This title bothers me: It is one of pibroch’s unsolved mysteries. No-one has come up with a convincing interpretation. There are two dogs in Colin Campbell’s Instrumental Book 1797: ‘Samuell’s Black dog’ (PS 108) and ‘McLeod’s Dog Short Tail’ (PS 131), but we know nothing about either of them. In my post Sorley’s Black Dog, I explained why it is more likely that we are dealing with […]
dog
Sorley’s Black Dog
The children’s game ‘Telephone’ (called ‘Chinese whispers’ in the UK) can have hilarious results. It works best when the seed phrase is unexpected. The same is true in oral transmission: bigger changes occur when the model is unfamiliar. If no template exists in the listener’s memory, then the closest fit can produce a laugh. The prize for the funniest garbling of a pibroch name […]