In the famous christmas song Jingle Bells, the lyrics mention someone named “Miss Fanny Bright.” Who is Miss Fanny Bright? Was this a real person? If so, why was this person mentioned in the song?
“Two forty as his speed”? What’s that? A mile in 2 min 40 seconds?
Could be. That would be a bit over 22 mph., which sounds like a decent speed for a standardbred, (or even a trotter), when pulling a sleigh across packed snow.
I also saw that link. The song has been around for over 140 years. Surely someone, somewhere knows the truth. The local census could be a coincidence. There must be more to it.
Surely most should realize that “Jingle Bells” is not a Christmas song; its a winter song. I doubt it can be classified a carol, as the YouTube article says.
I had a kind of an idea it was 240 hoofbeats to the minute, which to my musical ear sounds like a briskly-trotting horse (march tempo with twice as many legs), but I’m no horseman.
That link also shows that Fanny Bright was not in the original song. The third verse given in the sheet music is as follows:
A day or two ago,
The story I must tell
I went out on the snow
And on my back I fell;
A gent was riding by
In a one horse open sleight,
He laughed as there I sprawling lie,
But quickly drove away.
[del]Bright Fanny[/del] Fanny Bright is in the second chorus.
- A day or two ago
I tho’t I’d take a ride
And soon Miss Fannie Bright
Was seated by my side,
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seem’d his lot
He got into a drifted bank
And we - we got up sot.
I can think of two possibilities:
[ol]
[li]Whoever wrote the song really had a girlfriend named Fanny Bright, and he included her name in the song[/li][li]He pulled the name out of the air because it fit well with the rhyming scheme and rhythm of the song[/li][/ol]
We will probably never know the correct answer, but does it really matter?
I don’t know how I missed that. I guess I just assumed the third verse was the right one because it starts the same.
I have long suspected that the name given to this girl is slightly off-color. If you look up definitions of “Fanny,” you’ll see what I mean. The singer is riding with a girl with a bright fanny? (I hope this suggestion, which I think would appeal to many literary scholars, does not violate The Straight Dope rules.)
There’s a plaque on the corner in Medford MA (on the very block where I lived for six months) stating that this song was based on sleigh races held in downtown Medford. In fact, they have a festival every year to celebrate it:
http://www.jinglebellfestival.org/index_0308.htm
If this is tue, the existence of a Fanny Bright in Connecticut is prettty irrelevant to the song, which the above claims was written in medford
The lyrics are:
Two forty, 2:40, is the bay’s speed on dry ground. It’s just saying that you should use a fast horse, not the speed of the horse pulling a sleigh through snow, a very different thing.
The reference would be to a trotting horse, one hitched to a two-wheeled sulky for racing. Two forty would be a good time for an ordinary horse. Racing horses had just begun to break two thirty in 1850.
In that case we can be pretty sure that Fanny used a metric ton of hairspray.
According to my aussie friend, ‘fanny bright’ would be the australian equivalent of ‘Pussy Galore’ (of James Bond fame) today.
I can’t help but think that that’s a mondegreen of some kind…
I learned that line of the verse as “and soon my dearest love was seated by my side.”
If the song is based around races, maybe ‘Fanny’ is a diminutive of ‘fan’, i.e., a sleigh race groupie. And a ‘Fanny Bright’ may be a nickname of such a fan.
Was ‘fan’ used as such back at the time of the origin of the song?
To be specific, a Thanksgiving song. And it’s basically about a traditional sleigh race the author’s town held each year.