[Ads-l] Where are the PC police?

[Robin Hamilton]

It's odd ... Not so much that "Chicken Licken Was Right" doesn't sound right,
but *why* it doesn't sound right.

Chicken Licken is embedded in the rhyme-cascade of Chicken Licken, Henny Penny,
Ducky Lucky, Goosy Loosey ... Foxy Loxy, whereas Chicken Little [sic] is
detachable.

As to why Chicken Licken in England whereas Chicken Little in America. *That* I
dunno.  The when but not the why.

Way it goes.

Robin

> 
>     On 18 September 2016 at 00:34 Jim Parish <jparish at SIUE.EDU> wrote:
> 
> 
>     The Turtles released a song by that title in 1967. (It's not one of
>     their better songs....)
> 
>     Jim Parish
> 
>     On 9/17/2016 6:32 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>     > In the year 1968 I purchased, in NYC, a novelty button that read,
>     > "CHICKEN
>     > LITTLE WAS RIGHT."
>     >
>     > It has served me well ever since.
>     >
>     > On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 7:00 PM, Robin Hamilton <
>     > robin.hamilton3 at virginmedia.com> wrote:
>     >
>     >> It's worse than that, even, Wilson, since there's a degree of
>     >> gender-bending
>     >> involved in making the protagonist male:
>     >>
>     >> I quote myself from some long-ago notes:
>     >>
>     >> << The second version of the narrative to be written down [the earliest
>     >> version is Scots, and begins with a hen], with the initial figure now a
>     >> younger
>     >> barnyard fowl named Chicken Licken, was that of James Orchard
>     >> Halliwell-Philips
>     >> (as he was finally known by the end of his life), Shakespearean
>     >> scholar,
>     >> and
>     >> anthologist of nursery rhymes and folk tales. Halliwell-Philips
>     >> introduces
>     >> Chicken Licken in his 1849 anthology. It is here for the first time
>     >> that
>     >> the
>     >> protagonist is named Chicken Licken, while it is now an acorn [not a
>     >> pea,
>     >> as in
>     >> the earlier Scottish version] which falls on the creature’s head:
>     >>
>     >> “As Chicken-Licken went one day to the wood, an acorn fell upon her
>     >> poor
>     >> bald
>     >> pate, and she thought the sky had fallen. So she said she would go and
>     >> tell the
>     >> king that the sky had fallen …”
>     >>
>     >> This was the version which was to dominate the British strand of the
>     >> tale. >>
>     >>
>     >> Or so I once seem to have averred.
>     >>
>     >> As to why she's called Chicken Little in America ... well, children,
>     >> that's
>     >> another story.
>     >>
>     >> Robin Hamilton
>     >>
>     >>
>     >>> On 17 September 2016 at 20:44 Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>     >>>
>     >>>
>     >>> Chicken Little (2005) - IMDb
>     >>> www.imdb.com/title/tt0371606/
>     >>> IMDb
>     >>> Rating: 5.8/10 - ‎64,469 votes
>     >>> Animation · After ruining _his_ reputation with the town, a
>     >> courageous
>     >>> _chicken_ must come to the rescue of _his_ fellow citizens when
>     >> aliens
>     >>> start an invasion.
>     >>>
>     >>>
>     >>> When did chickens - not to mention honeybees, wasps, hornets, cows,
>     >> etc. -
>     >>> become *male*? No less a light than Seth MacFarlane has even
>     >> portrayed
>     >>> bulls as having udders.
>     >>>
>     >>> Is it becoming the case that, in English, _male_ v. _female_ is
>     >> relevant
>     >>> only WRT personkind?
>     >>>
>     >>> --
>     >>> -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
>     >>>
>     >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>     >>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>     >>>
>     >> ------------------------------------------------------------
>     >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>     >>
>     >
>     >
> 
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>     The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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