Heard on The judges: "Ripping and running"

[victor steinbok]

Thanks, Jon--trying to learn from you, Garson and everyone else (although I
run only limited searches through a fixed handful of databases and some
hand-picked culinary references from old cookbooks and travel books).

Not sure what happened on that 1929 ref. I had the snippet up on the page
but appear to have forgotten to copy the link. It's not a complicated search
(just run "rip-and-run" before 1950) and the snippet shows nothing anyway.

In any case, I'm going to get to a couple of searches that I've had in the
Draft folder anywhere from two weeks to a year--I still have "gherkin",
"white of their eyes" 1801 ref involving Putnam (antedating all other Putnam
attributions by about 3-5 years) that I never posted and a handful of others
that need attention. I tend to get bogged down in exhaustive searches on
some of the more interesting ones, then get distracted by something new that
could be posted immediately. Or the browser crashes--a much more common
occurrence now that I use Chrome about 75% of the time (Firefox gets slow
with 10 tabs open, Chrome just freezes, and Safari does not preserve tab
history, so it's useless). Whatever the case, some of the more interesting
stuff goes into the Draft folder and never comes out. Gherkin is important
(along with pickle--but we've covered that). I am not promising recovering
any of them right away. I will get to them unless a rock falls on my head.
Just not today.

VS-)

On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> Great sleuthing, Victor.
>
> JL
>
> On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 9:51 AM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
> ...
>


> >
> > Cold Steel. By Matthew Phipps Shiel. 1929
> > > The women sat still, three with babies at the breast, waiting that the
> > boat should rip and run, and the trip be done; Bessie's forehead was
> > propped
> > on her palm astarboard; and she was so undone ...
> >
> > Again, I am not trying to be systematic or exhaustive here--merely
> picking
> > out a sample. Note that the last one (1929) does not appear in the same
> > meaning as the rest--it's the only non-spurious hit before 1950. But,
> > following up on Garson's variants, I also tried "rip-an'-run" and got two
> > hits.
> >
> > http://goo.gl/YziRm [Snippet not visible, text from preview only.]
> > The wonderful weald and the quest of the crock of gold. By Arthur
> Beckett.
> > 1924
> > > So off dey goos over de fields wid de mare's-egg ; and prensly him what
> > was a-carryin' of it ketches his foot in a hole in de groun' so dat he
> > dropped de pumpkin all of a sudden, an' starts a hare from de bushes so
> dat
> > it rip-an-run ...
> >
> >
> > http://goo.gl/fS62V
> > Sprigs o' Mint. By James Tandy Ellis. 1906
> > Bill Boles, Of the Steamboat Band. p. 86
> > > Hist legs they were bowed, jes' as if they's made
> > > Fer that fiddle to set between.
> > > His hands they was big as a post-hole spade,
> > > An' I reckon about as clean.
> > > But when he strung fer a rip an' run,
> > > His face a-smile like the risin' sun,
> > > He looked right well--the son of a gun,--
> > > At least, thar air worse I have seen.
> >
> > The last one certainly seems authentic--Harvard Library stamp is from
> 1940
> > on the 1906 copyright page and the same date appears on the title page,
> > eve=
> > n
> > though the font looks a bit more modern than that. The book's title is in
> > the header on every page, so it's not picked up from another source.
>

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