gillygalou bird

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 7/5/01 11:10:19 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM writes:

> My correspondent corrects my inference about the dialect in which she
>  observed the phrase [gillygalou bird]:
>
>  >>>>>
>  At 11:01 AM 7/3/01 -0400, you wrote:
>  >This item apparently comes from Canadian French, but it was observed in
>  >Canadian English. Does anyone recognize it or have an idea about it? A
>  >correspondent asks:
>
>  Never Canadian English.  My g'g'g'father is the one who
>  I believe moved from the Montreal area to the Detroit
>  area.  That quarter of my pedigree is all French

While I have read several collections of Paul Bunyan stories, I don't know
anything significant about the ORIGIN of the Paul Bunyan legend.  A book I
read many years ago (it may have been entitled _Yankee Doodle's Cousins_)
tells the story that Paul came from Francophone Canada, and was already
accompanied by his blue ox, Bebe.  When they stepped over the US border, they
magically became Anglophones (and Bebe was renamed Babe).

I have never encountered any other versions of the Paul Bunyan legend that
gave his origin as anything other than the USA.  Does anyone have additional
data on this?

      - Jim Landau   (who also lays square eggs)

PS.  "Gillygalou" sounds Irish to me.  Probably I'm thinking of such Celtic
phoneticisms as "Gilgarry Mountain", "gallowglass",  "gillie", "Gilligan",
and the British Admiral "Billy Blue" Cornwallis and his sidekick Captain
Pellew.