bootstraps--speculation/questions

[Jonathan Lighter]

There's a difference between Davy Crockett and David Crockett.  David (1786-1836) was the actual frontiersman, autobiographer, and Congressman.  (Billy Bob Thornton did an excellent job portraying him in _The Alamo_ (2003).

"Davy" was the creation of opportunistic publishers, mainly in Boston, who printed twenty years worth of "Davy Crockett almanacs" beginning in 1835.  These portray Crockett as a crude, violent, illiterate, drunken bumpkin with a penchant for Xtreme Yarns.

If any "Crockett" created the "bootstrap" phrase in a tall-tale context, it was undoubtedly "Davy."

JL

"Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Cohen, Gerald Leonard"
Subject: bootstraps--speculation/questions
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I've been looking at Ben Zimmer's and Chris Waigl's ads-l messages on "pull oneself up by one's bootstraps." Ben has shown that several 19th century quotes with this expression associate it with (Baron) Münchhausen, the subject of numerous tall tales. One of those tales involves the baron lifting himself out of a swamp by his own hair, although none of the tales has him lifting himself up by his bootstraps.
Meanwhile, Ben also presented a 1950 item in which the author wonders whether Davy Crockett might have originated the expression. That's an interesting possibility. Would anyone know of any evidence to support it?
If so, Crockett would likely have uttered the phrase under the influence of the Münchhausen story, and then other Americans would have associated the phrase directly with Münchhausen, even though the baron never did lift himself up by his bootstraps.

This, of course, is only speculation. And still, the question remains: If
Münchhausen never lifted himself up by his bootstraps, why did 19th century
writers/speakers associate this phrase with him?

Gerald Cohen
P.S. Would Ben perhaps share with us the portion of the Münchhausen story in which the baron pulls himself out of a swamp by his own hair?


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