Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story about an imaginary mongoose

[Douglas G. Wilson]

> It leads me to wonder if Schauffler had heard the mongoose/apparatus story
> with, perhaps, the added detail that the mongoose/apparatus was a Christmas
> gift for someone. An interlocutor might then have said something like, "What
> sort of a McGuffin is it?"
>
> Worthless conjecture, but it would be nice to account for this 1925 McGuffin
> as something more than complete coincidence.
--

My own speculation would be that Schauffler's word was the etymon, and
that Hitchcock's etymology story was irrelevant and probably false.

Is there any independent evidence of the existence of a "mongoose"-type
story using the word "McGuffin"? If not, it's surely plausible that
Hitchcock or his informant was either misremembering something or just
casually fabricating an etymological myth. If there was a previous
"mongoose"-type story containing the word "McGuffin" (and there may have
been), I would still speculate that it had no etymological relevance
(but that Hitchcock or his informant might have thought that it had).

Just my speculation, but not necessarily any worse than Hitchcock's.

-- Doug Wilson

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