Transcript of “That Beats Bobtail and Bobtail Beats the Devil”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Byron Rowe.
Hi, Byron. Where are you calling us from?
Jacksonville, Florida.
We’re glad to have you, Byron. What’s on your mind today?
Well, I listened to your show and it piqued my interest because as I listen, I think of things that I heard in my upbringing from my mother, usually.
And there was something that she used to say, and I wanted to see what you all thought about it.
Fire away.
So if she heard something or experienced something that really kind of astonished her or kind of took her aback, she would say, oh, if that don’t beat all.
But sometimes if it was really something amazing or something that really took her for a loop, she would say, that beats Bobtail and Bobtail beats the devil.
And I never gave it much thought when I was a child.
I just listened to it.
But as an adult remembering it, I just kind of wonder what she was talking about when you say that beat Bobtail and Bobtail beats the devil.
What is Bobtail?
Because I thought nothing beat the devil.
I was just wondering what that could mean.
Yeah, you’ve got the order of events there.
Usually nothing beats the devil, but if it’s something extraordinary, it would be extraordinary for something to beat the devil.
And bobtail in this case is a horse.
You trim the tail of a horse so that the hair is all short, and that’s a bob, just like a woman can get a bob, which means a short haircut.
So the bobtail often was a horse nickname or an actual name for a horse, and you can find it in old horse racing records.
Bobtail came in second in such and such race or so forth.
And so, yeah, it’s just the idea here that this horse is named Bobtail,
And Bobtail’s amazing, and Bobtail beat the devil.
But whatever we’re talking about right now, this exciting event, this beats both of them.
Okay.
There was a bit of folklore that came out of this, African-American folklore,
That tells a story where Bobtail isn’t a horse, but is a rabbit who beats the devil
And tricks the devil into giving the rabbit the food that it wants,
The plants that it wants to eat.
But the expression is older.
It’s about 200 years than the folklore, which is substantially newer.
Huh. Interesting.
Yeah.
So it’s like to beat the band or to, like you said, to beat all.
Don’t that beat all?
Doesn’t that beat everything?
Yeah, but how did bobtail, a rabbit, beat the devil?
I don’t understand that.
Yeah, were they running a race or what?
No, no. So the way this I wasn’t going to tell the story, but the way the story goes is the rabbit says to the devil, you know, let’s plant our crops together and you can have the bottom of the crops and I’ll have the tops.
So the devil says, all right.
And so when it comes time to gather the crops, the rabbit had all the grain that grew above ground, and the devil didn’t have anything but roots.
So the next time the devil says, well, that’s not fair.
Let’s do this again next year, but I’m going to have the tops, and you have the bottoms.
And the rabbit says, all right, all right, let’s do that.
So the next year they raise sweet potatoes.
So the rabbit gets all the sweet potatoes, which are under the ground, and the devil gets nothing but the green parts that he can’t eat.
And the rabbit’s name was Bob Doe.
But again, that bit of folklore comes from the expression
And is not the source of the expression.
So then my mother must have been somewhat familiar with that story
Or even if she didn’t know the background, like I didn’t know the background,
She had heard the expression or the story somewhere along the way.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Somewhere along the way.
Or she could have just heard the expression without the story.
But it’s colorful, isn’t it?
Absolutely, absolutely.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate that insight.
Yeah, my pleasure.
Now I know what he was talking about.
Thanks for talking with us today, Byron.
Yes, thank you so much.
All right, take care of yourself.
Okay, all right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
