Re: Survival langauge

On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 12:12:53 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Tony Cooper <tony_cooper213@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> And mine is that Dan is the name of his pack horse or mule. The
>> lyrics posted say "an old Dan", but see:
>> http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/pages/tiRIDEPNT;ttRIDEPNT.html
>> where it says "I'm leadin' old Dan".
>>
>> Songs are so often passed along by being heard, and there are often
>> slight changes in the lyrics.
>
>Looking at published lyrics on Amazon, I see thirteen books that have
>some variation of "ride an old Paint" and "lead an old Dan", seven
>that have some variation of "ridin' Old Paint" and "leadin' Old Dan",
>and one that's "ride an old paint" and "leading old Dan".

Note how - sound-wise - "leadin' old Dan" could be heard as "leadin'
an Old Dan". Slur the "in'" part, and you have an extra "an" sound.

>Unfortunately, none of them seem to be in discussions of the song, so
>I can't shed any light on which is the earlier form. But most seem to
>assume that either "Paint" and "Dan" are both types of horses or both
>names of specific horses.

Names, I think. "Paint" is a common name for a pinto.

I'm conjecturing just as we all are.

--


Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL
.

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