I have no knowledge of Cowbuck but if someone can hum a few bars, Julian Leidman will create a dance for it.

What are they? I have no idea; I have never heard or read about them, until now. If I had to guess, whether close or not -- here is goes:

• The buck stops here.
• Have you got 10 bucks?

Buck is a shortened nickname for a buckskin -- a deer hide. During the fur trade days of early America it was probably worth a dollar or so. So, we called a dollar a buck, and still do!

Maybe, really maybe, if they didn't have a deer skin for sale, maybe they had a cow skin for sale? Maybe not worth as much; maybe more; I have no idea. But, it may have had a different value in trade.

So, if this whole cowbuck thing is not a bunch of bunk, then, here is a possible explanation. Of a somewhat different means of trade, eh? I know, it is stretching it.

William Parsons Winchester (1801 – 1850) was an extremely prosperous merchant whose business was a sutlery, or provisioner, to the U.S. Navy. He was commissioned Colonel in the First Corps of Cadets, an honorary militia at the service of the Governor of Massachusetts.

“Cowbuck” is a likely corruption of the obsolete term cowbeck, a hat made of animal fur or hair fibers. The hat was named for the town of Caudebec in Normandy, France, where it is thought to have originated, and subsequently exported to England, where it was Anglicized to the eponymous “cowbeck.” It’s not a long stretch to assume that Winchester, born in the then very British town of Boston, knew the term and may have applied it, in the corrupted “cowbuck” form, to describe an item of apparel his firm supplied to the Navy.

In support of this hypothesis, I found the following definition in Supplement to Craig’s Universal Dictionary, P. Austin Nuttall, LL.D., London, 1864:

CowBECK, kow'bek, ». A mixture of wool and hair used in the manufacture of hats.