Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian

Subject: Half-remembered joke
From: Hollowfox
Date: 06 Jul 01 - 12:52 PM

This has been driving me nuts for a while. My father always taught me that "One man's Mede is another man's Persian." When I quoted this to a teacher while I was in college, the teacher laughed and replied,"..said -----, when he died, very old." As I recall, the name at least sounded like one of the ancient Greek writers. Any help out there?

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Jul 01 - 01:03 PM

oh, this is VERY VERY familiar. Let me have a flashback and I'll get back to you...

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Jul 01 - 01:21 PM

Sophocles?

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Jul 01 - 02:37 PM

According to this site, it's a quote by Ogden Nash, which feels very familiar to me...

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Jul 01 - 02:39 PM

The whole shaggy dog story, or a whole shaggy dog story, is available here. Obviously I need more to do...

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 06 Jul 01 - 02:41 PM

Some people are just too too sad for words....

LTS

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: UB Ed
Date: 06 Jul 01 - 02:45 PM

Mrrzy, you are truly amazing....

So long, and thanks for all the fish...

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Jul 01 - 02:49 PM

LOL! Took me a while, but then... LOL!

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Hollowfox
Date: 06 Jul 01 - 04:05 PM

Wow, that's great! Not the name I was seeking, but great!

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Jul 01 - 04:14 PM

hmmm...many years ago, I constructed a shaggy dog story of sorts with the punch line...

"One man's mead is another man's poi, son."

It does not bear RE-constructing...but YOU may have it, free and embellish to your heart's content!

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Chicken Charlie
Date: 06 Jul 01 - 05:38 PM

"Mithridates, he died old."

Acc. to Greek legend, Mith. dosed himself with small amounts of various poisons and thereby acquired immunity. First line is "Terence, this is stupid stuff," is it not?

One man's mead is another man's poison easily warped into "one man's Mede is another man's Persian" from the reiterated line in the book of Daniel about "the law of the Medes and the Persians, which altereth not."

CC

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Hollowfox
Date: 09 Jul 01 - 09:44 AM

Thank you and bless you, Chicken Charlie, I'll sleep better tonight for knowing this! I was stupidly bluffing the teacher with a knowing laugh, as though I knew the line, so I never asked, "Who?"
Remember folks, Mudcat is the place librarians go for folklore questions when they can't find the answer at work!

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 09 Jul 01 - 11:47 AM

I was stopped on the street by a man asking directions. As I was passing on the information he grinned over my shoulder and then went on his way. Unbeknown to me he had spotted a photgrapher taking snaps of the local market square behind us.

Lo and behold the very next week there was I, in a centre spread about the imminent closure of the market, with a complete stranger grinning like a cheshire cat over my shoulder.

My wife saw the snap and asked if I recognised anyone in the picture. I considered for a while and replied

"Well, one mans me. The other mans posing one..."

(Sorry)

DtG

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Gervase
Date: 09 Jul 01 - 12:07 PM

...and then there's the punchline Come on Eileen, for which the joke is long forgotten. Anyone help (and no, I don't think the original was clean!)?

Subject: RE: Help: Half-remembered joke
From: Jacob B
Date: 09 Jul 01 - 03:37 PM

That college professor was referring specifically to a poem about Mithridates by A.E. Housman, which can be found on this page.

Subject: RE: Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian
From: GUEST,SjjSic2
Date: 25 Sep 13 - 12:55 PM

I always attributed this line to the late, great George S. Kaufman... (?)

Subject: RE: Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 25 Sep 13 - 09:29 PM

The link from July 2001 to the Housman poem seems to have died. This one works, for now: http://www.bartleby.com/123/62.html

The last line in the poem is "Mithridates, he died old."

There's no reference to Medes and Persians in the poem.

Subject: RE: Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian
From: GUEST,apeiron
Date: 03 Jan 16 - 12:10 AM

Sam Goldwyn

Subject: RE: Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jan 16 - 08:20 AM

One man's fish is another man's poisson,

Subject: RE: Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 Jan 16 - 09:33 PM

I always heard the orig. proverb as "One man's MEAT is another man's poison."

Subject: RE: Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jan 17 - 06:00 PM

I remember hearing it attributed to one of the 30s-50s literary humorist set, like George S. Kaufman or Robert Benchley, or maybe an Algonquin Round Table type. It helps to have had a good classical education, although Medes and Persians are mentioned in the New Testament. What wouldn't be obvious from the NT, though, is that the two were neighboring rival kingdoms.

The one thing it can't be is from Ancient Greek, or actually from any foreign language, because it's playing on the proverb "one man's meat is another man's poison" which is only a few centuries old, and the meat/Mede & poison/Persian homophones wouldn't work in other languages, as the words would be quite different.

But I can imagine Ogden Nash doing it, too!

Subject: RE: Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian
From: EBarnacle
Date: 16 Jan 17 - 10:28 AM

One man's meat is another man's poisson. Refers back to the shaggy dog link.

Subject: RE: Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Jan 19 - 07:17 PM

?EB White

Subject: RE: Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian
From: Mo the caller
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 05:24 AM

Didn't Frank Muir or Denis Norden tell a story based on this proverb on My Word (radio programme)

Subject: RE: Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian
From: Snuffy
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 09:17 AM

That sounds like their sort of thing: I recall Frank Muir ending one story with

"Marry in Hastings; repent at St Leonards"

Subject: RE: Folklore: One man's Mede is another man's Persian
From: GUEST,Neil Copeland
Date: 10 Dec 21 - 03:28 PM

I'm pretty sure it was Frank Muir who used the line in a My Word story, but it wasn't the punchline in the story I heard - he just used it in passing. The line his story was based on was, 'Mene, mene, tekel upharsin' - the Aramaic inscription the mysterious finger wrote on the wall in the Book of Daniel. The translations don't tell you the words are names of coins, or weights of precious metal. The u- of 'upharsin' means 'and'. I can't remember what his pun on the line was.

The Mede and Persian line annoyed hell out of me, because just a few weeks before I heard it, I had done a presentation on the passage in the Aramaic class I was in, and I had used the Mede and Persian line, WHICH I HAD THOUGHT UP FOR MYSELF, not knowing Muir had already come up with it. The Medes and Persians were actually distinct but related peoples, but both the Greeks and the Jews used the names interchangeably.

And yes, the original is "One man's meat is another man's poison."