Fossicker Michael O'Flynn

DESCRIPTION: "The system of fossicker Michael O'Flynn Got very much out of repair," so he travels to town to see a doctor. The doctor tells him to stop drinking and eat "nothing but animal food." When O'Flynn returns, he has lost even more weight; he cannot eat grass
AUTHOR: Words: Cornelius O'Regan (source: Cleveland-NZ-GreatNewZealandSongbook)
EARLIEST DATE: 1896 (Christie, Poems of Cornelius O'Regan, according to Cleveland-NZ-GreatNewZealandSongbook)
KEYWORDS: New Zealand humorous doctor food disease
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Cleveland-NZ-GreatNewZealandSongbook, p. 74, "Fossicker Michael O'Flynn" (1 text, 1 tune)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Abdul the Bulbul Emir (I)" (tune) and references there
NOTES [159 words]: According to Elizabeth and Harry Orsman, The New Zealand Dictionary, 1994; second edition 1995 (I use the 2003 New House Publishers paperback), p. 101, the primary meaning of the verb "fossick" comes from gold mining: "Also fossick about. To search unsystematically for small amounts of alluvial gold. b. Also fossick about, fossick around. To search about, to rummage for something other than alluvial gold; to potter about."
Similarly Bruce Moore, Gold! Gold! Gold! A Dictionary of the Nineteenth-century Australian Gold Rushes, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 53, "fossick 1 To search for gold on the surface, sometimes in a desultory or unsystematic way, and sometimes on an abandoned claim or washing place; to prise out bits of gold with a knife etc.... 2 To steal gold from other diggers, especially from an unattended claim."
Thus a fossicker is generally one who searches for gold without really wanting to do the work of digging. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: Clev074

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