"hot stuff" from 1759, antedates 1889? Or too literal?

[Jonathon Green]

Joel S. Berson wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      "hot stuff" from 1759, antedates 1889?  Or too literal?
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>
> The army of James Wolfe, of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham,
> 1759, sang a drinking song called "Hot Stuff."  It includes the lines:
>
> And ye that love fighting shall soon have enough:
> Wolfe commands us, my boys; we shall give them Hot Stuff ...
> When the forty-seventh regiment is dashing ashore,
> While bullets are whistling and cannons do roar.
>
>
You don't cite the precise source of the cite, but I have one for 1759,
again from a song:

‘If you please, Madam Abbess, a word with your nuns!’ / Each soldier
shall enter the convent in buff, / And then, never fear, we will give
them Hot Stuff!

where all the terms are undoubtedly sexual double entendres (and indeed
abbess, convent and nun were contemporary slang for a madame, a brothel
and its whores, while 'buff' means naked). However thereafter yawns a
substantial gap until the 20th century reopens the use of 'hot stuff' in
sexual contexts.

JG

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