Just to comment on this, which is probably really a hijack, but plenty of letters in the past were dictated by illiterate people. You certainly could take advantage of written communication through the mail and otherwise without being literate yourself.
Transcripts are here. They’re really helpful.
I’d like to know the translation of “farp”. Was it someone’s name or a slam? Is “farp” Cornish or Irish or Gaelic (whatever they were speaking) for “cocksucker”?
I actually agree with the OP, and was thinking of starting a thread about this. Last night, the “fucking cocksucking motherfucking fuck” talk was a bit over the top.
FUCK! FUCKITY FUCK FUCK!
However, what I fucking really want to fucking know is when fuck became the fuckin’ defacto fuckin’ curseword in this fuckin’ country? Was the fuckin’ frontier the fucking cocksucking motherfuckin’ womb for this fucking pissass word?
Jesus, last night made me wonder if they could say hello without saying FUCKING HELLO, CUNT BAG! I was waiting for the children in the class to recite “fucking school fucking blows fucking squarehead cock.”
It did distract me a bit.
By the way, the only thing worse than all the FUCKS in Deadwood is the patented Bullock stare.
That skinny prick ever stared at any REAL frontier man, Bullock would be his bitch.
Fuckface.
I suspect this comic would be funnier if I watched the show.
Still pretty funny, though.
As someone who swears more than your average sailor-turned-pimp, yes, it is quite over the top.
At least, I think so.
-Joe
My interpretation, based on the other presumably nonsense phrases being uttered by the provocateur and the fact that he referred to the Cornismens’ “gibberish”, is that it was just a made up word mocking the sound of the Cornish language. A time-honored technique of bar room xenophobe bullys everywhere.
- Tamerlane
Actually I think we have Martin Scorcese and Quentin Tarantino to thank for the ascendancy of that particular curse word in popular media.
Before those guys came along, I belive “Goddamn” would have been the more popular choice.
I belive Deadwood’s use of “fucking” as an intensifier (as opposed to a verb) is an anachronism.
You are misremembering that scene. The shooter in that scene is not a drunk, but the bartender, who mistakenly shot a man he thought was the man who pissed on him, and whom he warned not to come back or he’d get shot.
Hickock is killed by the gambler with a droopy eye, but I don’t recall if he was drunk at the time or not, or if he said anything flowery in his defense.
Fuckin’ cite? 
Sorry. Had to.
I think we have Samuel L. Jackson to thank for consenting to be QT’s chosen instrument and for popularizing its matrilineal variations.
That, and “bitch.”
I knew somebody would demand a goddamn cite.
Hard to produce one since these words didn’t show up much in print in the old days.
I can tell you that all the old-time cussers I have known (who would be in their 80s and 90s now) used “goddamn” as an intensifier. “Fuck” was used much more rarely, and then only as a verb.
Here’s a second-hand cite:
Milch admits that the swearing is anachronistic to a point but since he is going for flowery yet realistic dialogue having the characters say “Goddamn” and “that’s a lot of apple sauce” does’t have the power to modern audiences as a good FUCK and COCKSUCKER.
Wouldn’t it be difficult to find publications from that era that had any salty language? The F word has been around for a long time (according to the experts), but I don’t think I saw it in print until the 50’s. (The 1950’s) 
Heck, Victorian novelists and journalists didn’t even write damn; it was d----. They might make reference to a character who used unsavory language, but they never told us what was said.
Seems like it’d be hard to prove, one way or the other, about the F word in the old west.
I can understand that reasoning, but for my own part the anachronism is so jarring that it interferes with my enjoyment of the show. I may be a crank on this subject.
(My objection is historical, not puritan, by the way. I love a good Scorcese movie as much as the next guy. Fuckin’ A.)
The circumstantial and anecdotal evidence pretty strongly suggests that use of “fucking” as an intensifier (and the liberal use of the f-word in general) is anachronistic. See the article linked in my previous post.
Nobody disputes that “fuck” was around as a word. The question is when it made the transition from being used strictly as a verb (e.g., he’ll fuck anything that moves) to being also used as an intensifier (e.g., hand me the fucking gun).
I like how E.B uses the flowery language to make him sound as intelligent as his peers, but just comes across as a hick with no real grasp of the finer details.
Oh. In that case, I’m not the one misremembering the scene. I’m talking about the scene with the droopy-eyed guy (the actor later played some henchman from back East) who killed Wild Bill. Somebody provided the supposed actual dialogue and I took their word for it.
As I recall it, the shooter was a sorry character and falling down drunk at the time, thus my contention that he shouldn’t sound like Hamlet… but we’re treading the same ground here, so I’ll stop.
Miller, you know you are my favorite Doper ever, right? That for almost six years I’ve been reading your posts and you’ve always either said what I wanted to say or said something that I would never have thought of but recognized as truth? That said:
Watch this fucking show.
You and I have agreed on literature and art over and over and over again, and I tell you it’s brilliant. Watch the show.
Yes, but, you might want to rent seasons one and two before you jump into the current season. The story is very convoluted and complicated and without it the the current season will just sound like a bunch of filthy people saying the F-word over and over.
The confusion is partly my fault. The character who asked the sheriff about his “liability” didn’t shoot Wild Bill, he shot Bummer Dan (or Slippery Dan). I should have cleared that up. This was in the first episode of the second season.
The man who shot Bill said “Take that, damn you” as he fired, and then said nothing else. (Fourth episode, first season.)
Neither character used flowery language.
But I’m nitpicking, and I take your point. Some of the characters’ dialogue is more complex than we might expect.