Lebofsky lexicon

[Peter A. McGraw]

Wow--I had no idea there were any variations to this that didn't involve a
barn door and a cow.  The usual version in So. California in the late
40s-early 50s was simply "your barn door's open," and only from one boy (my
best friend, as it happens) did I hear what was probably the original, full
form of this: "Barn door's open and the cow's comin' out!" sung to the tune
of the universal (as far as I know) "nyaa nyanya nyaa nyaa!  I think it was
a simple matter of imagery rather than having any connection with the
metaphor of the horse and the tardily secured barn door.

Tangentially, I wonder if anybody else experienced the practical joke that
made the rounds in Oregon in the late 50s or so:

First boy: "Your hobby's open!"
Second boy: (Hastily checks fly.)
First boy: "Ha ha--I didn't say anything about your fly, I said your hobby!"

Peter Mc.

--On Monday, May 2, 2005 3:43 PM -0400 Laurence Horn
<laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

>> The barn[sic] door's open and the horse is running out.
>>
>> I don't know why we said "barn" and not "stable," since horses,
>> horse-drawn wagons, and stables for horses all were still commonplace
>> in my childhood, but there were no barns.
>
> We had no barns but a few stables in NYC (for those NYPD horses), but
> "closing the barn door after the horses are out/have escaped" (or
> variations) was a standard metaphor, not specifically for closing
> one's fly; perhaps this (which I haven't heard, any more than the N
> o'clock one) is a variation on that theme.  The question of why it's
> the barn and not the stable door would really apply to the more
> general and I think more widely extant metaphor for the too
> little/too late reference.



*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************