KACC, like most radio stations, has started in on the Christmas music. Which is fine – as with everything they do, it’s a good mix of classics, lesser known works, and local artists. One song that’s gotten some play is a swingy version of “Jingle Bells” by what sounds to me like a local group (I don’t recognize the voice, and hadn’t heard this particular tune anywhere else before now). Something about it bugged me the first time I heard it, and yesterday as I drove back to work from lunch, I realized what it was: During the main verse, the singer croons “Bells and bobtails ring…”
Okay. How many of you out there know what a “bobtail” is? Show of hands, please. You, there, in the back. Yes, that’s right: A bobtail, at least in this context, is a horse – see, for example, the line from Camptown Races: “Bet my money on the bobtailed nag/Somebody bet on the bay.”
Makes sense, right? You’re in a one-horse open sleigh, so there’s a horse in this song. That horse is a bobtail. It has bells on, hence the correct line “Bells ON bobtails ring”. Bobtails don’t ring, but bobtails who have bells on do. It’s all so simple.
OK, I feel better now. Please go about your business, nothing more to see here.
UPDATE: There is one more thing to see here – the comments, in which I get out-pedanted.
Heh. I can’t listen to Clandestine sing “Tins of Morphine” without cringing when they tank on the phrase “My husband and I are rolling in faith”. I know the original is hard to hear, but the point is that he can’t talk about killing himself underground if he’s trapped in a mine collapse.
Roman in faith, Jen. Roman, as in Catholic.
<ahem>
“Bells on bobtail,” please — singular, not plural.
After all, it’s a ONE horse open sleigh. Just ask Mr. Pierpont.
Crispy, you have restored my faith. I always suspected that no matter how pedantic I might get, someone would do me one better. Thank you for fulfilling that role today. 🙂
Oh, and you’re quite right. I’ll make a correction.
A bobtail is a style of horse grooming. Specifically, it is when the tail is gathered and tied up in a bob.
Don’t know so much about horses, but from my days driving wheat trucks and following the wheat harvest I do remember that a bobtail truck is one with a single drive axle in back as opposed to the more common dual axle drive trucks.
The thing about tying up the horses tail makes sense as you wouldn’t want a tail in the face in a small sleigh.