I hope at least some of y’all are familiar with the W.C. Handy song “Yellow Dog Blues”; if not, there are links to a couple of performances at the Mississippi Blues Travellers page Where The Southern Cross The Dog – Moorhead, Mississippi, one of those maniacally detailed investigations of historical/cultural backwaters that so appeal to me. Most of it is about the music, but I’ll quote the part that goes into the etymology of “Yellow Dog”:
The Yazoo Delta RR was nicknamed the “Yellow Dog.” The Ruleville Depot National Historic Register designation says this nickname came about because the Yazoo Delta RR’s s locomotives and rolling stock were constantly covered in yellow dust from the surrounding agricultural areas and because of the trains’ habit of regularly jumping jumping the tracks.
W.C Handy gives a different explanation for the origin of the nickname “Yellow Dog” in Chapter 6 of his autobiography.
In W.C. Handy’s version, a “blistering sun beats down upon a gang of black section hands during the late nineties [note: construction of the the Yazoo Delta Railroad began in 1897]. They are working down in Mississippi, laying the railroad tracks for the Yazoo Delta line between Clarksdale and Yazoo City. Their hammers rise and fall rhythmically as they drive the heavy spikes and sing ‘Dis ole hammer killed John Henry, won’t kill me. Dis ole hammer killed John Henry, won’t kill me.’
A locomotive, following the progress of the men, is steaming idly on the track. The letters ‘Y.D.’ are painted boldy on its coal car. A travelling salesman comes up the embankment, mops the sweat from his face, shifts a chaw of tobacco from one bulging red cheek to the other, and says: ‘Hey, boy. What in tarnation does that Y.D. stand for?’
A Negro straightens up, rubs the kink out of his back and begins to scratch his head in obvious puzzlement. ‘H’m,’ he ventures slowly. ‘Yaller Dawg, I reckon.’
The strangers eyes twinkle. He cackles softly and walks on down the track. ‘Yaller Dawg,’ he repeats under his breath. ‘that’s pretty cute, hanged if it ain’t. Yaller Dawg. Gee whiz, that’s a good one.’ The Yazoo Delta R.R. was christened The Yellow Dog.
The story was circulated and the idea spread until one branch of of the Yazoo Delta was known as the North Dog. For reasons equally suggestive, the fast, direct train from Clarksdale to Greenville was known as the Cannon Ball, while its slow-time, round-about companion between those points was called the Peavine. Negroes had nicknamed all those roads.”
I just wish our old fiend thegrowlingwolf were still around; I’m sure he would have had plenty to say.
I see what you did there with the jumping
jumping the tracks.
Is there a printers’ term for that, for the thread about widows and orphans?
This is one of those terms which I always assumed was more widely used among southerners, or at least southerners of a certain type, whatever that type may be. However, as a northerner, I only ever consciously remember hearing it in the contexts of so-called yellow dog Democrats, a throwback to the Solid South, and Yellow Dog Linux, where I am unsure if the naming is related. I’m told the use in Linux is at least in part contrastingly connected with the name Red Hat for another Linux-related thing, but I’m currently unsure whether there were also other factors involved in choosing that name.
Yellow Dog Linux ran on the old Power PC Macs. I used to run it myself; probably my favourite combination of latop hardware and OS ever. Ah me!
And, says Wikipedia, the name was immortalized in the “high-level” Red Hat package manager, yum (“Yellowdog updater, modified”). I don’t use the Red Hat family of distros myself, so I wouldn’t know.