How the Cow Ate the Cabbage

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Jane.

I am calling from the Central Texas Hill Country outside Austin.

Oh, nice.

Welcome to the show.

How can we help?

Thank you.

Well, I have a quandary that as a Southerner, I think I know the answer to, but I was real curious how the rest of the world would view the phrase, how the cow ate the cabbage.

How the cow ate the cabbage.

Yeah, what do you mean by that?

So if I was giving you a little bit of a talking to and setting you straight, I would tell you how the cow ate the cabbage.

And growing up, my mother used to say, I’m going to tell you how the cow ate the cabbage, and you’re not going to like what my answer is.

You’re giving them the hard, straight facts, right?

Well, you know, it’s kind of setting you straight, you know, and kind of putting you in place a little bit.

And it’s a Southernism, and everybody uses it without thought.

You know, it’s just every day.

But I thought, you know, the show coming from the West Coast and all these people calling in, I wonder what everybody else thinks about how the cow ate the cabbage.

Well, there’s a little bit to say about it.

Are you interested in a little backstory on possibly where it came from?

You bet. You bet.

All right. Just know that the term has been around since at least the 1880s.

And it almost always appears in the rustic dialogue or the speech of farmers.

And often it’s kind of offset.

It almost always means to tell somebody something they don’t want to hear or tell them something kind of unexpected.

There’s a joke about this.

So there’s a lady whose vision isn’t very good.

And she’s got this problem.

There’s a circus in town.

And one of the elephants escapes.

And it gets in her garden.

And it begins uprooting her cabbages with its trunk and eating them.

So she calls the police.

And she said, she says, Sheriff, there’s a cow in my garden pulling up my cabbages with its tail.

Remember, her vision’s not very good.

And he says, well, what’s the cow doing with him?

She says, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

And that’s how the cow ate the cabbage.

That’s how the cow ate the cabbage.

And so this anecdote, I’ve found versions of this anecdote going back almost as far as the term itself.

I wouldn’t be surprised if varieties of this story have been being passed around well before the term first appears in print.

So you don’t think it’s unique to a southern vernacular or culture?

It is, actually. I think it’s particularly from Texas and Oklahoma.

At least most of the uses that I’ve seen tend to be from the American South and tend to be from Texas and Oklahoma.

Yeah, the one that I remember was Ann Richards, Governor Ann Richards, back at the Democratic National Convention years ago, said, we’re going to tell them how the cow ate the cabbage or something like that, right?

Well, she’s a favorite of many.

I grew up in Oklahoma, and I’m now a voluntary Texan, so I guess that’s why I hear it every day.

Not a compulsory Texan, right?

You volunteered for it.

We love our Texas listeners.

Well, thank you very much.

We do have a flair.

I’ll say y’all love to talk about the way you talk.

We love getting down there.

Jane, thank you so much for the call.

We really appreciate it.

I appreciate y’all.

Love the show.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

So do cows eat cabbage?

I think they would if they’re given a chance.

I think an elephant would give it a chance.

Yeah.

Is there any notion of it having to do with explaining something in great detail, you know, telling how the cow ate the cabbage?

I think I’ve seen one or two uses of that.

But in general, it’s a thing that you don’t want to hear.

So I guess somebody going into great detail could be a thing that you don’t want to hear.

Make it even worse.

As the hard talk that Jane was talking about, the lecture from a parent or the advice that you don’t want, or somebody sent you straight to the facts.

Those are all varieties of how the cow ate the cabbage.

Great image.

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