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Dappled. Today during my walk, the forest floor was dappled with sunshine filtering through the leaves. Not to be too much of a girly-girl, but it was so pretty. :-)
The cowboys had a ton of colorful phrases and terms.
Walking was "shank's mare"; a cowboy without a horse was afoot and dependent on his own shanks to get around.
Sometimes the word afoot became word play; a cowboy without a horse wasn't a cowboy. He was called a foot.
A buckaroo is a pure quill cowboy. He refuses to do ground work. Ground work is any work that requires getting off a horse to do.
"Pure quill" is slang for the genuine article- the real deal, the right stuff.
A buckaroo rode a saddle called a rim-fire rig. It only had one cinch, which made the saddle lighter and more flexible in use, but less secure than a center-fire rig with two cinches. When a horse began bucking, a center-fire was easier to stay on, but in daily use, is more tiring for the horse. So an expert buckaroo, a real horseman, was sometimes called a "Rimmy" in admiration of his abilities.
Or he was called a "Daisy". That term came from the best maker of rim-fire saddles. The company used a distinctive metal stamp shaped like a daisy on it's leatherwork. The saddles became known as a Daisy Mae.
Since a cowboy was expected to own his own rig- a saddle and bridle, but not a horse, everything on a rig became important and said a lot about the person. The buckaroo often used a hackamore- a bitless bridle that uses a hard leather braided noseband connected to hand-braided horsehair ropes (called McCarthys or reatas) to control the horse. Anyone who used a hack was a respected pure-qull horseman of the highest caliber.
So was a horseman who used a full spade bit with 'crickets'- copper rollers in the bit that lay against the horse's tongue. The copper rollers taste good to the horse, and make the horse salivate.
A horse with a wet mouth is happy as a dry bit chafes the mouth, and when the cricket is chirping, the horse very happy; the horse is entertaining itself with the bit.
The spade bit is the most punishing bit of them all, but punishment isn't the purpose of the design. They are placed in the most sensitive part of the horse's mouth, and the horse is educated slowly with them. Once the horse is accustomed to the bit, it's like adding power steering and power brakes to the animal.
"Jingle-bob" was a term for a cowboy who loved his fancy dress and trappings.
A jingle-bobs are little lumps of hard metal suspended on a tiny chains on either side of a spur's rowel. The bobs were anything from a simple steel washer or a lead bullet slug to a sculpted silver droplet.
The rowels had many different names that would also be used to describe the men who wore them. The English style spur, which has no rowel, was universally disdained.
A 4-pointed rowel was a 'stabber', a 5-pointed rowel was a 'Federal', because it resembles a 5-pointed star, and a 7-pointed rowel was called a "Lucky".
Not all rowels are sharp. Larger rowels with many points are more merciful than small rowels, while others have rounded shapes like flower petals. Those who wore them were sometimes called Quakers, Real Gentlemen, or Mercies. (sometimes in admiration, sometimes derision.)
A Lucky spur was often ornamented with inlaid silver playing cards or dice. A Lady's Leg spur had a shank cut out to resemble a woman's leg, often wearing a garter and high heels. Other shanks were forged to resemble snakes, pistols, figure-eights, guitars, and other fancy designs.
When the foot moves, the jingle-bobs make the rowel chime when struck, making the spur go jingle-jangle (another cowboy term).
The big bandanna buckaroos wore were never called bandannas. A bandanna was the item one used to blow his nose, The scarf worn around the neck was called a wild rag.
The cowboy's hat didn't always have a chinstrap to hold it on, but when it did, the strap was called a 'stampede string'. In normal use, the stampede string went to the back of the head, not the front. it was only when the wind was high the string was worn at the front of the head, and almost always was never tight against the chin.
If a hat blew off, the string just prevented the hat from blowing away. The hat went back on the head when there was a moment that could be used to re-set it.
Lot of good "cowboy slang" there. I love the phrase "All hat, no cattle."
Thanks.
There are a lot of other professions that have their own words and terms, but cowboys have been mythologized for so long by Hollywood I thought folks might be interested in learning some of the actual words and dialog they used.
Some movies got the slang right. True Grit, Lonesome Dove both captured the formality of cowboy speech, and Tombstone really hit the mark. One of the interesting things about them was their love of fancy words. Erudition was a rare treat to listen to when there were so few people around and they all got to know each other so well.
Anything that would relieve the tedium was welcomed.
" She's so fine, there's no tellin' where the money went "
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