The etymology of the term "taw" to mean a square dance partner is
a
topic that I've seen come up before--I think both on the
rec.folk-dancing
Usenet newsgroup and on some MWSD list I used to
subscribe to--but never
with any definitive resolution.
One explanation sometimes offered is
the one alluded to by Phil
Jamison and Richard Hart, namely, that it
derives from use of
"taw" to mean a favorite marble. However, I haven't
seen any
citations of early sources to support this idea. I've only
seen
it offered as a conjecture after the actual origin of the usage
was
already obscure.
The word "taw" also occurs in the phrase or "bring
[someone] to
taw" (or "come to taw"). The precise nuance of meaning
implied
by this phrase isn't clear to me, but it seems related to
the
ideas of getting someone under control and making them toe the
line,
and perhaps by extension the idea of bringing ("dragging"?)
someone to the
altar.
You can find a long discussion of the phrase "come to taw"
on
the Mudcat Cafe site
here:
http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=50284
One of
participants quotes the Oxford English Dictionary (1989
edition) as citing
this poem from a 19th-century source:
He smiles at all the girls he
meets,
And you smile at him on the crowded streets,
Why don't you make
him 'come to taw',
I know he wants a mother-in-law.
Did this sort of
usage "come/bring to taw" lead to the use of
"taw" to mean a square dance
partner? Perhaps. But the idea
would seem more compelling if someone could
provide evidence of
any regional usage of "taw" to mean a spouse/sweetheart
outside
the context of square dancing.
(By the way, I have no idea
whether the expression "bring/come
to taw" is etymologically connected with
the phrase "toe the
line" or with the "taw line" in marbles
games.)
Another suggestion is that "seesaw your taw" is a mangling
via
oral tradition, of the French phrase "chasse autour'
(sidestep
around). I think I first read that idea in an article by
Stewart
Kramer, which you can find
here:
https://www.ceder.net/ArticleCoOp/articles/sashay.php
Personally,
I think that this explanation has more of a ring of
plausibility than the
others. What keeps me from being fully
sold on it is that I haven't yet
seen an example of the phrase
"chasse autour" (or the plural/polite form
"chassez autour",
with implied subject "vous" instead of "tu") appearing in
an
old French dance manual. I'd be interested if anybody can
cite
one.
--Jim