[Ads-l] Hager-ma growley (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill CIV (US)]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Saratoga Spring NY _Daily Saratogan_ 22 Feb 1883

"Beware, you base twelve-ounce-to-the-pound huckster, you gimlet-eyed
seller of dog-sausage, you sanded-sugar idiot, you small potato three card
monte sleight of hand rotten egg fiend, you villain that sells smoked sturgeon
and dogfish for smoked halibut. The avenger is on your track."

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter
> Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2015 8:28 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Hager-ma growley
> 
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header ---------------
> --------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Hager-ma growley
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
> 
> Here's some colorful (and surely romanticized) Civil War grousing, from
> "D. S. Forbes" [actually S. W. Lewis] *History of the Thirty-
> Days=E2=80=99 = Campaign of the Sixty-Eighth Regiment, New York State
> National Guards* (Fredonia,
> N.Y.: pvtly ptd., 1863).
> 
> P. 20:
> 
> Gentlemen, by smut, hark, and I'll just naturally put a flea in your
> ears.
> Now, you see this is a grab game, and if we don't keep our eyes peeled,
> we'll get euchered. These gol-blasted commissioned officers are going
> to be powerfully patriotic and great Union-loving sons of ------- until
> the thing is all fastened and the knots all tied. When things look
> smutty and danger begins to look a little red in relation to our bones
> and sinners, why they'll resign, and we poor, unlucky, cat-hauled
> devils may go to H =E2=80= =94l, for all of them; they'll resign their
> commissions and are all sound on the goose.
> 
> 
> P.45:
> 
> "I can just naturally look through this d----d clap-trap game, and I
> ain't going to stand it; now that's what's the matter with the mule.
> ...  Old Snipe, (Knipe,) the lop-eared, penurious, snake-eyed Hager-ma
> growley, is going to slip us across the Potomac, and clear on down to
> where it is hotter than Balshazzar's furnace."
> 
> P. 49:
> "The old whiskey-drinking pop-gun; he's gone home, the old lily-livered
> cuss....  Knipe, the old, black,wall-eyed, crabbed, fiery-mouthed,
> flint-pated devil, will be here in about ten minutes, frothing and
> foaming because we ain't down there in the scorching Virginia swamps."
> 
> "By smut" and "smutty" may euphemize "shit" and "shitty," but the
> historical record makes that uncertain.  To "euchre" is to victimize by
> trickery.  A "grab game" is a swindle, and "sound on the goose" usually
> means "sound in one's political views."  Here it may simply mean "safe
> and sound," but that is conjecture.
> 
> "That's what's the matter with the mule" elaborates the19th C.
> catch-phrase, "That's what's the matter!"  It meant pretty much what it
> means today, but seems to have been used frequently for its own sake -
> possibly a quotation from somewhere?
> 
> "Hager-ma growley" may be a one-off creation. The regiment was camped
> near Hagerstown, Md.
> 
> JL
> 
> 
> 
> --=20
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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