:42 AM

Polar bear liver is extremely high in VITAMIN D, which they obtain by eating seals, who obtained it from eating fish, whose livers are high in Vitamin D. Remember your doses of COD LIVER OIL given to prevent Rickets?

There are only 2 toxic vitamins, and they are the only oil soluble vitamins....A & D. Both are toxic in excessive doses only.
Eskimos and their sled dogs are or were the only ones liable to consume enough P.B. liver to be affected...and they know better. This is not fakelore.

How come no one has mentioned malnutrition from living on RABBIT meat exclusively? And I don't mean Rabbit Fever which is Tularemia.
Larry

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Genie
Date: 12 Feb 03 - 11:24 PM

Hester, thanks for the article critiquing Freeman's attach on Margaret Mead. I was privileged to meet the grand ol' broad/scholar in 1963, "great walking stick in hand," and all, and was quite impressed. Glad someone is setting the record straight.

Kim C., I also saw the video clip of the Newlywed Game where the wife says (sheepishly) that the strangest place she ever made love ("whoopee," or whatever) was "in my a**.

Steve et al., I thought the expression was "the short end of the stick," not "the wrong end of the stick."

Steve P., I've seen photos of horses harnessed to carts with a carrot dangled in front of their eyes and the driver holding a prod behind. This type of photo was supposed to illustrate the carrot (incentive) and the stick (whip or prod -- disincentive) -- the classic "push-pull" of motivation.

Genie

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 12 Feb 03 - 11:44 PM

I saw that "Newlywed Game Show" clip too. They showed it last night on The Man Show

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Snuffy
Date: 13 Feb 03 - 08:27 AM

"the short end of the stick" would imply getting a bum deal, whereas "the wrong end of the stick" would imply misunderstanding.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 13 Feb 03 - 12:19 PM

Which end is the short end?

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Feb 03 - 02:03 PM

The other end.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 13 Feb 03 - 04:51 PM

Well, this one I got in my e-mail today I KNOW is bullshit:

This is a slice of golf history I thought you might enjoy. I never knew why there were 18 holes before this tidbit. Why do full-length golf courses have 18 holes, and not 20, or 10 or an even dozen? How many of you golfers know the answer to this one? I didn't, until ...

During a discussion among the club's membership board at St. Andrews in 1858, one of the members pointed out that it takes exactly 18 shots to polish off a fifth of Scotch. By limiting himself to only one shot of Scotch per hole, the Scot figured a round of golf was finished when the Scotch ran out.

Now you know ...

Just like that other fierce pile of bog, the one that says the word "GOLF" stands for "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden".

It pushes the stupid clichéd drunken misogynist Scotsman image. All that's missing is mention of hiking up the kilt to whiz or take a dump in the cup for the next golfer to enjoy.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 13 Feb 03 - 06:09 PM

How about the 'traditional Ploughman's Lunch' for a piece of fakelore? This picture of bucolic contentment complete with vision of Thomas Hardy-esque yeoman knocking off for a bite and a pull on the cider flagon (oo-er, missus), seagulls wheeling in air, billowing clouds overhead, -- this midday institution was invented by an advertising firm in the 1950s. Still tastes good though.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 13 Feb 03 - 07:02 PM

Yeah, did those old farmers really take tupperware containers with chutney and Trisket crackers out to the fields with them?

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 13 Feb 03 - 07:03 PM

My father once asked a ploughman what he had for his lunch. "Pork pie, generally", was the reply.

Onions were genuinely traditional components of the (old-style) agricultural labourer's mid-day meal. Given the wages they were paid, it was often all they could afford.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 13 Feb 03 - 07:42 PM

In North America, poor pioneer farmers of the first half of the 19th century were heavy drinkers, even as they plowed, to bear the pain and boredom of their effort. A common article in the fields was a bottle shaped like a doughnut, which slipped onto the arm and was carried on the shoulder. It contained the worst of hard liquor.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Feb 03 - 05:56 AM

Cluin: "During a discussion among the club's membership board at St. Andrews in 1858, one of the members pointed out that it takes exactly 18 shots to polish off a fifth of Scotch. By limiting himself to only one shot of Scotch per hole, the Scot figured a round of golf was finished when the Scotch ran out."
Clearly an urban myth. the "Fifth bottle" is an American standard. The standard bottle in the UK was (until late in the 1900s) 1pint 6 2/3 fluid oz. With a standard English measure being "one sixth of a gill" i.e. one twenty-fourth of a pint. By this it can be seen that there were 32 standard measures (or 16 'doubles') in a full size standard bottle.
At the same time the standard Scottish measure was slightly larger at "one fifth of a gill" i.e one twentieth of a pint. Meaning a 'bottle' was never quite properly finished.

Modern bottle sizes have been 'Metricated' as 1 litre or the smaller 75cl. But measures have become larger at 25ml, making 40 full measures to a litre bottle, or 28 measures to the smaller

Nigel

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Bystander
Date: 14 Feb 03 - 08:52 AM

Back in the late 50's quite a few faketales circulated in the UK. These incidents always happened locally and to a friend of a friend of the teller.
One I remember was how this person stopped his car at the lights on a well known local crossroads and a group of yobboes suddenly appeared, grabbed his rear bumper (they had them in the 50's) and started rocking the car. When the lights went green he drove off as fast as possible and when he got home he saw two human fingers stuck between the car body and the bumper.
Another was of an ad in a local shop from someone selling a nearly new Jaguar at a really silly price. The friend of a friend had phoned the seller and asked why it was so cheap and was told she had to get rid of it as her husband had blown his brains out on the back seat.
These tales circulated all over the UK at the time and I would be interested to know if they went, or even came, from further afield

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Cluin
Date: 14 Feb 03 - 09:07 AM

Both of those tales, or versions of them, are common all over.

The "death car" one particularly has been around since the 50s. I read about it in an Urban Myths book years ago. Another version of it is the one where the ex-wife is selling the husband's Porsche or Mazzoratti for $20 because he had run off with another woman and sent her a telegram telling her she could keep the house if she sold the car for him and sent him the money.

The "fingers in the bumper" one sounds like a version of "The Hook", a tale about 2 teenagers making out in some lover's lane, when she gets suddenly mysteriously nervous and calls a halt to the proceedings. So the boyfriend starts up his car and speeds off in a huff, tearing off the prosthetic hooked hand of a serial killer who was just about to yank open the car door and slaughter the two. He finds the hook hanging from her door handle when he decides to be a gentleman and go out and open her door for her when he drops her off.

Another version concerns a ghost story about someplace in the southern states where a horrible train accident with a stalled school bus occurred. Supposedly, if you stop your car on the tracks there and turn it off and leave it in neutral, a score or more of little ghost hands will push your car over the tracks to safety, leaving their little handprints all over the car.

Nigel, thanks for the extra info on standardization of distilled alcohol bottle sizes. That's interesting.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 14 Feb 03 - 10:45 AM

And true!

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Feb 03 - 11:57 AM

Cluin: That's alright, just "Cluein' you in" *BG*

Nigel

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Gareth
Date: 14 Feb 03 - 12:14 PM

Mmmm ! Arn't we in danger with confusing "Fakelore" with "Urban Ledgends" ??

Gareth

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Strupag
Date: 15 Feb 03 - 08:51 AM

Gareth, Haven't you heard about the old aunty who was stapped on to the roof rack?

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Cluin
Date: 15 Feb 03 - 03:12 PM

That one was in "National Lampoon's Vacation".

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 16 Feb 03 - 03:30 PM

I'vw just found this thread and would like to add:
cnap (pronounced crap) is Scottish gaelic for a small mound, lump.
And 'mo cas sin' (moccasin, Indian shoes) is Scottish Gaelic for , loosely translated, 'here are my feet!

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 17 Feb 03 - 10:43 AM

And in the early days (c 17-18th century) of Friendly Societies, the guy who looked after the money would frequently keep it safe by stuffing it into a sock and hiding it under his mattress. To keep it secure and avoid giving the secret away, this always appeared in the accounts as "S.U.M assured" (i.e. the dosh in the sock under mattress is safe"). Eventually, Lloyd's of London picked this up and "sum assured" became standard insurance-speak for the value an object was insured for.

I made that up last night, but feel free to misinform anyone daft enough to believe it, and let's see how soon we see it on the 'Net as "official".

Steve

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Gareth
Date: 17 Feb 03 - 10:54 AM

Nice one Steve but -

Sum Assured is only used in Life and Marine Policies,

Sum Insured used in everything else.

The reason being (traditional) is that people will inevitably die, and ships inevitably sink, in the end.

Hmmmm ! is Gareth calling our bluff ???

Gareth

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 17 Feb 03 - 11:45 AM

I know that, Gareth - I worked for Britannic Assurance for ten years! *BG*

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 17 Feb 03 - 01:18 PM

Americans never get assurance along with their insurance.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 17 Feb 03 - 01:57 PM

Assurance assures you of a payout at some future date.
Insurance insures that you will get a payout if certain circumstances merit it (i.e. you crash your car, your house burns down...etc any good reason to sing the blues!)

Nigel

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 17 Feb 03 - 03:01 PM

Nigel, I have both kinds of policies. Both are from US companies and are labeled insurance (Webster's Dictionary- Assurance: "Chiefly British").

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 17 Feb 03 - 04:37 PM

Going way back to the first post. In southeast Asia, smaller weights were often in the form of animals, cast in brass. A brass monkey is about --- ounces. British sailors, if they were cheated in a transaction, said that the shopkeeper cut the tail off the brass monkey. When they brought the saying home to our less than tropic climate, this became "froze the tail ---."

Posh- In early 19th century thieves cant (British) "posh" meant money (OED). This easily became a word meaning best; thus posh for travel in the best cabins or conditions.

Source: Q's own dictionary of disreputable language.

Subject: RE: Fakelore
From: Abby Sale
Date: 07 Mar 03 - 10:46 AM

To set the record straight and since I much like the song, I repost in full the following discussion by the great folklorist and broadsides scholar, Steve Roud.


No 1 January 1998

During the lunch-break of the Sheffield meeting, the conversation turned to rivers mentioned in song-titles which were not quite what they seem. For example, is there a river called Dundee, so clearly referred to in The Banks: of the Sweet Dundee, and where is Nancy that is evoked in The Streams of Lovely Nancy?

Ruairidh Greig, suggested that the former should actually be spelt The Banks of the Sweet Dun Dee, because the River Dee was once a dirty brown colour, but I was not convinced by this suggestion however ingenious it may sound, and I cannot find any evidence that the Dee was ever that colour. But his suggestion proved to be just the clue that I needed. On the way home I mused over the problem and with the aid of my indexes (of which you may have heard) and my expert knowledge of the subject of Folk Song, I can clear up this mystery. In fact, the 'Dee' part of the tide is a red herring as it was introduced into the song by a short-sighted broadside printer in the early 19th cent". This can be easily tested. Working by candlelight, take your glasses off, close your good eye, and read the title of the Catnach broadside of the song and you will discover that it should read Banks of the Sweet Dun Cow - and this is obviously what it was originally. This makes the whole thing quite clear, and indeed it sheds important light on the real meaning (hidden for over 100 years) of the whole song. By checking the standard social histories of the 19th century, one can easily discover that when the Rochdale Pioneers formed the Co-op Bank they couldn't afford proper premises and anyway all the decent corner properties were already owned by their rivals, so they hired a room in the back of the pub called the Dun Cow, and their potential customers were thus exhorted to 'bank at the sweet Dun Cow' (I am not sure why it was called the sweet Dun Cow - perhaps there were two in the town and this one also sold confectionery). In the light of this new knowledge one can see that the whole song is about the working classes (given the heroic title Undaunted Mary) slaying the capitalist bosses (the Squire) and thereby gaining their wealth.

The Streams of Lovely Nancy proved no more difficult to my incisive analysis. On checking the original manuscripts, I discover that Cecil Sharp's informant had no teeth, and Cecil himself had a head-cold on the day in question, so it is not surprising that he mis-heard the title and first line, which should be "0 the dreams of lovely Nancy are divided in three parts..". This is thus an excellent example of the psychological folksong. Freud, whose work on dreams is justly famous, pointed out the three-fold nature of the human psyche - the Id, the Ego and the Superego. The song is therefore patently concerned with a young female's erotic nocturnal fantasies - the second line is "where the young men and maidens will meet their sweethearts". Other verses speak of diamonds, sailors, flying high and the "noise in the valley" making the "rocks for to ring".

I would welcome comments on the above, or details of other such investigations for circulation to members of the Forum.

ie, the scholarly forum this was posted to, not Mudcat - AJS