origin of "mess with the bull, get the horns"?

Sat May 15 04:31:10 UTC 2010

Ca, 1961, I heard it in the Army as,

Fuck with the bull (fail to follow S.O.P.), and you get horned [sic]
(take the meat = "suffer punishment that, by civilian norms, *far*
outweighs the crime")!

In my mind - a WAG, of course - the reference was to bull-fighting,
that being a sport in which people regularly fuck with bulls and
regularly get horned. Yet, as is the case with failing to follow
S.O.P., no one is forced to do it.

-Wilson

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: origin of "mess with the bull, get the horns"?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 1967  George W. Boswell, "Folk Wisdom in Northeastern Kentucky," _Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin_ 33: 14.  "Play with the bull and you will get the horns."
>
> Not the origin, of course . . . .
>
> Charlie
>
>
>
> ---- Original message ----
>>Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 06:30:04 -0400
>>From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> (on behalf of Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>)
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>I am curious about the history of this one as well. It sounds like an
>>expression that would have been around for some time, yet it hardly
>>cracked it in print. I found several "get the horns" hits on GB, yet,
>>none with the full expression. Plenty of it on-line and I recall two
>>film scenes where the line was prominent. One was an otherwise
>>forgettable movie where the line comes from the mouth of Nicholas Cage
>>(in fact, it's so forgettable, and he's done so many forgettable roles,
>>that I don't recall which film it was). The other, of course, comes from
>>The Breakfast Club:
>>
>>> "Don't mess with the bull, young man, you'll get the horns."
>>
>>Lately, it's become fashionable to mention it in context of various
>>sports teams, not the least of which would be the Bulls.
>>
>>http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/46/46821.html
>>> if you mess with these bulls on the court, you might get the horns
>>
>>The latest comes in an analysis of the forthcoming FA Cup final between
>>Chelsea and Portsmouth:
>>
>>http://bit.ly/95jYrP
>>> Since Everton last caused something approaching an FA Cup final upset
>>> in 1995, Middlesbrough, Newcastle (twice), Southampton and Millwall
>>> have all seen what happens if you miss the big four bulls at Wembley -
>>> you get the horns.
>>
>>http://bit.ly/bVj2gw
>>> Any old Texas cattle rancher will tell you, "Son, when you mess with a
>>> bull you better be ready to get the horns." Sunderland defender Alan
>>> Hutton found this out the hard way earlier today when he got
>>> head-butted by Jozy "The Bull" Altidore.
>>
>>OK, the last one is crossing the line--"any old Texas cattle rancher"?
>>Sounds fishy to me.
>>
>>Network World from 2000 blames "the Old West":
>>
>>http://bit.ly/d1b7oF
>>> Don't expect to walk away from this rodeo. There's an ol' sayin' in
>>> the West: "If you mess with the bull, you get the horns."
>>
>>That does sound more plausible than Texas. But both have equal amount of
>>evidence--zero.
>>
>>The Spoof has a better version:
>>
>>http://bit.ly/a7In6u
>>> President Obama concluded his criticism of Arizona by saying "it's
>>> time to teach this bitch a lesson ... you f_ck with this bull, you're
>>> going to get the horns."
>>
>>Current news produced only 9 hits, three of them quoting The Breakfast
>>Club. All but one of the rest are above. The archives don't do much
>>better--the timeline shows two hits in the 80s, a handful in the 90s and
>>a steady, but slow, stream since 2000. But the earliest is not from The
>>Breakfast Club:
>>
>>> Peter Puck belongs in sin bin
>>> Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - Feb 25, 1975
>>> ... comes when a player gets killed a lot of the foul matter will come
>>> down on the heads of NBC Sports You play with the bull you sometimes
>>> get the horns.
>>
>>Another version is more likely to be hidden from view--not because it's
>>literally hidden, but because it's even less likely to show up in print
>>until recently:
>>
>>> Don't tempt the devil by leaving stuff in car
>>> Pay-Per-View - Toronto Star - ProQuest Archiver - Oct 28, 1995
>>> ... in this If a place seems safe even if it is safe it's probably
>>> unwise to tempt the devil. Because youre almost sure to get the horns.
>>> *** InfomartOnline ***
>>
>>There are some variations (2010):
>>
>>http://bit.ly/cH0IIj
>>> Mess with the Gorlok, get the horns
>>
>>In case you're wondering what's a "gorlock",
>>
>>> the Gorlok is a mythical creature with the paws of a speeding cheetah,
>>> horns of a fierce buffalo and face of a loyal Saint Bernard, according
>>> to the Webster University Athletic Web site.
>>
>>Well, at least, it has the horns.
>>
>>In any case, The Breakfast Club clearly was not the coinage. The ChiTrib
>>1975 use is clearly too tame to be of use and it just does not sound
>>like an expression a Texas rancher would use. So, I am stuck. No origin.
>>Any ideas?
>>
>>A couple more interesting bits, for good measure.
>>
>>http://bit.ly/d4nAZ9
>>The English dialect dictionary. Volume 3. H--L. Edited by Joseph Wright.
>>1902
>>Horn. 2. p. 233
>>> (15) /to have got the horn/, to be lustful; (16) /to have got the horn
>>> in one/, to be slightly tipsy; ... (23) /to get the horns/, to be made
>>> a cuckold.
>>
>>The latter is cited to Lauderdale's Poems (1796).
>>
>>http://bit.ly/9DxRgB
>>Hampton's Magazine. Volume 26:3. March 1911
>>Columbus--A Tragedy-Farce in Strikes. By Frederick Palmer. p. 337
>>> A play must have a villain and, as EK Stewart's friends will tell you,
>>> he got the horns and the forked tail. Stewart is a practical,
>>> hardheaded, efficient, self-made type of business man who is too
>>> vigorous at sixty-four to think of retiring from an active career.
>>
>>http://bit.ly/dr6Xjc
>>Pictures of Travel. By Heinrich Heine. Tr. by Charles G. Leland.
>>Philadelphia: 1856
>>Part Third. (1826.) The Island Norderney. p. 153
>>> For neither ladies nor gentlemen bathe here under cover, but walk
>>> about in the open sea. On this account the bathing places of the two
>>> sexes are far apart, and yet not altogether //too/ /far, and he who
>>> carries a good spy-glass, can every where in this world see many
>>> marvels. There is a legend of the island that a modern Actseon in this
>>> manner once beheld a bathing Diana, and wonderful to relate, it was
>>> not he, but the //husband/ /of the beauty who got the horns!
>>
>>http://bit.ly/adB3xA
>>The origin of the family, private property and the state. By Friedrich
>>Engels. Tr. by Ernest Untermann. Chicago: 1902
>>3. The Pairing Family. p. 86
>>> In both of these novels they "get one another:" in the German novel
>>> the man gets the girl, in the French novel the husband gets the horns.
>>
>>So there is some printed evidence for "get the horns", although not
>>combined with either bull or devil.
>>
>>     VS-)
>>
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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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