I was in St. Paul on Monday, meeting with my companies regional manager for Minnesota/N. Dakota. After telling him a story about an incident I observed, he laughed and said “Now I’ve heard it all. Now I can go to Sheboygan and die!”. What? I was stunned! What the hell does that mean? I begged for an explination, but all I got was that it was a Minnesota expression. I’ve never, ever heard anyone say that before. It makes no sense!! I’ve been to and met many folk from Minn., and have never heard this.
But here is the zinger(it’s a big one): I WAS BORN IN SHEBOYGAN!!! No kidding!
I spent part of my life there, and still have oodles of relatives living there. None of us ever said or even heard this saying. Anyone ever heard this goofy phrase before, and most of all, what the hell is it suppose to mean??
I am Baffled!!!
Can’t really help you but it kind of sounds Irish/Celtic ( it wouldn’t be spelt like that ) . I’m terrible at my native language :o .
There are other posters here from Ireland . Well one Irish and one American but the American ( ruadh ) knows a good bit of Irish ( even more embarrassing ) and may be able to help you.
I’m from Minnesota, and I’ve never heard that one.
What about this one. When one stays at an affair until its over or stays up really late it is said that one “stayed until the last dog was hung”. Anybody ever heard that one? I’ve never been able to figure out its origin.
For centuries, there was a common saying, “See ROme and die.” The idea was, the city of ROme is so magnificent, so splendid, that it was all anyone could hope for to see such a place before he died. In ancient times, once I’d seen the splendors of Rome, I had seen everything, and could die happy.
Well, Sheboygan Wisconsin is a nice, small, ordinary, average, boring midwestern town. Equating Sheboygan with Rome is a wry joke- as if to say, “I’m such a country boy, such a yokel, even Sheboygan seems like a glorious metropolis to me.”
Sheboygan/Cheboygan is an word in the Ojibwa dialect of the Algonquin language. (It may mean “water of the Ojibwa” but no one is sure.) Any relationship to Celtic or the Gaels is coincidental (unless you believe that Brendan and his monks left some Irish-speaking babies behind).
Just a WAG about the “last dog is hung” phrase: My Teutonic/Nordic ancestors used to hang criminals from trees and let them dangle there like rotten fruit. Thieves used to be hanged along with two dogs, which in some way that I don’t understand added insult to injury. Perhaps someone who was waiting 'til the last dog was hung stayed not only to see a miscreant put to death but also the final ignomy associated with it?
