Harmon’s Histories: Alas, the gleeful history of America’s whiffenpoofs

By Jim Harmon

“The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary,” says the online Merriam-Webster dictionary.

That’s strange. I know this word. It’s been around for decades, more than a century, in fact. How can it not be in a dictionary?

I fear the answer is age – my age in particular (as I’m just a couple of clicks shy of four score).

Oh, to have an OED handy.

My wife, however, has nixed the expenditure: “What’s an OED?” she asked. Once I explained it was an Oxford English Dictionary ... and described its girth, she proclaimed, “It’s too big.” “It’s too expensive.” “Where do you propose to put the thing?” “It probably needs a special stand, doesn’t it? That’s not happening!”

My response, of course, was a courteous, “Yes dear.”

So I plod along without the proper tools. The word in question is whiffenpoof and the website with all the answers is, of course, https://www.whiffenpoofs.com/history.

But before we check out that source, let’s explore other uses of the word.

According to Wikipedia (since Merriam-Webster is of no use), “Whiffenpoof can refer to an imaginary or indefinite animal, like "the great-horned whiffenpoof,” a "water-dwelling, food-gobbling" creature of some sort.

“It’s also been described in a comic page as a multi-legged, aggressive spotted quadruped.”

"The whiffenpoof" apparently is much sought after - so much so that numerous newspapers of the past have printed stories about how to capture the creature.

One account recommends using peanuts as bait. You must row a boat out to the middle of a lake, place the bag of peanuts atop a 2-by-4 along with a pail of mortar, and wait patiently. The whiffenpoof will smell the peanuts, pull down the bag, spilling mortar all over himself resulting in death by “mortarfication!”

"Whiffenpoof," according to en.wikisource.org, “has also been used as a joking, fictitious name for a member of the upper crust.”

“A 1922 Philadelphia newspaper columnist wrote of an opera performance attended by "Mrs. T. Whiffenpoof Oscarbilt, Mr. and Mrs. Dudbadubb Dodo and [their] three dashing daughters who have just finished a term at Mrs. Pettiduck's School for Incorrigibles at Woodfern-by-the-Sea."

“More than 100 years ago, on a frosty January night in New Haven, Connecticut,” explains the wiki website, “five of the Yale Glee Club’s best singers convened at Mory’s Temple Bar to escape the cold.” It became their regular meeting spot from then on.

Soon, they had a significant number of followers, even though the group hadn’t given itself a name.

“Denton ‘Goat’ Fowler, tickled by a joke featuring a mythical dragonfish named the Whiffenpoof, suggested the name to his companions, who found the name an apt reflection of the atmosphere of levity that accompanied the group’s gatherings. The word quickly caught on with the group’s admirers, and the name stuck.”

“Upon the conclusion of the song's premiere at Mory's Temple Bar in 1909, the singers declared it their anthem, "to be sung at every meeting, reverently standing." In the more than one hundred years since, each class of Whiffenpoofs has sung The Whiffenpoof Song at the end of every concert.

The song has been recorded by Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and countless others. Feel free to sing along:

“To the tables down at Mory's,
To the place where Louis dwells,
To the dear old Temple Bar
We love so well,

“Sing the Whiffenpoofs assembled
With their glasses raised on high,
And the magic of their singing casts its spell.

“We are poor little lambs
Who have lost our way.
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We are little black sheep
Who have gone astray.
Baa! Baa! Baa!

“Gentlemen songsters off on a spree
Damned from here to eternity
God have mercy on such as we.
Baa! Baa! Baa!”

Jim Harmon is a longtime Missoula news broadcaster, now retired, who writes a weekly history column for Missoula Current. You can contact Jim at fuzzyfossil187@gmail.com. His best-selling book, “The Sneakin’est Man That Ever Was,” a collection of 46 vignettes of Western Montana history, is available at harmonshistories.com.