This might be a GQ, but I know there is an old blues song, I think its name is “At the Circus,” where there is a line about how you get into the circus when you don’t have a cent: You have to carry water for the elephant. The singer carried water “till his back was bent, but he couldn’t fill up that elephant.” So I thought it might be related to this question.
I ran into this as a phrase while going through old newspapers from the pre-Depression 20th century, and as used it seemed to be a euphemism for something–but I don’t know what. I won’t say it was pervasive but the second time I ran into it I googled it the phrase, and found an even older quote, from a newspapers in Marietta, Oklahoma, in 1896, saying that so-and-so had gone to Ardmore to carry water to the elephant.
This is exactly how it was used in the other old newspapers. ???
I’m pretty sure that the only elephants ever in Ardmore came through with the circus. And somehow I don’t think the 1896 newspaper was implying that so-and-so didn’t have a nickel–although maybe it was.
The song, FWIW, seems to be a straightforward account of a visit to the circus, with a good deal of emphasis on the trouble taken to effect entry, but it did have a lot of other verses. Not to say that it couldn’t also have been interpreted metaphorically.
Anybody know what this could have meant? Guesses and speculation welcome, but facts better.