A Couple of Folk

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

        I deleted the message I am not responding to, before I decided to
respond, and therefore cannot cite its author nor, perhaps,
summarize its message with perfect accuracy.

        I had posted a message regarding an overheard conversation
explaining the origin of the word "botch" and the phrase "the real
McCoy".  The explanation proffered was that of a Prohibition
bootlegger named McCoy.  Someone replied with an alternate
explanation, that McCoy was a 19th century inventor.  Checking just
now RHHDAS, I find that the long and well-documented note on this
phrase -- which I had previously read, since I have read the RHHDAS
-- (this is why I am so distraught over the delay in publishing the
last volume -- I want to know how it comes out) -- mentions both the
inventor and a prizefighter named McCoy, but not the bootlegger,
which I had described as the familiar story.  A novelist and writer
named Frederick F. Van de Water wrote a biography of the bootlegger,
William McCoy, 1877-??, or a purported biography, called "The Real
McCoy", published in 1931.  I have seen this in a bookstore, but have
not read it.

        Originally, I was interested in the explanation of the word "botch",
which I had never heard, nor, apparently, has anyone else on this
list.  But perhaps there is also some interest in the fact that the
story of McCoy the bootlegger still lives in the memory of the Folk.

GAT