A Couple of Folk

[Jan Ivarsson]

Nigel Rees' Bloomsbury Dictionary of Phrase & Allusion (1991) says:
"real McCoy, the. Meaning 'the real thing'; the genuine article, the phrase probably derived from 'Kid' McCoy, a US welterweight boxing champion in the late 1890s. When challenged by a man in a bar to prove he was who he said he was, McCoy flattened him. When the man came around, he declared that this was indeed the 'real' McCoy. As Burnam (Tom, More Misinformation, 1980) notes, 'Kid' McCoy promoted this story about himself. However, Messrs G. Mackay, the Scottish whisky distillers, were apparently promoting their product as 'the real Mackay' in 1870, as though alluding to an established expression. This could have derived from the Mackays of Reay in Sutherland claiming to be the principal branch of the Mackay clan. Robert Louis Stevenson used this version in an 1883 letter."

The Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase end Fable, based on Brewer's and revised by Ivor H. Evans (1993) also has:
"McCoy, or McKoy, The Real, as used in the U.S.A., but formerly in Britain it was 'the Real MacKay'. Various stories about an American boxer of the 1890s have been suggested as the origin of the phrase, but Eric Partridge in From Sanskrit to Brazil (1952) , says with more probable truth that it dates from the 1880s and originated in Scotland where it was applied to whisky, men and things of the highest quality. The whisky was exported to both the U.S.A. and Canada where people of Scottish origin drank the whisky and kept the phrase alive. In the 1890s, however, there is no doubt that it was applied to an outstanding boxer whose name happened to be McCoy."

Jan Ivarsson, Sweden

----- Original Message -----
From: "GEORGE THOMPSON" <thompsng at ELMER4.BOBST.NYU.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: den 21 september 2000 19:08
Subject: Re: A Couple of Folk


>         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