bamfordr wrote:
Not to throw a monkey wrench into the the excellent discussion of grammar, but according to several unknown and unpublished texts, it appears the farmer’s name was Byng Oliver MacDonaldnaill (the “naill” being silent in the Anglicised version). Named after the unfortunate Admiral, in 1757 he started using Bing instead of Byng.
He also switched to MacDonald, since everyone thought that was his real name.
In his later years, his legendary skills as a farmer were immortalized in the children’s song “Old MacDonald”, based on the D’Urfey song from 1719.
It is a lesser known fact that, in an effort to earn more in Royalties, the verse about dogs on the MacDonald farm was spun off as a separate song in the 1780’s.
To make the spun-off song much shorter and more suitable to sing at children’s parties, by January 3rd 1829, the verse “Bing Oliver MacDonald was his name-o” was shortened to “Bing O. was his name-o”. By March of 1829 the verse had been corrupted to “Bingo was his name-o”.
Hope you enjoyed this.
Not to throw a monkey wrench into the the excellen... (
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I found early in life that if you can make it sound like you know what you're talking about, people will actually believe what you say.