black as Caesar's tail

[Jonathan Lighter]

I encountered 'black as Coaly's ass' in Knoxville in the late '70s.

  'Coaly' remains unexplained. The Devil ?  A coal-miner ?

  JL

"Joan H. Hall" <jdhall at WISC.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Joan H. Hall"
Subject: black as Caesar's tail
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Are there early cites for "black as _____'s tail" where ____ is not
Caesar? A person who on occasion said "Great Caesar's ghost" might
make a variation on something like "black as Nero's tail" or even
"black as a demon's tail" (or whatever) for the usual reasons of
self-amusement and self-reference.



DARE's entry for "coaly," meaning the devil, has "black as Coaley's
butt" and "black as Coaley's tail" from Vance Randolph in the Ozarks,
plus "black as Old Coaly's ass" from DInis's 1975 collection of
Proverbial Comparisons in Southern Indiana.

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