To clarify: the sense of “concealed black ancestry” makes it a very strange construction, where “nigger” is literal, but “woodpile” is metaphorical. It seems more likely to me that the earlier meaning was entirely metaphorical, and that the half-literal meaning was attached later, when the colloquialism was established but perhaps the metaphor was anachronistic and obscure.
I’ve been looking at instances of the phrase in Google Books. Interestingly, many of them are in transcripts of Congress/Parliament in the US, UK, and Australia.
I heard it for the first time some 10 or so years ago. It was explained to me as an expression for a little black ancestry. And that it was an olde-timey phrase.
I first learned the phrase in grade school. We had a very old music book out of which we sang selected songs. One gave the above phrase as one of the verses in “Skip to My Lou”. IIRC it came after “Flies in the ointment, skip to my lou”. This would have been in the early sixties, and we never sang that verse.
I never heard it used in any sense other than “an undisclosed problem”. Never to refer to having a black ancestor, but I didn’t hear the phrase used a lot.
Regards,
Shodan
I have a sense in the UK that this phrase may have maintained currency in the upper classes far later than we’d like to think. No doubt Anne Marie Morris had heard it and perhaps used it herself within her family or private social circles, and it just escaped the filters on this occasion.
That would be consistent with it being expunged from books or journalism where any editorial oversight (or self-censorship) is present; but escaping the filters in parliament, where the transcripts usually represent unedited speech.
Interesting. I grew up in a somewhat rural area in Missouri in the 70s and 80s and haven’t heard that phrase that I recall. Casual racism was pretty common in my circles, but I seem to have somehow missed that one.
I’ve heard that phrase only once, but I can’t vouch for its authenticity. My recollection:
In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter’s embarrassing younger brother Billy became a media celebrity, once Carter had won the election and it was safe to show him in public. Supposedly in one of his appearances a black chap, whose name was also Carter, quipped that they might be related. Billy’s response was pretty much the phrase in the OP.
At least that’s the story I heard, but I didn’t see the news or print report myself.
I don’t know if US usage parallels the UK, but it strikes me as a somewhat “literary” expression, or one associated with the dialect of the upper classes - something that I would have expected to hear from Bertie Wooster, not a coal miner. Not that the working classes were any less racist, just that doesn’t sound to me like working class vernacular.
I’m 67 and grew up in Oregon. My father used this phrase when I was a child a couple of times that I can remember, always in this literal sense (I always thought that the “woodpile” was where the fellow was hiding after having his way with some female ancestor, until he could get way. I’m guessing now that really isn’t it.)
Random notes: I heat with wood and coal, and used to cut a lot of my own wood. Too old now, I buy it instead.
There are numerous hardwoods that make excellent firewood, but black walnut is not one of them. It’s okay, but usually not worth the bother of cutting.
So if you see a nice woodpile of mixed hickory, ash, oak, etc. (all very light in color) but then see a piece of black walnut in the middle . . . well that would not be good.
A digression, if I may.
Are black walnuts the ones with a shell so thick they are only good for squirrels?
I’ve heard of it, thought the meaning was “something fishy” and that it was probably a reference to the Underground Railroad.
I don’t think it’s particularly an upper class issue over here. There are plenty of lower-class racists.
That seems like the most likely origin.
A land owner suspects that someone is hiding on their property. Maybe in the barn, or some other utility building. I guess they could hide in the wood pile or haystack.
The expression means you suspect something isn’t right.
It covers a lot of situations besides a person’s racial background.
Yes, I would say so. They don’t taste nearly as good as English walnuts (somewhat bitter as I remember) and the black juice that comes off the husk will stain your hands for days. I have tons of BW trees in and around the yard, and the squirrels go “nuts” over them in the fall.
I’ve never heard it before. And I thought suspect ancestry was blamed on the milkman ?!
I can spot the irony there in Geisel’s art, you cant?
I guess neither can that blogger. :rolleyes:
I always heard it as “something not quite right, something off that is hidden”.
It was apparently an acceptable term in Britain in 1896 when Joseph Conrad wrote The Nigger of the Narcissus. Of course, that was 120 years ago. It appears that it was not a derisive term in Britain at the time, though; and the guy is West Indian, not African.
I’ve heard the phrase, but not in the last 40 years. It was usually in the context of “there’s an unidentified someone who’s screwing things up.”
Neither did all the potential bidders. Care to enlighten all of us?