"I said to myself, 'Self...'" in "Moose Turd Pie"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Back in September I posted a query here about the locution "(So) I
said/says to myself, 'Self...'" I also wrote two Language Log posts on
the topic:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002658.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002661.html

I was unable to find examples before 1980, so I asked Language Log
readers if they could supply earlier attestations. Many readers had
vague memories of various comedians using the line, but only two
firmly attested pre-1980 exx have come in, both from 1973.

One example is from Allen Toussaint's song "Play Something Sweet
(Brickyard Blues)," recorded by the Scottish R&B singer Frankie Miller
in 1973 and more famously by Three Dog Night in 1974:

    So I said to myself
    I said "Self, do you see what is sailin' through my soul?"
    And I gotta have some more, don't ya know.

I just received the second example, from "Moose Turd Pie," a tall tale
recorded by Utah Philips on his 1973 album _Good Though_:

    "I looked down at that meadow wafer, and I said to myself,
    'Self, I'm gonna bake up a big moose turd pie.'"

    audio: http://www.utahphillips.org/stuff/mooseturdpie.mp3
    text: http://www.lpslicer.com/KFAT.htm
    album: http://www.rounder.com/index.php?id=album.php&catalog_id=5719

The story is said to have folkloristic roots predating the Utah
Philips recording. Does anyone know how to find earlier tellings of
"Moose Turd Pie" that might have the "Self" line?

(Proquest has an abstract for a 1982 dissertation by Saul Brody at
Univ. of Pennsylvania with the title, "The Effect of
Performer-Audience Interaction on Performance Strategies: 'Moose-Turd
Pie' in Context." I'll have to track that down.)


--Ben Zimmer

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