[Ads-l] dough boys 1823, 1826

[Peter Reitan]

As for cutting out the "dough boys" and girls and horses for the Christmas stockings, it is different from the normal "dough boys" - because they are probably cutting out boys and girls in the cookie dough, not making "dough boy" bread pieces.  The giving of cookies was an early Dutch New York Christmas tradition.


As for the down in the mouth sailor, it seems like a metaphor using a pun on the expression, "down in the mouth" - as "down in the mouth" as a "midshipman's dough boy".  It might be read as including a reference to how seasick young "midshipmen" (soft, educated, wannabe officers, just getting acclimated to shipboard life) get - he "comes up" as "down in the mouth" (that is to say, coming up instead of staying down) as a "midshipman's dough boy."  And the speaker is "down in the mouth" - depressed - about being put "clapt into limbo" - tied down or put into chains.


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Subject: dough boys 1823, 1826

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Subject:      dough boys 1823, 1826
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a) "....the eldest, was busily engaged at the table, cutting out dough boys=
 and girls, and birds and horses to fill up the long row of [Christmas?] st=
ockings...." [like gingerbread men?]

Dutchess Observer (Poughkeepsie, NY) Dec. 10, 1823, p. 4, col. 1. Readex Am=
. Hist. News.


b) "Well, howsomever, to shorten the matter: as I comes up, as down in the =
mouth as a midshipman's dough boy, I was clapt into limbo...." [a marine be=
ing seen by sailors as useless aboard ship as a humanoid cookie?]

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 19 (1826) Naval Sketch-Book p. 365b.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=3Dnjp.32101076889615;view=3D1up;seq=
=3D399


Stephen Goranson

Origin of Kibosh (Routledge)

http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/
<http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/>


<http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/>


<http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/>





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