Throughout the United States the oral tradition of telling exaggerated stories has been a popular pastime, especially during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These embellished, far-fetched accounts are most commonly known as “tall tales,” but in much of the American South they go by another name: “callin’ the dog.”
How the expression “callin’ the dog” came about to describe this vibrant tradition of exaggerated storytelling is not historically documented, but appropriately enough, there is a tall tale that explains how the phrase came into being. According to this well-known tale, recorded by S. E. Schlosser in his book Spooky South, the expression came about during the course of a storytelling competition in rural Mississippi. A group of men who had gathered on a local farm one night after work began telling stories. After a while it became clear that to hold the attention of the group, each teller would have to embellish his story even more than the one that preceded it. Finally, the man who owned the farm, seeing how this was progressing, decided to up the ante by offering one of his newborn hound pups to the man who could tell the most outrageously exaggerated story. The offer had its desired effect and the stories became increasingly more implausible. Finally, there was only one man left who had yet to tell a story. Unable to think up anything that could top the preceding man’s tale, he boldly claimed that he wasn’t very good at this sort of game because he had never told a lie before in his life. His friends were so amused by this clever response that they decided that of all of the stories that had been told that night, his was certainly the most unbelievable. His host rewarded him with the dog.
Regardless of how the expression originated, “callin’ the dog” has been a thriving Southern tradition. Several facts help to explain why the American South has historically been such a rich environment for the proliferation of oral storytelling. According to Hennig Cohen, the greatest threat to traditional folklore is the spread of mass-produced print literature. During the nineteenth century, this process was greatly inhibited in the South by combination of low literacy rates and lack of urbanization. These factors have largely disappeared during the late twentieth century as the South has experienced unprecedented growth; however, with luck, one can still hear old-timers “callin’ the dog” down in the Deep South.
Andrew Wickersham
See also Big Bear of Arkansas; Playing the Dozens; Storytelling; Tall Tales; Yarns, Yarn-spinning
Further Reading
Ford, Sarah Gilbreath. 2014. Tracing Southern Storytelling in Black and White. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Kelley, Saundra Gerrell, ed. 2011. Southern Appalachian Storytellers: Interviews with Sixteen Keepers of the Oral Tradition. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Schlosser, S. E. 2004. Spooky South: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press.
Wilson, Charles Reagan, and William Ferris, eds. 1989. Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.