mush (mouche/marche) retry from OED citations

[Mike Cleven]

HI Alan; it's been a while since you sent the following but I came
across it whilst editing my inbox; thought I'd add a few comments.......

"Alan H. Hartley" wrote:
>
> This didn't go through to your AOL address, so I'll try this way.

Hmm.  Don't have an AOL address; never have; or did you mean my @bigfoot
address?.....
>
> Mike,
>
> Here's the whole OED entry for MUSH (in our sense):
>
> Also const. on.  a. intr. To travel on foot through the snow with a
> dog-sledge (said also of the dogs); trans. to
> drive dogs through the snow.

Sounds like there should be a third rendering; a command used for
dogteams, obviously rooted in the same sense "go, move on"......_if_
from "marcher", except for the following 1762 imtimation......; sounds
also like (from the other citations below) that it can simply mean
"walking through snow" as well as driving a dog-sled....; although in
some cases below it's hard to say, given that there is no direct mention
of the dogteams; but in that climate/region it can almost be
assumed.....

>
>   [1862 R. KENNICOTT Jrnl. in J. A. James First Sci. Explor. Russian
> Amer. (1942) 130 My dogs are dogs! and we will mouche very
> likely, after all.]

Hmmm.  Kennicott's journals; hadn't expected to find it there but it's
of an obviously pre-Jargon reference and also of Prairie-French
borrowing, if any; by this I mean because the Jargon had not yet
migrated north into Alaska or the Yukon (the former being still Russian
America, the latter being pretty well completely empty other than of the
indigenous peoples there) and certainly of a different meaning than the
"to throw, to send, to eject" meaning in the Jargon.

As far as the meaning of "mouche" goes I tried at babelfish and got no
translation of the imperative form ("moucher") although I did get one at
Lernout & Hauspie's online translation service - "to fly".  At Babelfish
"mouche" comes up as "fly", which IIRC is in reference to the flying
insect; must be a lexical connection here (Yann?).  There certainly does
seem to be some sense in commanding a dogteam to "fly" (dogsleds can
reach fairly high speeds; ref. the Iditarod; to say nothing of the
sensation of hurtling through/across the snowy realms).  This
word-adaption makes a bit more sense as there is no trace of the
guttural "r" of "marcher" in "mush" (whilst there is in "mahsh")......

1897 Medicine Hat (Alberta) News 30 Sept. 7/4 It is
> laughable to hear the driver yell, ‘Mush, Mush,’ at them. 1900 J.
> LONDON Son of Wolf 5 ‘Come, mush on there, you poor sore-footed brutes!’
> he murmured. 1903 Sun (N.Y.) 22 Nov., His little boat
> was cut out, and then he started to ‘mush’ back over the ice. 1904 S. E.
> WHITE Silent Places xvii. 180 ‘Mush! Mush on!’ shouted Sam.
> The four dogs leaned into their collars. 1914 R. CULLUM Way of Strong I.
> i. 1 Five great sled dogs crouched in their harness. They were
> waiting the long familiar command to ‘mush’; an order they had not heard
> since the previous winter. 1927 Brit. Weekly 13 Jan. 409/2
> They were mushing on to a new strike. 1932 Sun (Baltimore) 15 Jan. 1/5
> Through a raging blizzard McDowell mushed a dog team the
> eighty miles to Aklavik. 1934 Beaver Sept. 26 Constable Lee and his
> Indian interpreter, Albert, came mushing up with a jingle of bells
> from Fort Providence to pay their annual visit to trappers in the bush.
> 1947 Mazama Dec. 6/2 Norris left Mt. McKinley Park station on
> 11 April and mushed his dog team to Base Camp arriving 15 April. 1963 R.
> D. SYMONS Many Trails 198 And hurry! Hurry! Before it is
> too latemush, mush onthe whip cracks hysterically. 1966 Kingston (Ont.)
> Whig-Standard 25 Feb. 12/1 There hasn't been so much
> excitement over sled-dogs in the north since Leonard Sepala mushed
> through the land of the midnight sun.

These are all post-Klondike citations, with the exception of the
Medicine Hat 1897 citation, which is pre-Klondike (on the cusp).  The
Jargon, if known at all on the Prairies at this point, would have only
been known there by the voyageurs in any case; French usages on the
Prairies are clearly French/Metis, perhaps Mitchif, even if the same
usages might be found in the Jargon; but to make a connection to the
Jargon here seems very remote.....notwithstanding, of course, the
entirely different meaning......re: prononciation see below (last)

>
>   b. transf. To travel (through snow or ice).
>
>   1898 W. N. ROBERTSON Yukon Memories 210 You think all the while you
> are nearing the top, and ‘mush on’, like viewing a ship at
> sea. 1906 ‘O. HENRY’ Four Million 106 I never got off the train since I
> mushed out of Seattle, and I'm hungry. 1958 P. BERTON
> Klondike Fever 19 He thought nothing of making a present of his trousers
> to a pantless native and mushing home in his red flannels. 1966
> Globe & Mail (Toronto) 24 Jan. 17/8, I then struck out to mush to the
> nearest bus stop.

Berton is both a Yukoner and also of French ancestry (don't think he
spoke it as a youngster, however, even if he might now); this only by
way of comment as he learned the term, of course, in its Yukon/Klondike
cultural demesne......
>
>
>   Hence mushing vbl. n.
>
>   1904 Prof. Papers U.S. Geol. Survey No. 20. 15 In ‘mushing’, the best
> progress is made in relatively cool weather. 1930 W. N.
> ROBERTSON Yukon Memories viii. 114 There is a lingering feeling that the
> monotonous mushing along has not been devoid of its
> pleasures. 1966 Kingston (Ont.) Whig-Standard 25 Feb. 12/1 Wilfrid
> Charles is regarded as a sure-pop betting cinch to retain the
> mushing title.

"monotonous mushing along" doesn't sound much like dogsled travel; more
like slogging through the snow w. snowshoes....
> ------
>
> The 1862 quote raises the question whether mush was at that time
> pronounced moosh: wouldn't that throw a different light on things?

Sure does.

MC