Ring-eyed fit

Posted by Pamela on October 11, 2007

In Reply to: Ring-eyed fit posted by ESC on October 10, 2007

: : : : Has anyone ever heard of the origin of "a ring-eyed fit"? My boyfriend uses it & I've never heard this phrase before.

: : : Is your boy friend from Tennessee, or Appalachia? The only uses of the phrase that I found were by a blogger from Tennessee. His wife warns about the effect of a smoking ban in the Jefferson County Nursing Home in East Tennessee. 'There are not a few of these folks, in her words, who will throw "a ring-eyed fit" if not allowed to smoke a cigarette.'

: : : The same blogger also writes, "Apparently, so does [Governor] Bredesen, or he and his staff would not be throwing a ring-eyed fit, as they have done in the waning hours leading up to the final enactment of the new ethics Law."

: : : That's all she wrote.
: : : SS

: :
: : Is the idea that when you go really bolty-eyed the whites of your eyes show in a ring all the way round the iris?(VSD)

: I really like that. All I could find was that a ringeye is a type of goose. Don't know if there is a connection.

"Eye rings" (i.e. coloured rings around the eyes) are common in fish and birds (and hence the "ring-eyed goose", the "ring-eyed hawkfish", "ring-eyed dove" and so forth). I did find a famous "Ring-eye" in the US - the horse that belonged to Smiley Burnett. There is a picture of the horse if you go to (smileyburnette.org/ Smiley/history.html) and click on the "Ring-eye" link. The page says:
"Smiley's horse also became famous first as "Black Eyed Nellie", then "Ring Eyed Nellie", and finally shortened to just "Ring Eye".

From the page he seems to have been perfoming in the 30's but he was later in Petticoat Junction (which was shown here in Australia right through the 1970s in re-runs). This may or may not have anything to do with the phrase - but the notion has been around for that long at least. Pamela

There's an article "Etymology of Selected Medical Terms Used in Radiology: The Mythologic Connection" by Christos S. Georgiades, which says that Cyclopes is Greek for ring-eyed. This has no relevance to the question being asked, but the article was interesting enough (and has good pictures) for me to menition it. www.ajronline.org/ cgi/content/full/178/5/1101
Pamela