swug
Yesterday, Sumana told me about Martin Van Buren’s anti-Harrison campaign song from the 1840 US presidential election.
Harrison’s slogan and campaign song was, famously, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” (because Harrison had been a military leader at the battle of Tippecanoe). Van Buren’s campaign song was to the tune of “Rockabye, Baby,” and the first verse goes like this:
Rockabye, baby, Daddy's a Whig
When he comes home, hard cider he'll swig
When he has swug
He'll fall in a stu
And down will come Tyler and Tippecanoe.
I suspect this may be the only instance of the word swug (as the past tense of swig) in American political history, but that’s not easily searchable, so I may be wrong. Either way, I was amused.
