Quick meaning alive

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Jan 3, 2010, at 7:12 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> At 2:06 PM +0000 1/3/10, ronbutters at aol.com wrote:
>> Yesterday's crossword used "coney" as a synonym for 'rabbit'. It
>> survives (I assume) in "Coney Island" (but with few people for whom
>> the first word is more than an empty meaning). It lives on also for
>> scholars and maybe dialectologists. So I'd call it rare or scholarly
>> or specialized, but not obsolete or merely archaic. Ditto "quick" =
>> 'alive'.
>
> "Coney" occurs in a verse of "Big-Eye(d) Rabbit", an Appalachian folk
> song I have on my iTunes in two slightly different versions.  June
> Maugery sings what I assume is the traditional version, although I'm
> a bit puzzled by the gender reassignment surgery between lines 3 and
> 4:
>
> Coney on the island
> It's coney on the run
> Watch that rabbit, she's so scared
> Shoot him with my gun, gun
> Shoot him with my gun
>
> John and Heidi Cerrigione favor this relatively non-violent
> counterpart, also attested elsewhere on the web:
>
> Coney on the island
> Coney on the run
> See that rabbit, she's so fast
> Missed her with my gun, gun
> Missed her with my gun
>
> In both versions, "coney" is rhymed with "phoney" (as in the
> amusement park) rather than with "money, honey".  As the OED puts it
> with some delicacy in its _cony_ entry:
>

Tolkien used the word in Lord of the Rings. "A brace of coney" I think is the expression that Samwise uses it in. (It's the cooking of the coney that lead to Faramir's men finding Sam and Frodo.)
BB

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