"Fat Lady Sings" in Dallas Morning News

[Fred Shapiro]

On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Fred Shapiro wrote:

> To me, any source that is one of the two earliest known carries some
> authority, so I take the 1976 _Southern Words and Sayings_ citation very
> seriously.  It probably indicates that the "church" version was around
> before 1976.

I should add that there are a lot of seemingly reliable people who affirm
that they heard both the "opera" and "church" versions long before 1976.
I don't normally put a lot of stock in undocumented memories, but all in
all this seems plausible.

Fred Shapiro


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