Responses from collectors - please drop a line to glassmaster@pre-pro.com to have your comments added:
| Tahj Gomes
notes that the phrase "Going back" means betrayal.
Thus the glass celebrates word play - the fat man has physically "gone back"
on his friend (presumably as a result of too much to drink) and in so doing
has betrayed him by sending him flying into the dirt. (I has always
thought that the thin man has a fish flying from his hand it may just be a
puddle splash?). |
| Gary responds: ...as for the drunk large man falling on a smaller man, that one is harder to crack. The word "on" in older English and American regional speech can mean "for". The expression "waiting on a friend" is still heard in the South, for example, and in England to this day - think of the Rolling Stones' song from the 1970's, "Waiting On A Friend". So, the legend may mean, the stout man is going back to help or save his friend, maybe to retrieve him from the bar they both were drinking in. I agree with you that the thin man seems to be holding a fish. That could be a visual metaphor for being "under the water" - being drunk. Maybe the two were supping beside a lake and the thin man fell in. But in trying to save the thin man, from drowning or drinking any more in a bar, the fat man makes the situation worse by smothering him. Therefore there may be a play on words here, and your other reader who suggested the idea of betrayal may be right too: there is in other words an attempt at rescue but it fails and possibly achieves the oppsoite result - proof of the folly of over-drinking. It is hard to know for sure, of course. I find that meaning, both verbal and pictorial, changes more than we realise over a period of 100 years or so. |