"Cock"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Feb 11 05:07:02 UTC 2011


At 11:09 PM -0500 2/10/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>"Miss Wilkins' Cock" starting on p.36 of the _Fanny Hill's Bang-Up Reciter_
>employs the same pun except that here the putative (and I use the term
>advisedly) referent is a water faucet.

I'm clearly revealing my Ivy League naivete again, but I'm still
struggling with the *real* meaning of that threat...

"In paying her water rate.
She hadn't paid for many a month,

The gatherer she'd mock,
Until at last he threatened her.

That he'd cut off her cock."

Tol de rol indeed.  The fanny's straightforward, though.

LH

>
>P. 39 has "fanny" in what is presumably the British sense.
>
>I'm led to believe that anybody with few hundred idle clams (that's "idle"
>clams) to dispose of should find this imminent publication of great cultural
>and lexicographical value:
>
>http://www.pickeringchatto.com/major_works/bawdy_songbooks_of_the_romantic_period
>JL

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