Modern Proverb: Sacred cows make the best hamburger (antedating attrib Aardvark magazine 1965)

Robin Hamilton robin.hamilton2 at BTINTERNET.COM
Thu Mar 11 15:37:00 UTC 2010


> Tangential to the main subject, but the reference to "Chicken Little was
> right"
> as a graffito in a 1969 citation amuses me, given that the Turtles had
> released
> a song by that title in 1967. (Granted, it was a B-side....)
>
> Jim Parish

Was there ever a version of this in which Chicken *Licken was right, and
conversely was there ever a full version of the source story in which the
central protagonist was named Chicken Little?  The later seems unlikely as
the pattern of rhyming names -- Chicken Licken, Cocky Lockey, Goosey Loosey,
and Turkey Lurkey -- is built into the original narrative in which they
finally meet Foxy Loxey who will take them to the king.

Did the name shift occur before the catch phrase?

A google books cite located in 1973 seems to suggest that the change was
made *just in order* to generate the catch phrase:
___________________________

The drugged nation: a "narc's" story? - Page 142
John Finlator - Political Science - 1973 - 352 pages

Was Chicken Little Right? ... Once upon a time there was a Chicken Little
(known
in the original text as Chicken Licken). Now this little character lived in
...
___________________________

On the other hand, the Chicken Little variant of the name name was already
being used (though not in reference to the sky falling but possibly with a
deliberate echo of the name in the Chicken Licken story) by Frederick Pohl
and C.M.Kornbluth in _The Space Merchants_ in 1952.

Curiously, a google search reveals that perhaps in the early 2000s, the
original name was used (reinstated?) in order to convey a warning about
climate change:
___________________________

Its official - We're Doomed - Ecademy
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has now confirmed that Chicken
Licken was right after all. How ironic - Having survived the Mutually
Assured ...
www.beyond.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=blog&op=next...
___________________________

-- and a few similar google cites.

Hm ... A further google search reveals that the Chicken *Little association
with climate change was used much more widely by *contrarian climate change
commentators.

Which leaves us with the interesting question, "Who *was right -- Chicken
Licken or Chicken Little?"

Robin

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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