Because you just can’t shiver too many timbers, Jim-Lad.
I had no idea that “hornswoggle” was a pirate term. That seems like a dubious attribution to me. The only time I’ve ever heard it is in old westerns. Collins online says it is peculiar to American English, and Google’s N-Gram viewer shows no instances of the word having appeared in print before 1907.
I guess this is pirate like behavior. I’ve been reading one of the two latest books on Charles Manson called Hunting Charles Manson: The Quest for Justice in the Days of Helter Skelter. It came out in 2018 only about 6 months after Manson died, so some might criticize it as a ‘fast make a buck book.’
The author, Lis Wiehl, however is also a lawyer and former prosecutor (although she became a Fox ‘News’ legal analyst) but she had, for instance, attended Manson family parole hearings for a number of years.
She said that she wrote the book as part of a planned book series on high profile court cases that she would use to describe the legal system in the United States and how it’s evolved or how it still has long-standing problems. I think the book is best read by those familiar with the case but aren’t internet obsessed Mansonfiles looking for some details to be cleared up. Of course, in most cases, the details won’t ever be cleared up because it’s a matter of which of the defendants you choose to believe (Wiehl seemed to be most sympathetic to ‘Tex’ Watson’s claims.) However, for instance, as a small detail, she mentions that Bugliosi called 84 witnesses during the penalty phase of the trial.
Since much of Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter is about the trial mostly going over witness testimony in chronological order, I thought it was odd that Bugliosi didn’t provide a list of all those who provided testimony. He also mentioned that he initially wanted to call about 100 witnesses, but in light of how long the trial was expected to take and not wanting to annoy the jury too much, he said that he was able to pair it down to ‘around 80.’
Anyway, I’ve never read the first non quickie book published, Ed Sanders’ The Family, but I’ve read a number of others, all of whom mention, with the exception of Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, that sometime when Manson was in prison from 1960-1967, that Manson served for a time with a musician and recording engineer who knew a music producer in Los Angeles, and that after getting out of prison, the recording engineer promised to tell this producer about Manson (which he did do, and Manson went to see him right after getting out of jail.)
While reading this book over the weekend, I also saw the movie Grand Theft Parsons, a semi fictional account of the true story of Gram Parsons’ road manager who stole Parsons’ body in order to burn it in Joshua Tree. Some reading this, if anybody reads this, may know where I’m going.
The name of the recording engineer who tried to help Manson get a record contract is Phil Kaufman. The name of the Gram Parsons’ former road manager is Phil Kaufman. They are one and the same person. I knew that Gram Parsons’ body had been stolen for a long time (it’s probably as legendary a story as Melvin Dummar and Howard Hughes) but I had no idea of this connection to Manson.
Phil Kaufman pirated Gram Parsons’ body in 1973, while Bugliosi had Helter Skelter published in 1974. I wonder if Kaufman’s minor celebrity status around that time had anything to do with Bugliosi not mentioning Manson’s first hope for a record contract in his book.
According to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, the word “hornswoggle” appears in a book called Beginnings of American English, dated 1829, where it is defined as “to embarrass irretrievably.” Indications appear that it may have originated in or around post-Revolutionary Kentucky–so, something Davy Crockett might have uttered. (As in, “People who actually believe I wore a coonskin cap have been hornswoggled.”) Like you, I fail to find any kind of pirate connection.
Correction to the above: It was Daniel Boone who was on record as disliking coonskin caps. Sorry, Fess,