196 years o' braggin'

[Wilson Gray]

Shit, y'all! These studs don't be as bad as they *can* be!. They be as
bad as they *wanna* be!

-Wilson

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 9:46 PM, Laurence Horn<laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: 196 years o' braggin'
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 5:44 PM -0400 8/7/09, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>  What follows was drafted in the summer of 2004, but never sent so far as I
>>can tell. The phone must have rung or something:
>>
>>
>>
>>I was passing through Houston International last month when I happened to
>>fall in with a trio of welders back home from a Vegas vacation.
>>
>>At one point the eldest man, who'd been talking about retirement, casually
>>said, "I can weld anything but a broken heart."
>>
>>The second eldest said, "I can weld anything I can jump across."
>>
>>The youngest, who looked to be in his late thirties, said, "I can weld the
>>crack of dawn."
>>
>>  Cool enough, right?  Now get a load of this:
>
> Shades of Mike Fink, keelboater of legend, who also had an
> interesting heritage, as reported e.g. at:
>
> http://www.bartonpara.com/discog/today/mikefink.html
>
> Well, my daddy was a bear in the Allegheny Mountains
> And my mother was a 'gator in the Ohio.
> I was born full-growed at the forks of the river
> And I cut my teeth on a catfish bone.
>
> Oh, my name is Mike Fink, I'm a keelboat poler,
> I'm a half-alligator and I ride tornaders,
> And I can out-feather, out-jump, out-hop, out-skip,
> Throw down and lick any man on the river.
>
> LH
>
>
>
>>
>>1810 Christian Schultz, Jr.,  _Travels on an Inland Voyage through the
>>States of New-York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee;
>>and through the Territories of Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, and
>>New-Orleans, Performed in the Years 1807 and 1808 _ (N.Y.: Isaac Riley)
>>145: * *In passing two [keel] boats next to mine, I heard some very warm
>>words; which, my men informed me, proceeded from some drunken sailors who
>>had had a dispute respecting a _Choctaw Lady*_.* Although I might fill half
>>a dozen pages with the curious slang made use of on this occasion, yet I
>>prefer selecting a few of the most brilliant expressions by way of sample.
>>One said, 'I am a man; I am a horse; I am a team; I can whip any man _in all
>>Kentucky_*, *
>>by G-d.' The other replied, 'I am an alligator; half man, half horse; I can
>>whip any _on the Mississippi_,* *by G-d.' The first one again: 'I am a man,
>>have the best horse, best dog, best gun, and handsomest wife _in all
>>Kentucky_,* *by G-d.' The other, ' I am a Mississippi snapping turtle; have
>>bear's claws, alligator's teeth, and the devil's tail; can whip _any
>>man_*,*by G-d.' This was too much for the first, and at it they went
>>like two
>>bulls, and continued for half an hour, when the alligator was fairly
>>vanquished by the horse."
>>
>>That was in Natchez.
>>
>>JL
>>
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>
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>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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