You may be wondering where the name originated.  It might be a
Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train.  One
man says, "What's that package up there on the baggage rack?"
	And the other answers, "Oh, that's a MacGuffin."
	The first one asks, "What's a MacGuffin?"
	"Well," the other man says, "it's an apparatus for
trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands."
	The first man says, "But there are no lions in the
Scottish Highlands," and the other one answers, "Well then, that's
no MacGuffin!"
	So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.

		-- Alfred Hitchcock as quoted in
		   François Truffaut's book "Hitchcock"