Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

I actually see a few Google Books hits that would seem to be on
target.  The earliest is from Ann Stephens's 1854 _High Life in New
York_:

   I swanny, if he didn't take me a'most off the handle with his
   consarned sweet voice and harnsome manners.  It raly was eenamost
   as good as a play, to hear him reel out the common sense and soft
   sodder about this land of liberty and old England.

(sic, modulo my own typos, of course).  There's also David Porter's
1884 _Allan Dare and Robert Le Diable:

   "Betsy Jane," said Samson, "ain't it time we heered them
   sleigh-bells?  Parson Peabody has had time enough to splice half a
   dozen couples.  When I was married it didn't take more'n half so
   long to reel out the ceremony; but nowadays, with their hifalutin
   notions, they do take uncommon long."

So it looks as though it actually was an expression in the nineteenth
century, almost certainly from the notion of reeling out cable or line
or something similar.

There we are, then. No tape-recorders or movies were harmed in the
production of this idiom: just unrolling stuff.

[...]

Maybe she's calling for a term of imprisonment, for sad infamy.  John
Lyly and Thomas Dekker published strangely similar poems towards the
end of that century, in each of which the nightingale cries, "... jug,
jug, tereu".  Lyly's bird says four jugs and Dekker's says three.

I'm not posting the links: the poems are nothing to write home about.
In fact, I wrote and killed a post about this yesterday.

Is it something to do with the nightjug?   A bird much like the
nightjar, but with a handle.

Richard Maurer wrote:
   I saw an unauthoritative note that 19th century writers
   used "jug jug" for one of the nightingale's sounds.
   Elsewhere on the web it is mentioned that the nightingale
   has a call (as opposed to a song) that resembles
   that croak of a frog.  Maybe "jug jug" is that croak.

   I've heard a nightingale; in the spring, the park rangers
   here lead evening "nightingale walks" so people can
   hear them. The song is a long and involved series of
   squeaks, chirps, and buzzes. I found a sound file --
   I'm not sure I'd transcribe any of the sounds
   as "jug" myself, but...
     http://www.dutchbirding.nl/sounds/thrush_night060603a.mp3

I hear something close to "jug jug jug jug" at 21 seconds in.
I have seen reports of a gurgle, so maybe "gurgle" is the
modern notation for "jug jug".  The question that remains for me
is whether "jug jug" is supposed to sound sweet or raucous
or gurgly.

That bird uses such a wide variety of sounds; most seem to use
just two or three.  I am reminded of a time thankfully now
in the past when a car alarm would sound off twice a week.
It was one of those alarms that cycled through a series of
annoying sounds and it would go through the whole cycle
at least twice.  To compound the annoyance, a local bird
learned that "song".  It was a little sweeter than the real
thing, but conveyed the annoyance.  Just a reminder that many
of these bird songs are territorial, so they imitate the most
threatening sounds they know.  No surprise to hear
hissing snakes, croaking frogs, screeching monkeys, and
frumious whatnots.

--                       ---------------------------------------------
Richard Maurer              To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California       of a homonym of a synonym for also.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Good idea!  The Jubjub bird is notorious for sneaking up on you when you're
not paying attention.  I think you just got lucky this time.