Well, maybe it was "old speckled 'en."
CR
On 5/4/2011 8:47 AM, David Breneman wrote:
> --- On Wed, 5/4/11, Paul Hunt<paul.hunt1 at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>> Makes no difference, it was the 'hen'
>> part I was questioning.
>>
> Me, too. I didn't want to add to the confusion. The
> first time I heard "Ol' Speckled 'Un" was in the literature
> for the beer, so I assumed that "'un" was a colloquial
> pronunciation for "hen", since I had heard "Old Speckled
> Hen" years before the beer came out. "Old speckled one"
> makes no sense without the definite article "the", but
> "Old Speckled Hen" refers to a well-known fairy tale,
> and so it make much more sense as a nickname. That was
> the gist of my inquiry. All this rationalizing doesn't
> make it the proper etymology of the phrase, but it
> explains my surprise at hearing "Old Speckled ONE" for
> the first time, here.
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