Folklore: Old sayings from childhood

Subject: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 07:19 PM

Every once in a while an old saying comes to mind that takes me back to my boyhood, and I'm wondering if this is common. If so, give them some exposure here.
One of mine is: Sing before breakfast, cry before night.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 07:25 PM

My mom was always saying "It'll all come out in the wash" only with her Western accent it was "warsh."

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Neighmond
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 07:51 PM

See a penny, pick it up, all the day you'll have good luck!
See a penny, let it lie, wish you had it by-and by!

Chaz

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 08:15 PM

"A stitch in time saves nine."
"A penny saved is a penny earned."
"Ach, du lieber!" (My family is of German-American descent.)
"Das ist heisse!" (ditto)
"We'll see."
"We can't afford bail. No."

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 10:19 PM

A sunshiny shower won't last half an hour.

We too, Kendall, were warned against singing before breakfast. You suppose the folks were trying to keep down early morning noise? :)

One I've heard but that we didn't use was 'What the hey- I'm not gettin' married in this man's town' used when you knew you were going to be seen in public hile wearing an old dress or without your hair done- you get the idea.

I've used the penny, penny bit for my own ends. I made up the notion that after you pick up a penny, it will bring you luck- but you then give it to someone else, assuring them they too will have a lucky day, etc, and that it will persist no matter how far the penny travels. It's amazing how many people respond to the idea- we all want good luck, I guess.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 10:30 PM

"Sing before seven will cry before eleven."
"Rain before seven, dry before 'leven."
"Little boys who play with matches wet the bed."

And one of my all-time favorites, often heard around our house:

"You light that fuse in the house and I'll whack you so hard your brains'll rattle for a week! Now take those firecrackers outside!"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Amergin
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:00 PM

I'll wash your mouth out with soap!

Nathan Isaac Tompkins!

Go stand in the corner!

Go out and cut yourself a switch!

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Metchosin
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:01 PM

oh dear....most that come to mind were threats from my father.....usually prefaced by "See what you made me do!"

"You'll be laughing on the other side of you face in a minute"
"I'll tan your backside"
"I'll fix your little red wagon"
"When I finish with you you won't be able to sit down for a week"
"Shut your cakehole"
"whistling girls and crowing hens always lead to some bad end"

Although he sometimes tempered it with:

"They said it couldn't be done
But he with a chuckle replied
That he wouldn't be one
That wouldn't say so till he tried
So he buckled right in
With a trace of a grin
On his face, if he worried he hid it
And he started to sing
As he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done
And he did it."

and

"I wept because I had no shoes, then I met a man who had no feet."

I took the last two to heart and somehow managed to survive childhood.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Ely
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:12 PM

"You can have anything you want, you just can't have EVERYTHING you want."

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Deckman
Date: 15 Sep 03 - 11:30 PM

From my beloved Father: "Mina Rakastaan Sinua" ("I love you") (Finn) Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 12:03 AM

"Where'djou git them go-to-hell pants???"

Courtesy of Hardi's dad, Stanley.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 12:20 AM

Cripes...Metchoson....you "sound" like my family.

Toss in the this civil-war era.... sing-song taunt:

White man he smell like Castil-soap
Nigger, he smell like an ol' billy-goat
An I don like a nigga, An I don like a nigga
No How!

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 12:39 AM

From Hardi's mom: "Don't you EVER let me CATCH you playing in the coalyard..." (or on the train tracks)

From Hardi's younger brother: Ain't MY (fill in the blank)... (describing a crisis about to occur over which he does not plan intervention)


From Grandpa Cleve, "Goddammit to hell!!" and "hellfire!"

From Hardi's great-grandmother, coming from the back bedroom to mutter this and then go back, "Yoyyyymeneeee......"

From Hardi's childhood doctor, "Dot kid got rrrrrrotten troat, I geeev shotttt!"


From Hardi's pals:

Go play marbles on the freeway.

Hey kid yer ma dresses ya funny...



From my grandfather, "RRRRRUBBish!"

From my mother, "Beggars can't be choosers."

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Mudlark
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 12:45 AM

If you don't quit crying I'll give you something to cry about!

A stitch in time saves nine (took me a while to figure that one out)

Spare the rod and spoil the child (ditto...sounded to me like a command, but...)

Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.

Pretty is as pretty does...

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 12:45 AM

I ain't got a dog in that fight.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 01:09 AM

See a pin and pick it up and all the day you have good luck (and a pin).

My grandfather used to come up with this one when my cousins (both boys) and my brother would complain about me wanting to play with them rather than my sister (I'd still rather play with them than my sister but one is now a 6'4" beefy fireman.....). He would say this:

All the bulls bain't worth a thing without they got a cow. And neither be the cow much use without it's got the bull.

Made not one bit of sense back then and they still wouldn't let me play....

Another one that never made sense was the 'if you don't shut up I'll give you something to cry for'... usually said to me as I was bawling over a cut finger or a gashed knee. 'But dad/mum, I've already got a cut finger, what else do I need?'

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: open mike
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 01:36 AM

my dad would often say:

fuzzy wuzzy was a bear,
fuzzy wuzzy had no hair,
fussy wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, was he?

and something like this:

Yehudi

The other day upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today,
gee, i wish he'd go away!

my mom used to say:

do it quick,
in 3 shakes of a lamb's tail

and: if we sit down to eat, they will come
(if waiting for someone to join you for dinner)

grandma would say:
I'm filled to sufficiency,
any more would be a superfluity.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 01:48 AM

Teah, "It's all true - As sure as God made little green apples" (Thanks Nana)

Cheers - Sam

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Jeanie
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 02:37 AM

"Don't make faces like that. The wind might change and you'll be stuck like it."

"What have you got, St. Vitus' Dance ?" (rebuke when fidgeting)

"There's enough blue in the sky to make a pair of sailor's trousers"

"Rain before seven, fine by eleven"

It seems my mother was always pontificating about the weather. Here's another one: "If Candlemas day be fair and bright, winter will take another flight" - (I think it was Candlemas)

"That's a proper Dagwood, that is" (Dagwood was what my mum and dad called a very large 'doorstep' sandwich - I think after a newspaper cartoon character of the 30s/40s ??)

People sitting around for hours drinking tea were called "Mrs. Mazawattees" - after a tea-drinking mechanical figure in shop windows advertising "Mazawattee Tea".

Two favourite expressions from my old headmistress, who went by the wonderful (real) name of Miss Bubbers:
"Don't be a silly mutt !" - "Show some stickability, girl !"

All of the above are now being inflicted on my poor, longsuffering daughter... and so it goes on...


- jeanie

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 03:01 AM

Red sky at night, sailors delight.
Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.

A penny for your thoughts.

Well, who do you think you are? the queen of England?

Sew your clothes upon your back, poverty you'll never lack.

I'll snatch you bald headed!

Even a cow knows its own stall.

Blacker than Zips ass.

That thing about singing before breakfast I think comes from old Puritan belief. We are here to suffer, and all that twaddle.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 09:07 AM

Probably the MOST frequently heard saying in my family was, "Why is (the) _______________ (dirty, muddy, bleeding, crying, all wet, up on the roof, buried in the backyard, staked to an anthill -- or just fill in the blank with whatever you can imagine)?"

Sometimes this was followed by a telephone call that began, "Mom, don't worry now, but I'm over at the Emergency Room and...."

Or my favorite phone call: "Hi, mom. Listen, I can't talk long but I'm going to be home late. Do me a favor, and if the police ask where I've been tell them we went to the drag races, okay? Thanks, bye."

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Paul Burke
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 09:16 AM

It'll rain or go dark before morning.

Ask, don't get. Don't ask, don't want.

(answer to "where's dad" etc.: He's in a bottle on the roof.

Black follows green.

Anyone identify this teacher:

"Sir, my pen's run out." "What do you expect me to do, run out after it?"

"What do you expect me to do, stand in a bucket of water and sing a sea shanty?"

etc. ad nauseam.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: harvey andrews
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 09:24 AM

My Father when suprised by something would say;
"Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs!"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Joybell
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 09:28 AM

From my Dear-one: a geometry teacher - I'll kick you so hard you'll need an operation to get my foot removed.

Bigger kids picking on him -- If I had a dog with a face like yours I'd shave his ass and make him walk backwards.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 09:40 AM

Who died and made you God?

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: boldreynard
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 09:42 AM

Does "Step on a crack, break your mother's back" count? More a superstition than a saying.
I like the Vermont/New York saying "It's all there", which is said when trying to lift something particularly heavy.
To a pouty child: "That face would make a cow cry."
"Liar, liar, pants on fire" was a common playground taunt.
"Sticks and stones may break my bones/But names will never hurt me."
My wife has introduced "Don't get your knickers in a twist" into the family vocabulary. And of course "Do you have ants in your pants?" for a fidgeter, and "Where's the fire?" to someone rushing along.
About an ugly person: "S/he fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch coming down."

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Raggytash
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 09:47 AM

There's nowt wrong wi owt whats gradely o'er sump as lomg as there's tripe in picklin'

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 09:51 AM

"What's for tea, Mum?"

"Three jumps up the cupboard door and a bite of the knob."

Still never figured that one out. Some otehr nosensical ones.

"You should see the back of your neck..."
"If you don't come here I'll give you such a clout..."

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Allan C.
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 09:53 AM

Jeanie, click here to see a Dagwood sandwich.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: The Walrus
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 10:17 AM

"If 'ifs' and 'ands' were pots and pans, we'd have no need of tinkers"

"What's for tea, Mum?" usually got the reply
"Bread and pullit" or "Bread and Duck under the table"

One old one from an uncle:
"I was doing this while your Mum was still cutting bread on you..."
(Apparently one of their Grand-mothers had the - then common - habit of cutting bread without using a table and thhe phrase had been carried down the generations).

Walrus

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: sian, west wales
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 10:30 AM

My dad's take on the singing things was, "Sing at the table, die in the workhouse," the old misery-guts Calvinistic Methodist that he was.

Does 'misery-guts' count?

Dirt behind neck or ears (and in ears) would generate the accusation from mum, "Whatcha tryin' t' do? Grow putatuhs?"

She also dismissed any illogical argument with, "Ah - yer father's moustache!"

The face which usually accompanied hissy-fits was, "Better stop. Yer face may stick like that."

I seem to recall, "Faint heart never won fair lady" when we were flagging in any project. And 'sooner started, sooner mended'. And 'there's two ends to every stick' for both sides of an argument.

And I, too, could never figure out the sense in 'stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about'.

sian

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Metchosin
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 10:59 AM

From my mum when we asked "What's for dinner?" "Don't know what it is now, but it's bean soup." Also, "You may be as big, but you'll never be as good."

I also remember the taunt "Just because your face looks like a hubcap, doesn't mean to say you're a big wheel."

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Amergin
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 11:01 AM

oh i forgot one...."no ifs ands or buts about it except yours"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Auxiris
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 11:11 AM

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

cheers,

Aux

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Sorcha
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 11:14 AM

Rip your head off and spit down your neck.
I'll shove your head so far down your neck you'll have to fart to cough.
HumpDay for Wednesday
Hit the Deck!!! (time to get up)
My heart soars like a hawk (from film Little Big Man, next line is--you wanna eat?)

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,bbc at work
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 12:02 PM

Fond memories of trips in the family car:

How long till we get there?

Couple hours, honey; couple hours!

Dad's favorite saying:

If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all!

I may not have mastered that one, but I've sure passed it on my children & my students!

Dad also spent a lot of time trying to teach me the distinction between can & may. I knew the difference, but didn't find it to be socially acceptable in my peer group to speak properly. Sorry, Dad! Nonetheless, I am passing the same message on to the next generation (who also don't want to hear it!).

best,

bbc

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 12:15 PM

In our house, the reply to 'what's for dinner' was always 'iffits'.

In answer to the question, 'what's iffits' (thinking it was some obscure meat by-product like chittlings or lights), the reply was 'iffits in the cupboard, we can eat it'.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: HuwG
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 12:31 PM

"What did your last servant die from ?"

"Don't argue with your elders and betters." [Yes, that one still makes me seethe, nearly forty years later]

(When asked for a drink) "There's plenty in the tap."

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: C-flat
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 01:31 PM

"Put a beggar on horse-back and watch him ride to hell"

"If you break your legs don't come running to me!"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 01:43 PM

"I want..." "People in hell want ice water."

God made her as ugly as he could, then kicked her in the face.
Ugly as a bucket of assholes.
Slicker than deer guts on a door knob.
If he grows any taller, he will have to fork again.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Carly
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 02:30 PM

It will all be the same in a hundred years.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 02:39 PM

Kendall, I forgot about people in Hell wanting ice water. My mother was fond of that one, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: sian, west wales
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 03:23 PM

A friend just reminded me of one from her mother, if my friend did something dumb because her friend did something dumb ... "And if (friend's name) stuck her finger in the fire would YOU stick your finger in the fire?????"

Mothers are very good at having the last word, aren't they?

sian

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 10:22 PM

Yes Mum!

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 10:54 PM

"Your Mother sees you doin' that and she'll put the wood on you! from my Father. And a favorite of mine, which I often heard from a friend who heard it growing up "What he needs is a sound thrashing about the head and ears."

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Bert
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 11:18 PM

Sticks like shit to a blanket. (charming grandmother I had)
If pigs could fly and elephants wore high hats.
A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither use to God nor men.
Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which gets full first.
Daft as Arseholes.
He wouldn't know his dick from his thumb if it didn't have a nail on it.
You look like a sack of shit tied up with string.
You look like a bundle of arseholes tied up ugly.
Straight as dockey's hook.
Straight as a dog's hind leg.
The man who never made a mistake, never made anything.
The wind will change. Or if the wind changes you'll stick like that (to someone making faces)
Thick as two short planks.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Sorcha
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 11:26 PM

Jumped on that like a chicken on a June bug.....
Only sane people are me and thee and sometimes I wonder about thee.
Shit on a stick.
He thinks his shit don't stink.
Hit with a Ugly Stick forty 'leven times.
If pigs had wings.
....like flies on shit.
Dumber than a box of rocks.
Two bricks shy of a load.
Half a bubble off.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Sorcha
Date: 16 Sep 03 - 11:29 PM

And one more......
If hop toads had wings, they 'ud fly to keep from bumpin' they butts on the ground.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 05:40 AM

Useless as a screen door in a submarine
or a trap door in a canoe

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,madwaff at work
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 06:58 AM

All about like a fart in a fan (Grandad's favorite)

If you sit on concrete you'll get kingcough (I think they meant piles....!)

About as much use as a chocolate fireguard

Scrub your nails, they're black-bright

You have the brains of a rocking-horse!

...and Mum's usual cry - "I want to tie a label on you saying 'this child was clean when she left home'..."

madwaff

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 07:58 AM

If you had a brain, you'd be dangerous.
Did your mother have any kids that lived?


Some of the more modern ones that my mother never would have yelled at another driver;
YOU DRIVE LIKE OLD PEOPLE SCREW.
and when the car ahead of you just sits there on a green light;
IT DON'T GET ANY GREENER.

Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Allan C.
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 08:05 AM

Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth!
Put his brain in a crow and it'd fly backwards!
I'll spank you so hard your little bottom won't hold shucks!

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 08:10 AM

I find it fascinating that parents world-wide seem to use the same sayings.

Some sort of parental telepathy, perhaps? Or just response to similar circumstances?

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Geordie
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 08:16 AM

We Can't afford the water, Have a dot myra(Quick wash behind the ears). Don't go all Gallagher on me .(Don't go foolish). There are ducks in the pond.(Something is afoot) Her man's all diluted(Drunk)You'll Get what Paddy shot at.(I was never quite sure of this, but in our house it meant"Nothing". Cobble up yer ounds (Look after your children.) Drop your oars...(Be still). Lots more but these are ones I have seldom heard outside my own family. Anyone else familiar with any of these ?

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: DMcG
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 08:24 AM

One of my mother's favourites was:

If you can't fight, wear a big hat.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 08:38 AM

Did anyone else have to put up with what "the monkey said"

If complaining about a minor matter: "Hard lines...as the monkey said when he sat on the railway"

When impatient about something: "It won't be long now...as the monkey said when he cut off his tail"

Also "It'll be better before you get married" said of a minor injury

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 08:51 AM

They were passing out brains, but she thought they said trains, so she asked for a slow one.

.... thinks her shit comes wrapped in plastic bags.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 08:53 AM

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Don't saw sawdust. A sandwich short of a picnic. Don't gild the Lily. Your sailin on with the wrong wind.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Geordie.
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 08:58 AM

You're gonna have someones eye out with that! Shiver me timbers. What yer need is a fair lug-winder(a smack)

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 09:02 AM

Now see what you did. (said by the instigator)

Someone's gonna get hurt.

Be careful! You'll fall down and hurt yourself!

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: sian, west wales
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 09:14 AM

I forgot "a lick and a promise" which was basically a quick spit-wash with a hanky.

sian

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: C-flat
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 09:16 AM

Child. "....but I thought it would be OK"

Parent. "Well, you know what thought did!...followed the dustcart 'cause he thought it was a wedding!"

Another family favourite is "Lean dogs for long hunts!"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Allan C.
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 09:17 AM

Use it up. Wear it out. Make it do or do without.

...since Noah was a bow hook. - Used to indicate a length of time such as how long someone had been a friend. I've never heard this one used by anyone but my father, a Navy man. For the less-than-nautical, a bow hook is the title of the person who mans the boat hook, a long pole with a brass hook on the end used to hold a boat alongside, to push off from a dock or other boat, or to snatch buoys and lines from the water.

Hotter than a two-dollar pistol...

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Big Mick
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 09:54 AM

My Grandmother to an unnamed, but known Mudcatter, when he was being something less than what she expected:

I will send ye back to Jesus, ... and yer Mother, God bless her, will make another just like ye tomorrow"

Larry Cope of Macon, GA, a fellow serviceman, when he saw something that fascinated him:

That is slicker'n hot chicken fat on a stuck door knob"

Same Larry Cope when asked how he was doing:

Jes' fine as frog hair..

Our own Kendal Morse, when asked if he had many relatives in his hometown:

Hell, I got more relatives than a 30 year old rabbit...

His delivery was so dry and instantaneous that Marum and I just fell out and laughed so hard we had tears running down our faces.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 10:06 AM

from my dad, who had dozens:

"it'll feel better when it quits hurtin'" (to solace small children with minor injuries)
to someone who has dripped gravy, jelly..etc on their shirt "You look good in everything you eat"

on the burdens of life: "if you were carrying all the feathers you could carry, could you carry one more?"

"shake it more than twice, and you're playing with it"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 10:10 AM

Cold as a well diggers ass

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Peg
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 11:20 AM

I recognize a lot of these, especially the ones that promise    corporal punishment...

Mom was fond of the "people in hell want ice water" one. She also would say, when we crabbed about dinner, "One of these days I'll put a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter on the table." Once   when I accused her of saying that a lot but never doing it I got smecked...kids got smacked a lot more in those days, yes? Or was it just my family?

"Eat your (broccoli, squash, peas, lima beans etc.)! There's children starving in India!"

"She's like a fart in a windstorm." (My mom still says this about me, meaning who knows where I am at any given moment.

"He thinks his shit don't stink."

"You've got good taste." (when picking out the most expensive item on the clothes rack when shopping for back to school).


"She's so stuck on herself."

Kid: "She started it!"
Sibling: "No,   HE started it!"
Parent (usually Mom): "I'm gonna FINISH it!"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 11:23 AM

Champagne taste, beer pocket.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: *daylia*
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 11:50 AM

From my dad ...


"You gotta tongue longer than a Mountie's boot".

"If shoes were clues you'd be walking on your knees".

"Just a minute ... I'll start spittin wooden nickels".


And from my mom ...


"If you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything".

"Let's not, and say we did".

"GO TO YOUR ROOM AND SHUT THE DOOR!"


And here's one we used to chant that I haven't heard in a long time ...

"Whistle while you work
Hitler was a jerk
Mussolini bit his weenie
Now it doesn't work".


Okay, th th th that's all folks!

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 11:53 AM

Since Hector was a pup. (As in a longtime activity) I have no idea of what it means. Who was Hector?

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Midchuck
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 12:50 PM

From a friend of mine many years ago:

On seeing a female hitchhiker: "Don't stop - she's uglier than Death takin' a shit!"

Of his wife: "Don't listen to her, she's crazier than a shithouse rat!"

From one of the late H. Allen Smith's books:

"She smelt like eight wet rams."

"That woman was so tall she could stand flat-footed and piss in the radiator of a Chevy pickup."

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Big Mick
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 01:20 PM

"That boy stinks like a wet Angora goat"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: C-flat
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 01:40 PM

My mother refering to the people from the new, private housing estate nearby.............."They're all kippers an' curtains, that lot!" Meaning behind the lace curtains and smart exteriors they were as poor as us, eating kippers (inexpensive then) for dinner.


Another of mothers.........
"What's for tea?"
"Bread and pull-it!"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Allan C.
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 01:43 PM

Ebbie, I have always heard it as, "Since Heck was a pup." I found a reference to its use in that form by Sinclair Lewis in "Babbitt" written in 1922 (see line 60.) I always assumed it was a euphemism for the Devil; but I can't say for certain.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: PageOfCups
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 02:13 PM

Followup to any apology: "'Sorry' don't pay the rent!"

From Grandpa: "Good, better best
               Never let it rest
               'Til the good is better
               And the better is best."

PoC

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: VoxFox
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 02:43 PM

Mum's favorite was, "Lie down and I'll fan you with a kipper!" In other words, Do it yourself.    Another one was, " Smile for goodness sake, you've got a face like a wet weekend!" And my favorite is, "Do I look like a Nubian slave to you?"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: curmudgeon
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 02:49 PM

Doesn't anyone read the classics anymore? Hector, a prince of Troy was killed by Achilles during the seige of that city.

A folk reference from "Gilderoy" --

"His relics they were more esteemed then Hector's were of Troy"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 09:41 PM

Keep it up till one of ya gets hurt!

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 Sep 03 - 09:43 PM

I'll kick yore ass so far up between yer teeth, yuh'll have to smile to take a shit!

~Hardi Again

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: C-flat
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 02:40 AM

or "I'll knock your teeth so far down your throat you'll have to stick a toothbrush up your arse to clean 'em!"
Actually, my mother never said that to me!

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: lady penelope
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 03:02 PM

Ah yes there are many of my mother's favourites here.

Please imagine a glaswegian accent when reading the following......

"Don't care was made to care"
"I want doesn't get"
"It's far off your backside, you won't sit on it" ( referring to minor injuries. I was never in the room when any one had a sore bum so I don't know what happened then......)
"Mocking's catching" (in answer to your declaring one had a sore throat and couln't go to school sort of thing)
"Get a grip of your knickers" ( pull yourself together )
"I could eat the snibs off the windows" ( I'm dreadfully hungry )
When complaing you had to go out and it was raining "Ach you're neither sugar nor salt you won't melt"
"Between you me and the wallpaper"
"If you do that one more time I'll batter yer melt in"
"Little jugs have big ears" (Meaning you weren't to say certain things as very young children were present)
"If you point that finger at me again I'll bite it off"

I could go on and on and on....

TTFN Lady P.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Sonnet
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 04:46 PM

"Shit wi'sugar on" was Grandma's reply to "what's for dinner?" I too survived childhood without catching kingcough, and never did manage to "have somebody's eye out with that..."

JMcS

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: RangerSteve
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 05:02 PM

In response to any useless information: That and a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee. (OK, it was 25cents when I first heard it, but you have to adjust for inflation).

a variation on one mentioned above: When they passed out brains, he thought they said "trains", so he asked for HO scale.

When they passed out looks, he thought they said "Books" so he said "GIve me a funny one".

From a Tennessee friend concerning speed: Faster than you can pull a greasy string out of a cat's ass.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Bert
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 10:16 PM

You smell like a Turkish wrestler's jock strap.
In and out like a fart in a colander.
He's got duck's disease (small man's disease)
and said of a small snack to keep you ging until dinner is ready "that'll keep the rats from gnawing"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 10:38 PM

Looks like death eating a cracker (bisquit to you Brits)
I'll hit you so hard, when you come to, your clothes will be out of style.
Ther's an Aborigine in the biomass heap.(Originally, there is a nigger in the woodpile)
Hotter than a whore's dream
Colder than a misers heart

Stunk like a dog's laundry.

I always assumed that Hector was one of the characters in the Iliad too.

One old guy used to say "Since Christ was a cowboy" never made any sense to me, never use it myself.
He's tougher than Japanese arithmetic.
If wishes were horses beggers would ride.

I'll kick your ass 'til your nose bleeds. Mothers never say this, some fathers do.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Bert
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 10:48 PM

I was doing that when you were running 'round eating bread and jam with the arse out of your trousers.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Metchosin
Date: 18 Sep 03 - 11:07 PM

Smells worse than all the night soil in China.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: annamill
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 12:30 AM

When asked the price of something, my Dad would reply "a buck three eighty". I have no idea what it meant.

When referring to the time, I remember kids saying

"half past cows ass, a quarter to his balls"...which again makes no sense.

I had a strange upbringing...

Annamill

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Metchosin
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 01:02 AM

Because we never had watches when we were kids, if anyone asked us the time, it was always "one hair past a freckle".

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: lady penelope
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 02:41 PM

Oh I forgot

"Your head's full of chewed bread" ( implying that someone was stupid)

TTFN Lady P.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Allan C.
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 02:46 PM

Annamill, on the old Hee-Haw show they often used "a dollar two ninety-eight" as a price for almost anything. (Not that I ever watched the show - except, perhaps, for the time that Kendall Morse was on it.)

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 07:43 PM

I was on Hee Haw?

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 07:53 PM

"There's everything in that attic from a baby fart to a clap of thunder".

I have stuff strewn from Hell to Hackney.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Deckman
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 09:53 PM

"I was busier than a one armed trapper sackin' wildcats!" Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Cruiser
Date: 19 Sep 03 - 09:59 PM

I double-dog dare ya!

My uncle saying get up, "you're burning daylight" when it was still dark and I had to wrangle horses during winter hunting camp in Colorado.

Cruiser

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Forsh
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 02:27 PM

Honi soit que mal e pense (I think)
Where there's life theres hop ... !
y'wee buggerohellye!
hadawa'n'shite man
you'll get your reward in heaven
take these bottles back to the offie..

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 03:16 PM

virtue is its own reward.
Pennies make dollars
Mend and make do.

"You can'r wear your good clothes out to play, you'll switch them out and get them all daubbed up."

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Celtaddict
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 06:55 PM

Of chewing with the mouth open: "You sound like a pig eating coal."
"Slicker than a snotty doorknob." (An obstetrician I knew used to say that about deliveries.)

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Celtaddict
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 07:01 PM

Of a big man: "He was made when meat was cheap."
In our family we used a number of stock answers. If a kid asked, "When ...?" (when do we eat? when will be there? when will I get my turn? whatever) the answer was "Tuesday." If a kid asked, "Where is my ...?" (baseball glove, shoe, homework, jacket, whatever the kid should have been responsible for and no one else even likely to know) the answer was, "It was delicious."

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 07:09 PM

In the service, if you ask where something is, the answer is likely to be, "If it was up your ass you'd know."

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: SINSULL
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 10:15 PM

Busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

Life isn't fair (In response to "But that's not fair!")

The crow of a hen and the whistle of a woman wake the devil from his lair. (To this day, I have never learned to whistle).

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Cruiser
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 12:20 AM

Not being a "star" football player, my high school coach had a saying for players like me that frequently missed assignments: "Son, quit standing there with one hand up your a** and the other one in you mouth waitin' for someone to hollar switch".

Aw, the good ol' early '60's, before PC, when coaches could kick you in the rear and berate you in an attempt to make you a better player and person. BTW, sometimes I lettered in sports and sometimes I did not make it, but nothing was given to you just to assuage your hurt feeling. Two other saying when you screwed up on the field:

"Go to the house!" (meaning "hit the showers", you were through for the day).

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 02:47 PM

The school I wnt to was so sub standard, you could earn a letter if you knew what the letter was.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: open mike
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 07:28 PM

if at first you don't succeed, try, try again

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: open mike
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 07:33 PM

and for time if you get up real early it is at "Zero Dark Thirty"
and a large number is eleventy seven
minnie pearl used to have a price tag haning off her hat
ws that on hee haw? what price died it say?
i jsut saw a documentary about the murder of
String Bean, a fellow who played th ebanjo on
Grand Old Opry...or hee haw? interviews with
many co-stars on that show were included..
apparently he distrusted banks so kept
money in the pocket of his overalls.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Gray D
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 08:30 PM

My goodness but some of you seem to have grown up under something of a tirade of vulgarity. I'm so glad that you have managed to rise above it.

"If you had another brain like the one you've got now you still wouldn't make a halfwit" - my Dad (there was a degree of truth there)

"Well I'll go to hell in a bucket!" - My dear old Nan, when surprised. I never did understand that one.

Gray D

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: SINSULL
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 08:50 PM

"If it were any closer it would bite you on the nose."
"If you had a brain, you'd be dangerous."

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 22 Sep 03 - 12:12 AM

I heard,

We'll all go to hell in a handcart

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 22 Sep 03 - 12:29 AM

I like these.

My Dad liked to say "close the door. I'm not paying to heat the neighborhood!" Once when I was going out on a date in a pair of tight slacks, he says "son, those look like cheap hotel pants...no ball room." Someone who was a blowhard was "full of shit as a yuletide fowl." If you were clumsy with something he'd say "you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the directions on the heel." A lazy person was "useless as the tits on a boar hog." When I didn't finish dinner, it was "children in Europe are starving." When I just woke up, my eyes looked like "two bubbles in a piss pot" or "two pee holes in the snow".

My favorite expression of Mom's was, when someone famous died, "people are dyin' that never died before!"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Sep 03 - 01:06 AM

Hey Leej!!

I heard it as "useless as tits on a nun."

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Little Robyn
Date: 22 Sep 03 - 04:14 AM

I recognize lots of the above, even here in NZ.
Some from our family -
If you had another brain it'd be lonely.
Don't speak with your mouth half full - fill it up!
What did your last slave die of? Overwork?
Shit a brick!
You're big enough and ugly enough...(usually to do a chore).
Just DO IT!
If you can't be good, be careful. If you can't be careful, buy a pram.
Red sky at night, shepherd's delight, red sky at morning, shepherd's warning.
But a friend recently said Red sky at morning, shepherd's hut on fire. I like that imagery.
And in my husband's family, "I want" gets nothing!
Robyn

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Sep 03 - 10:28 PM

Live and learn

Die and forget it all.


and for the vulgarians: shit fire n'save matches.

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Sep 03 - 10:52 PM

"children in Europe are starving."...my mother had pinned down closer, it was "eat that...think of the poor starving Armenians!"..(and I, of course, would answer.."you can send them my share")

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: LilyFestre
Date: 23 Sep 03 - 12:39 PM

My personal favorite is the 5 P's.

Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance!

Michelle   =^..^=

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 23 Sep 03 - 01:41 PM

Waste not want not

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: C-flat
Date: 23 Sep 03 - 03:05 PM

"C'mon Lad! You're all wishbone and no backbone!" Meaning more effort required.
My school rugby master used to run along the line shouting abuse at the sorry assortment of spotty, skinny, snot-nosed kids that made up the junior team;
"Hamilton! you bloody big daisy! Hit that man,hit that man!!"
"You're as much use as a rubber ladder!"
"About as useful as half a pair of scissors!"

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: open mike
Date: 23 Sep 03 - 04:20 PM

My grandma used to say "good night NURSE"
with the accent on teh nurse..
this meant "well, I'll be..."
or other exclamations

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Sep 03 - 07:37 PM

Another response to "That's not fair!" : No, it's a f***ing circus!

A response to a complaint of food being too hot: Well, it wasn't cooked in the refrigerator, you know!

These are courtesy of my ex. Glad I didn't grow up in his house!

Subject: RE: BS: Old sayings from childhood
From: Neighmond
Date: 23 Sep 03 - 07:52 PM

In a pride of your peers:

Went over like a fart in church (and) Sweating like a whore in church (both from my ulcle, who had a filty mouth.)

If you can't fix it, duck it, if you can't duck it, f*** it! (A reference to a certain repair product on the market)

Man, you really shit the bed!(referring to a massive screw-up, also "My (posession that went to pot) shit the bed on me."

(he, she,) would F*** up a wet dream.

Talk to the hand, 'cause the face ain't istening! (hold the hand up in front of whomever is speaking.)

You weren't working (sick, doing homework, chores, etc.), you were out playing lobo! (Lobo was a ballgame indiginous to our neighborhood-by and by "playing lobo" came to mean anything where you weren't up to anything productive.)

Itching like a three-dollar whore.

go like a raped ape

Where's (Here come) Johnny (John) Law?(!) Emphesize the "John": JOHN-knee-law. )Local term for any cop or crossing guard or teacher on playground duty. Have No idea where it came from but it was in use from the time I began kindergarten to the time I was in 7th grade.)



Words to the wise-the Elders dispense knowledge:

Now, if (name) went and jumped off a bridge would you go do it too?

I don't care what (name) does! S/he don't live here!

Eat it! There's starving little babies on the south side!

I didn't fall off (or: Do I LOOK like I fell off) the turnip truck yesterday!(?)

Stop it, and I mean NOW, or maybe you WANT a spanking...

(Tell them to do the offending act), and SEE what happens!

You only do (did) THAT once! (after some dangerous, painful, or otherwise ignorant doing)

Acted like a couple of Hahnyacks, you did!

Onray (or: rotten) little Scut!

You didn't need my help getting IN jail, you don't need my help getting OUT!

Eating before bed feeds hay to the nightmare! (I once heard my grey haired daddy say: A picture of him would keep a nightmare in hay all week!)


Taken as it's worth.

Chaz

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 23 Sep 03 - 11:10 PM

When my dad saw me picking my nose, he'd say: "Are you going fishing?"
Me, innocently: "Huh? No. Why?"
Him: "I see you're digging for bait."

I probably only fell for that joke once, and after that, "Are you going fishing?" was a sufficient reprimand to get me to stop.

I also used it on my own kid. It works.

Dad also liked non-sequiturs like:

"How big would you be if you was twice as big as half?"

In the realm of reprimands and threats:

You're gettin' too big for your britches.

I'll take you down a notch.

I'll jerk a knot in your tail.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: LadyJean
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 12:14 AM

From Dad: "Each to his own taste, said the old lady as she kissed the cow".
"Were you (or You Weren't) behind the door when the brains were passed out."
"Fold up kid," said when he'd caught me up late reading, again. Meaning turn the light off and go to sleep.
"Straighten up and fly right" Dad was a jazz fan.
"Most of your troubles never happen".
From Mom: We haven't done, (seen, had, eaten) that since pussy was a cat. (Suggestive, I know!)
"Not going to ruin two families" meaning the couple deserved each other.
"You spilled that all over Israel" meaning all over the place.
"That street is the rocky road to Dublin" Meaning there were potholes. (Pittsburgh is the pothole capital of the world.)
"You make a great door but a bad window" meaning you're blocking the view.
"That dog is smarter than some whole families" She learned that one from her grandmother. (We had poodles. They are very intelligent dogs.)

Mom told the tale of a neighborhood patriarch who was told that his grandson had been heard swearing. The old gentleman asked what the boy had said. He was told, "Son of a Bitch! Hell!" "Ridiculous," the old man replied. "No grandson of mine would say a silly thing like that.

Kids I knew said "go to heaven and make a U turn." Meaning go to hell.
A friend from New York said her friends said, "Go to heaven and make a U turn seventeen times." I think I like that better.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 06:27 AM

My sister and I used to get
Whats for pudding?
"Fresh air pie"

and we used to chant ad nausiatum "I can see the onion, the IRA's onion" every time we went to Basildon!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: muppett
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 06:41 AM

How's about 'well I'll go t' foot of our stairs'

And just to change the topic slightly how many of you out there used to sup corporation pop when you were kids and who went chumping at this time of the year.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Jim Dixon
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 01:58 PM

"I can see the onion, the IRA's onion"

I don't understand that one. Can you explain it for an American?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 03:37 PM

From my Grandpa (he was "borned" in the late 1800's):

"Black as coalie's arse" (coalie, the guy that delivered coal)

"White as a haint" (ghost)

"Harder than a whore's heart"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,SeaKing
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 07:16 PM

I have always been below average height. As a child my Grandmother would console me by saying "You don't get diamonds the size of bricks"

My Mother would hide toys until I 'learned to play with them properly'. The logic still escapes me.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: tuggy mac
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 07:21 PM

fOR GOOD VISION(hES GOT EYES LIKE A SHIT HOUSE RAT!

hEARING ( eARS LIKE A BAT.

iTS NOT THE SIZE OF THE DOG IN THE FIGHT BUT THE SIZE OF THE FIGHT IN THE DOG.
oNE I LIKE .hES GOT THE FACE ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE.

CHEERS TUGGY MAC.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: tuggy mac
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 07:23 PM

p S. Sorry for shouting !got a sore finger.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: LilyFestre
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 07:33 PM

A few more favorites..........

.............dumb as a box of rocks.............

Not from childhood, but when I'm sick, my husband always says, "If you die on me, I'm gonna kick your ass!"   LOL

Michelle

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,SeaKing
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 07:50 PM

...and if this thread is still running in fifteen years time my children will be posting messages remembering Dad's 'Tidy-up Fairy'...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: SINSULL
Date: 24 Sep 03 - 08:57 PM

"Cold as a witch's tit". Took me years ti figure out what a tit was.

Re height: "You're tall enough if your feet touch the floor."

"you're not made of glass, you know." when blocking someone's view.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Bert
Date: 25 Sep 03 - 07:46 PM

If a kid asked, "Where is my ...?"

The reply would be "Up in Annie's room, behind the clock"

As for dark you can't beat that unforgettable opening line from Trapp's War by Brian Callison "The night was as black as a Sudanese stoker's arse"

And the price of anything was "Fourpence 'apenee"

And the time was "half past twenty two getting on for nearly"

and someone incompetant "couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery"

The answer to What's for tea? was "Kippers with jam on"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 25 Sep 03 - 08:03 PM

Open Mike, my mother also used "Good night NURSE!" in Minnesota in the late 30s and the 40s. I would more-or-less echo back, "Good NIGHT, Nurse!"

If one of the kids dropped a piece of food on the kitchen floor, and didn't want to eat it because "It's DURRRRRR-ty!", my grandmother would assure us that "You gotta eat your peck of dirt before you die!"

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Edmund
Date: 25 Sep 03 - 09:10 PM

He calls someone a BLIVIT.
I ask "What's a BLIVIT?"
He sais "Ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag"

He sais "You think you're a great wit, like so many Irish, but you're only half Irish, so you know what that makes you."

Edmund

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: LadyJean
Date: 25 Sep 03 - 11:50 PM

What are we going to do today?
Stand on our head in the butterdish.
(Mother had degenerative arthritis, so it wouldn't have been easy for her.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Red and White Rabbit
Date: 26 Sep 03 - 02:41 AM

my mother's favourite saying was

" you'll die after it" I spent many a sleepless night worrying about not waking up eventually I asked her what she meant and was told
" well you cant die before it if its already happened can you?"

another favourite was
" if you dont eat your dinner you cant have any pudding" when my eldestwas about three I tried this one on him he just replied " if I eat all my dinner I wont have rom for any pudding!"

My maths teacher ( Mr Smart) when trying to teach my algebra spent a year saying if I have ten oranges and 3 apples what do I get - and clipping me round the ear for replies such as a fruit slad!

I had another teacher who is mudcatter who used to say 'as the actress said to te bishop....'

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: tuggy mac
Date: 26 Sep 03 - 05:35 AM

a fac like a bulldog chewing a wasp!(hornet to our american pals!)


And.

Also

He was shivering like a whippet taking a stif Crap!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Sep 03 - 01:24 PM

The IRA's onion thing was specific to my sister and I. it was a version of 1billion green bottles really!
In Basildon in Essex there is a cooling tower which looks like a giant Onion. It is known locally as "The onion" My sister and I rather liked the Onion bit and added IRA for some reason I have now forgotten.
When driving through Basildon we will still chant when we can see it. It drives my mother up the wall :-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: wysiwyg
Date: 26 Sep 03 - 01:47 PM

From Hardi, a childhood memory of Grandpa Cleve--

Shit in one hand and wish in the other, and see which one gets fuller the fastest.

From my memory-- in response to a promise to deliver on something expected: "Yeah, and Christmas is coming."

~S~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: JennyO
Date: 26 Sep 03 - 02:05 PM

"Where are you going, grandpa?" - "There and back to see how far it is." or "To see a man about a dog."

"Every horse to his own nosebag, said the old man as he kissed his cow." (my dad)

"What are we having for dinner mum?" "Pigs' didders (no idea what they are) on toast and duck under the table." or "Fresh air on toast."

My grandfather's favourite expression of surprise was "Great everlasting hambone!"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Forsh
Date: 26 Sep 03 - 02:27 PM

Many a mickle meks a muckle, (When given just a penny for reward)
Muckle beeng border land dialect for Large as in Muckle geet clart
(geet= great, clart= dirt/lump of mud, clarty= mucky/muddy etc)

and from my step dad, a value judgement: You're about as much use as a one legged criple at an arse-kicking contest!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Brían
Date: 26 Sep 03 - 10:39 PM

A couple fom my dad:

"What's for supper, dad?"-
"Bread and go with it."

"Off like a turd of hurdles".

One line an elderly woman told me when i figured out how to turn on an electric sander when I was sanding the floor in an apartment house:

"There, dear. Now you're cooking with gas."

Brían

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: LadyJean
Date: 26 Sep 03 - 11:43 PM

Dad would say, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." But I'm still wishing.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Metchosin
Date: 26 Sep 03 - 11:59 PM

From my Grandma...Lands o' Goshen!

Something was "chocker block" if it was full to the brim.

Things were done quickly in "two shakes of a lambs tail"

If you were stupid you were "as thick as two short planks" or better yet, "if brains were gunpowder, that kid wouldn't have enough to blow his nose."

A kid with a cold's nose was so full there was no room for his finger.

and you were always warned not to "cut off your nose to spite your face".

When your dancin' with your honey
and your nose is sorta runny
and you think its kinda funny
well its not.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: C-flat
Date: 29 Sep 03 - 08:58 AM

To a kid with his finger up his nose............
"Pick us a winner for the 3.30!"
or
"Mind you don't pick the lining from your cap!"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Bassic
Date: 29 Sep 03 - 09:36 AM

As I child I seemed to spend endless hours in the back of a car going to "the coast", the usual responces to my pleadings of, "are we there yet?" were.........

Its just round that corner,

Its just over that hill,

First one to see the sea gets an ice cream

I told you to got before we left!!

OK, everyone out and push!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: C-flat
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 02:38 AM

One of my Mothers' favourite sayings everytime she saw a funeral,
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in!"


No idea what for!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Snuffy
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 01:07 PM

That's an old music hall song, C-Flat. I remember hearing Alan Breeze sing it many times on the Billy Cotton Bandshow back in the 50s and 60s.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: C-flat
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 04:11 PM

It would be interesting to find the rest of the song. A quick "google" doesn't seem to shed any light. I wonder if anyone else remembers it?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Bman
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 06:54 PM

From my high school geometry teacher: I see, said the blind carpenter, as he picked up his hammer and saw.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Metchosin
Date: 30 Sep 03 - 10:50 PM

I remember it C-flat, it was of common usage in our family, but just the lines you posted. Also remember, from the same person (from Bolton)

It ain't the 'eavy 'aulin'
That 'urts the 'orses 'ooves
Its the 'ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer,
On the 'ard 'ighway.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 12:33 AM

Re: "It isn't the cough that carries you off; it's the coffin they carry you off in."

One site refers to it as an Ogden Nash poem.

Aerosmith used that line in a song, but I'm sure that's not the song you were thinking of!

http://www.georgeformby.co.uk/gf_senior/report.htm
says it's a joke (not a song) that George Formby, Sr., used when he performed while suffering from tuberculosis!

http://home.att.net/~shannon718/poems/lim4.html
gives it as a limerick:

There once was an eccentric old boffin,
Who remarked, in a fine fit of coughing:
"It isn't the cough
That carries you off,
But the coffin they carry you off in."

I couldn't find any site that refers to it as a line from a music hall song.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: C-flat
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 02:45 AM

I'm pretty sure my Mother didn't listen to Aerosmith, Jim, so I suppose it must have been from George Formby.
Thanks for the info.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 02:48 AM

A fellow camp counselor in Wisconsin used to tell a story about John Jacob Schmidt, who was "rough and tough and hard to bluff and used to many hardships." I swear I've heard that "rough and tough and hard to bluff" phrase in other situations, but I haven't found anything on the history of the phrase. Heck, I even started a thread on it a few years back. If anybody can tell me more about the phrase, please post in that thread.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 01 Oct 03 - 08:21 AM

A Maine curse:

"May the bleeding piles forever haunt you,
And corns grow on your feet,
And crabs as big as lobsters crawl up your balls, and eat.
May the whole world dis own you until you're a nervous wreck,
Then may you fall through your own asshole,
And break your fucking neck."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Brían
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 08:26 AM

There's something I remember my Great uncle say to his daughter. My wife remembers her grandmother say it, too:

"There was a girl with a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good, she was oh, so good,
But when she was bad, she was horrid!

Brían

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 10:21 AM

My stepfather, indulging in the "when I was a boy" syndrome that all the old folks seemed to enjoy, telling of how hard his childhood was, would say "For supper, we'd have breaded nothing."

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: HuwG
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 01:31 PM

A Rugby song variant of Brían's remembered ditty:

"When she was good, she was very, very good
And when she was bad, she was marvellous"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 03:47 PM

Well that's a hell of a note
Or That's an Irish trick

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Suzanne B.
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 06:18 PM

"You'll get your reward in heaven"
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"
"If it was a bear it would've bit you"
   (Or if it was a snake it would have bit you")
Mom also went to hell in a handbasket, but usually only if she
was having sour cream on her baked potato - if she had both butter
and sour cream on her baked potato, she just went straight to hell.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Suzanne B.
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 06:29 PM

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 06:47 PM

My step-father used to mention (when perhaps apologizing) that he'd had good intentions--"But you know what kind of paving blocks those are!"

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Amos
Date: 02 Oct 03 - 08:01 PM

My father's mum used to nod agreeably when someone was handing her a line, and her eyes would twinkle -- and she'd say "Ayuh! I hear ya talkin'!". A fine way to avoid agreeing with someone.

A

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Ian
Date: 03 Oct 03 - 05:27 AM

My mother always claimed that I could fall into a bag of flour and come out BLACK.

Ian

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Deda
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 12:05 AM

The same grandmother Amos mentioned used to call anything ostentatious or overblown "too much of a muchness". And she taught me to play Canasta -- but I don't remember it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Celeste
Date: 04 Oct 03 - 07:07 PM

"Were you born in a field?" or "Put wood in t'hole" When anyone left the door open.
"You're only happy when you're miserable" I seemed to cry a lot as a kid, I blame my big brother.
Whenever I was ill my Nan-nan would say she'd "put me in a bag, shake me around, and see what came out".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: rich-joy
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 02:14 AM

Bert - where were you brought up?
Coz my great granny in West Aussie (but from the UK a coupla generations back) used to say to my Mum :
"up in Annie's room behind the clock"
in answer to her "where's such-and-such?" question.
She always assumed it'd been a family saying, coz she'd not come across it in other families or in books!!

Also, in answer to "what's that?" the standard reply was :
"a wigwam for a goose's bridle".

Cheers!
R-J

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: City Crow
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 03:27 AM

Well, roll me in honey and toss me to the lesbians. From my ol' uncle Ron.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,jan glasgow
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 07:49 AM

read with interest - here's a few scottish ones!

"Yer on plums" you've got no chance!
"as black as the earl of hell's waistcoat" filthy.
"a face like a panfull of fried arseholes" ugly.
"giraffe stew and hamster sauce" response to menu questioning.
"you room's a booroch" it's a mess.
"in a guddle"   in a mess.
"och, stop yer fashin!" stop your fretting.
"were you born stupid, or did you take lessons?" self evident.
"ya numpty!" you idiot!
"shut yer coupon" and other directives, where coupon means face.
"it's ben the hoose" it's in the other room.

and one I still use even though the street names refer to Dundee and I now live in Glasgow...
"it's up the Hackie ( ie the Hawkhill area) doon the Blackie (ie the Blackness road area) first stop Birkie (a nearby village) then Turkey."

mixing east coast Scotland with west coast dialects/idioms makes for a rich vocabulary - and my teenagers are also fluent Gaelic speakers with their own developing repertoire!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 08:31 AM

I live in Blackness Avenue in Dundee, right next to Hawkhill. That's wierd! I'll have to ask about that one. My boyfriend has taken to using Numpty a lot reciently.
aaaah scottish, what a wonderful language!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Zelda B.
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 03:14 PM

I once asked a woman from Oklahoma what things her family used to say ...
"I'm gonna ride you bug huntin'!" ...when the kids got into trouble. Also.."What in cats hair is going on over there?!"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: redhorse
Date: 05 Oct 03 - 05:15 PM

Two from my late Mum

When standing (visually) in the way:"You make a better door than a Window"
.
When leaving a door open: "Were you born in Bromyard?". Maybe someone from Worcestershire/Herefordshire area can explain it but I can't

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Amos
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 10:25 PM

A fine collection of country expressions.

Regards,


A

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 06:29 AM

And Bob's your Uncle - said after doing something quickly and successfully

Couldn't hit the broad side of a barn - a poor shot

Put that in your pipe and smoke it - a parting shot

Skinnier than a sack of deer horns

Skookum - something well built or strong

Now that's a fine kettle of fish - said if you're in some difficulty

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Jack Hickman
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 04:26 PM

How about "dumber than a bag of rubber mallets?"

Or "she has a face like the wave on a slop bucket."

Does anyone but me remember the slop bucket.

Jack Hickman

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: tarheel
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 05:29 PM

but mom,if....   well,if frogs had wings they wouldn't bump their tails!!!!

also...we use to say,i 'spect so!...(Meaning,i expect so...)
but mom would interrupt with....well,if you speck,what does a fly do?
then there was this reply after some great statement!... no hock,sherlock!
i had an elderly aunt who always asked me if i got a whoppin' in school that day....of course i'd say no and she would always reply with... well,they didn't give you justice then,did they?
then we we kids would have something that we were trying to hide,mom would ask...what do you have? of course the reply would be,... 'nutin!!!and mom would say... well,did you bring anything to put it in?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 05:35 PM

from my Mum

oh what fun
oh what fun
shooting peas up a nanny goat's bum

(yes I know it doesn't rhyme)

Jemima Jones and me
we both sat up a tree
we had no shimmies
to cover our jimmies
Jemima Jones and me

(and yes I know it doesn't make sense!)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 06:11 PM

As referred to by Open Mike, when my mother was exasperated she'd say, "Good night, NURSE!" If I dared to feel sassy, I'd echo back, "Good NIGHT, nurse!"

My grandmother, catching me with matches, would solemnly assure me that "Little boys who play with matches wet the bed!"

My stepfather would tell me that when he was a kid his family was so poor that the would have "breaded nothing" for supper.

My mother: "This is the last time I'm going to tell you to (whatever)!" And I, in a sassy mode: "Good!"

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Cluin
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 06:56 PM

Quit bouncin' around like a bubble in pisspot! If I have to pull this car over...



(Hey, that's what Scenic Lookouts were invented for, right?)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: JennyO
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 09:22 PM

Q. What's for dinner? A. Fresh air on toast and duck under the table.


If you keep biting your nails, you will end up with a little bag of nails in your stomach.


If you don't eat your crusts your hair won't curl

to which I would reply

I don't want my hair to curl

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Joe_F
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 10:08 PM

You may be a pain, but I can't see thru you (said when you are blocking the view).

Binna bareda bitcha = If it had been a bear, it would have bitten you (said when you are looking for something and it is right in front of you).

It takes eyes to look, but brains to see (likewise).

Where there's no sense, there's no feeling (said when you don't seem to mind some discomfort -- e.g., when you are out in the cold without a jacket).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Nov 04 - 10:53 PM

From grandparents:

Hey is for horses! (Don't say "Hey!")

They must have seen you coming! (You bought something you didn't need.)

You'll have potatoes growing in your ears if you don't wash them!

Your face'll stay that way! (if you're making one)

"Each to his own taste," as the old woman said when she kissed the cow.

Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.

"I see," said the blind man.   ("Ah! Now I get it!")

Curiosity killed the cat.

Two thick never stick. ("Friends(or sweethearts)who are too close will always drift apart.")

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

The more I see of people the better I like dogs.

If I had a nickel for every time so-and-so said that, I'd be rich!

Blind as a bat.

You've got bats in your belfry.

Who was your n***** waiter last year? ("Don't give me orders!")

Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

Strong as a h'isting horse. (That is, one of the Percherons or other big horses that used to be used for raising cargo or timbers off a deck or at a construction site.)

A face that would stop a clock.

Dead as a doornail.

Gives me the willies.

Black as pitch. (a dark night)

Fog's thick as pea soup.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Metchosin
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 01:09 AM

which reminds me of some others:

an extension to the blind man-
"I see said the blind man, as he picked up the hammer and saw."

"Nobody here but us chickens"

"That'll put hair on your chest" - usually said about burnt toast or a roasted wiener inadvertantly dropped in a fire.

"I'm the king of the castle and your the dirty rascal" - a school yard taunt that was commonly heard from any suitable piece of higher ground

"Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
So Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, was he."

"Liar, liar pants on fire
Nose as long as a telephone wire."

Also overheard in adult's conversations, but not understood by me at the time was the comment:

"Her heels are round" or conversely, "Her heels are square", depending on how someone judged a female's sexual behavior. I did get the general idea that it was considered better to have square heels than round ones and worried for quite awhile, when upon close examination, I perceived that that part of my anatomy was decidedly not square.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: John Minear
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 09:10 AM

From my Mother:

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Don't be a dog in a manger.
Let sleeping dogs lie.
Little dog smells his own.
The longest way round is the shortest way home.
All the way around Robin Hood's barn.
They stumble who run fast, make haste slowly.
First the worst, second the same, last the best of all the game.
You're a pain but I can't see through you.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
Do unto others....
   T.O.M.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: tarheel
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 10:58 AM

and one i'll never forget!..."you CAN'T go home again!"....how true it was!!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: beetle cat
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 11:59 AM

"TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE!"
-Mom

"AND NOW ITS TIME TO SAY GOODNIGHT TO ALL MY FUNNY FRIENDS"
-Dad

"ITS A FREE WORLD!"
-Kids

"ITS A FREE COUNTRY!"
-Pollitically correct kids

"QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS; INTELLEGENT OR OTHERWISE?"
- 7th grade social studies teacher at the end of every class.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 03:20 PM

If you kids (don't stop that, don't get this room cleaned up, don't eat your deep fried fat, whatever...) I'll (knock you into next week, blister your butts so you won't sit for a month, whack you so hard your brains'll rattle for a week).

Nobody ever carried these threats out, however....

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: frogprince
Date: 18 Nov 04 - 10:15 PM

The longer response to "hey": "Straw is cheaper, grass is free; horses and cattle eat all three".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: frogprince
Date: 19 Nov 04 - 10:48 PM

Nobody else? Our farm was just a couple of miles from the nearest village, and if we weren't running machinery we would hear the noon and six pm whistles from the water tower. Like as not one of my folks would say, "Six o'clock and the whistle blew, and out of the boxcar the hobo flew, and said,'If I had some ham, I'd have some ham and eggs, if I had some eggs'"..

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: JennyO
Date: 20 Nov 04 - 06:42 AM

"You'd lose your head if it wasn't screwed on!" (when we couldn't find something)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: freda underhill
Date: 20 Nov 04 - 07:07 AM

wait till your father gets home...

(sometime later) where's that bloody man?

(before dinner) - loud call out the back yard .. "come and get it!"

..put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Is that so?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,KSUAVE236
Date: 23 Dec 08 - 11:51 PM

that's a cocker(referring to something fascinating) my grand father always used to say.r.i.p. papa

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: semi-submersible
Date: 24 Dec 08 - 06:24 AM

"By the skin of your teeth" you "just squeaked by" whatever "close shave" confronted you.

"Good night, nurse!" when much startled (putting emphasis on "nurse" as described earlier) is one my Manitoba-born Grandmother also used.

"Wouldn't that frost you!" expressed Grandmother's frustration. Somehow I have an impression a long form might have existed, something like "Wouldn't that frost your grandmother's preserves" or her "eyebrows," but I think that version (or versions) came through someone else.

"Since Heck was a pup" meant an indefinite span of years. I asked Grandmother about it once, and she didn't know what "heck" meant here. Later I ran across this in a book of word and phrase origins which alleged that Hector was a common name given to big dogs (after the Greek hero, I assume).

My mother (the Northwest-coast/Irish-American side of the family) rarely used "a coon's age" to mean a long time. This still has a literal meaning, I guess. When I was a child, we planted corn in our garden, until the racoons discovered it to be edible. Then each year they would always knock it down long before the cobs matured. We had to give up growing it. We tried again a few years later, but no use. Maybe fifteen years later, other people started growing corn again nearby - with no problems! I suppose there were no living coons in the neighbourhood who knew how to exploit standing corn.

"When I was a boy" was used as a stereotyped phrase by my mother, "tongue in cheek" (i.e. jokingly).

"H-E-two-sticks" was her mother (my Grandma)'s euphemisim for the exclamation invoking regions infernal. Grandma also used the spoonerism "a mell of a Hess," but not as much after the embarrassing moment when she accidentally inverted it back to the original while speaking with a friend who did not use profanities.

"Were you born in a barn?" when a door was left open, was used on both sides of my family. I was startled to hear the same phrase, from my late husband's Newfoundland family, ending with "born in a boat."

"On [something or someone] like ducks on a June bug" describes a spontaneous pack attack.

"If it was a bear it would bite you." (I don't recall the grammatically correct "were" being used in this phrase, but my memory may be at fault.)

"If the good Lord's willin' and the creek don't rise"
"Slow as molasses in January"
"Old as Methuselah" [Biblical reference]
"That joke has whiskers on it."

A bad mess looked "like a dog's breakfast" or "like the wreck of the Hesperus" [Longfellow poem] to Grandmother
A very dishevelled person might also look like the wreck of the Hesperus, or "like the Witch of Endor." [Biblical reference]
"Happy as a clam (at high tide)": Mom made a song, "Sam the Clam" from this saying.
"Three sheets to the wind" was about as drunk as a person could get and still be ambulatory. I think I've heard it with "two sheets" once. "Tight as a boiled owl" is another I may have heard, or only read.

"A real gully-washer and trash-mover" (very heavy rain) is a phrase that just shouts of origins in a more arid landscape. Here on the rural Wet Coast, moist earth minimises surface runoff. Vegetation grows so fast that discarded trash gets grown over instead.

Chinook jargon and other loanwords, and popular song or other phrases, especially from Pogo (Walt Kelly's comic strip) also formed parts of my family's language. Rowrbazzle!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: banjoman
Date: 24 Dec 08 - 07:13 AM

Go and see what time it is on the Liver Clock

Take a walk along New Brighton Pier till your hat floats

Get me some steel wool and I'll knit you a kettle

The rags of his arse are battering his brains out

Who does she think she is? Lady Muck?

Go and play tick on the East Lancs Road

The only good thing that ever came from manchester was the East Lancs Road to Liverpool

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Popeye
Date: 15 Dec 09 - 11:09 PM

My Grandmother from Northern Ontario would use this insult once in a while. "She couldn't cook shit for a tramp."

She left a waiter slack-jawed speechless once when he asked her if she was hungry. She replied " I could eat the arse out of a skunk."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Vin2
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 08:41 AM

'Don't cry, you'll sell up'
'Mam, where's me dad', 'In the oven with the meat'
'This day, the next, then fireworks'
'Come ere, while i 'it yer'
'Where yer goin dad', 'There and back to see 'owe far it is'
'It's all me eye and Tommy Martin'
'Eee, tis a sad day when yer learn nowt'

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 12:18 PM

My neighbor, when excited would say, "Jesus Christ on a hardwood ridge."

Never made any sense to me.
My Father used to say, "Well, shit a goddamn."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Joe_F
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 06:28 PM

"It won't show on a galloping horse" (said if something is slightly wrong with the way you look -- a small spot on your shirt, say).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 06:38 PM

"What's for tea?" "Cat's legs and apple pie."
- from my father (born in 1913), who heard it from his mother.

And if you said "don't care", my mother would come back with

"Don't Care was made to care,
Don't Care was hung.
Don't Care was put in the pot
And boiled till he was done."

(Even as quite a small child I thought 'Don't Care' was an unlikely name.)

My mother (born 1921) also had a handkerchief-figure rhyme which she'd got from her father, who was a devout member of the Plymouth Brethren. The hanky-man was supposed to be a monk, and the rhyme went:

"Dearly beloved brethren, is it not a sin
To eat new potatoes and throw away the skin?
The skin feeds the pigs, the pigs feed you.
Dearly beloved brethren, is it not true?"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Leadfingers
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 07:16 PM

200

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: kendall
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 06:52 AM

Hector wasn't a Greek.

Stupid: He doesn't know if his ass was bored or punched.
Poor shot: He couldn't hit a bull in the ass with a banjo

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Mo the caller
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 04:31 AM

My mother (born 1920 in London) used to say a slight variation on that potato rhymn.

Go and take a long walk off a short pier.

A short lived insult (just while the advert was current) - "you're Harpic" (Harpic gets clean round the bend). Does that need explaining for those from another continent or century?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 08:38 AM

For a man wearing a gaudy necktie : "Who died and left you that?".

I'll kick you so hard up the arse, you'll chew leather for a week.

Pretentious people : All fur coats and no knickers.

Stupid person :Thick as a piss-stone (US : - urinal) and twice as wet.

Fidget : running round like a fart in a colander - can't decide which hole to come out of.

Unlucky : I would dive into a barrel of tits and come out sucking my thumb.

Pretentious person : thinks his arsehole is a perfume factory.

Stupid person : has a head like the bottom of a baby's pram - full of piss, rust and biscuit crumbs.

Ugly : face like a bulldog licking piss off a wire brush.

Stupid person : were you born a pillock, or did you practice ?

Go away : shit bricks, build a wall and hide behind it.

Dialogue : I would call you a c**t, but C**ts are useful.

Diseased ones aren't !

What for you kick my dog, and call him fuck off ? his name is Rover !

About as much use as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking contest.

Neither use nor fucking ornament.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Bettynh
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 11:11 AM

After a storm my grandmother looked for "enough blue sky to make a Dutchman's britches." Those britches looked like this

My college roomie's favorite expletive was "Whale drek!"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Banjiman
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 11:35 AM

My Mum always said "You'd laugh to see a pudding crawl" meaning you would laugh at anything.

Hmmmmm.........

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 11:39 AM

One from leicester that always made me laugh, but could never work out its derivation

'neither arsehole nor watercress' ( not one thing or another)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 02:42 PM

Having just read this revived thread in its entirety, here are a couple of variants on sayings already noted, and one observation on "Hector"/"Heck".

"Were ye born in a field with the slap open?" (when someone doesn't shut a door)

" 'I see, I see,' said the blind man, and he didn't see at all"

"A blin' man on a flying horse would never see it" (said when there's a small flaw in a piece of workmanship). In Donegal, I've heard a rough, crude, hasty, improvised, makeshift, botched &c job being called a "half-hanged McNaught" (pronounced "Micknyat"), apparently after someone who was hanged but revived later - anyone got any further details?)

"He'd drink porter through a Polisman's sock" (i.e. said of someone with, like Tim Finnegan, a "love of the liquor"; Polisman being an officer of the law)

Not dissimilar is one collected in "The Patter" (an anthology of Glasgow sayings), "He'd eat a scabby dug", which as the editor put it, meands that someone is extremely ("not to mention indiscriminately") hungry. There's another variant, "I could eat a farmer's arse..."

Staying with dogs, notice the original mention of Hector has him as "a pup". While of course a human child might be called a "pup" - in fact, I've been jocularly called a "cub" myself - and Hektor, Prince of Troy, might well provide the name for a mastiff, like Caesar in Burns's "Twa Dogs", there's the seventeenth-century Scots poem, the Elegy for Bonny Heck, a famous greyhound from Fife.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Joe_F
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 08:25 PM

"Wandering around like a fart in the marketplace." (Confused.)

I later found out that that was originally "like a fart in the pickle barrel" (Yiddish: vi a farts im roisl), referring to fermentation bubbles working their way up between the pickles. That in turn was a play on "vi a frantsoiz in russland" (like a Frenchman in Russia, alluding to Napoleon's retreat). A pregnant metaphor indeed!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 08:39 PM

I sent her off with a flea in her ear!

My grandparents used this in the early 50s. Actually I used this just yesterday, while writing my letter of complaint about bad service to BP Australia... :-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: mousethief
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 10:32 PM

Bryn Pugh: For a man wearing a gaudy necktie : "Who died and left you that?".

A friend of mine wearing a fur was accosted by someone who was clearly anti-fur and who apparently had a ready-made question she asked of the fur-wearing classes:

"What poor creature had to die so you could wear that?"

My friend's response:

"My aunt."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 10:28 AM

That one about fur reminds me of an incident I witnessed some twenty years ago, and which I think is worth sharing. One elegant lady was striding along a street near one Scottish University, with some kind of a ?stole around her neck; it had the head and paws of some animal of a dark brown colour at each end of it. Another equally elegant lady was striding towrds her with a fine Irish Setter on a lead trotting along before her. It was the most elegant of the three, at least until it leapt, with a loud canine challenge, at the swinging heads and paws. Ah, the delight of seeing Kelvinside snobbery reduced to a most unladylike shriek and a flurry of bejewelled hands. Alas, the furry wummin didn't fall over, so I can't confirm the truth of the familiar Glasgow (and Edinburgh) reductive phrase, "All fur coat and nae knickers".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Der Pipster
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 11:16 AM

Joseph O'Connor - whether this was recollected from his own childhood I don't know - has one of his characters claim: 'I'm so hungry I could eat a nun's arse through a convent gate!'

And Pinter - again, was this invention or recollection? - has one of his more aggressive characters describing another as 'smelling from arsehole to breakfast time.'

And an Ulster friend of mine would always use, instead of 'a stone's throw from' or 'within earshot of' the lovelier 'within a hound's gowl of' - gowl being a howl, yelp, bark. I've appropriated that one.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 07:12 PM

My grandma: "If ifs an' buts was apples an' nuts, wuddn't old women be stuffin' the'r guts"

Grandma again: "Ahm as old as me tongue an' a little bit older than me teeth"

My dad: "Get thissen 'ackled up reight, lad. Tha's framin' thissen like a be'se'k mole"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 07:17 PM

Another from dad (after I came home blubbering, having been hit by a much smaller...just smaler, not younger...boy):

"Get thissen back dahn t' road an' bray 'im proper. Yon's nobbut t' size a' two pennorth a' copper"

(The rhyme was unintentional). I did as requested which ended up with the other lad's mother in our house shouting: "tha'll a' ter cum an' get thy Robert off'n ahr Phillip, 'e's just abaht killin' 'im".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Rowan
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 12:01 AM

From keel to truck, meaning from top to bottom (albeit in reverse order) often referring to how well one had or hadn't washed

Slower than a wet week = taking an inordinately long time

Not as green as he's cabbage-looking = not as clueless as he's trying to pretend.

As popular as a pork chop in a synagogue (often, these days, with mosque instead of synagogue) or as popular as a fart in a bottle or as a fart in church

Shake a leg (or) Unwrap your rung = get a wriggle on = hurry up!

Variations on some above
"I see it all", said the blind man, when he really couldn't see at all.

Bright as a new pin

Queen Anne front and Mary Anne behind ; more or less equivalent to "Not as smart as it looks" but also to "All fur coat and nae knickers"

More trouble than a barrel of monkeys

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Louise
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 02:37 AM

It's fun to update the classics as in:
blind as a bat with laryngitis
or It could happen, but right now it's as likely as a herd of flying pigs requesting landing privileges at Dulles Airport/

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 02:54 AM

Pipster (are we related in some way?) - my father remembered hearing "[from] arseholes to breakfast time" in the Army, basically meaning "dawn till dusk, incessantly".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Mavis Enderby
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 03:10 AM

Bad haircut - "look like you've been dragged through a hedge backwards"

Blunt knife - "blunt as a donkey's arse", or better still, "you could ride bare arsed to London and back on that"

Several variations on leaving a door open above - interestingly there's a Lincolnshire variation of "Were you born in Bromyard?" (from Redhorse above on 5 Oct 2003): "Were you born in Bardney" - explanation here. I don't know if the Bromyard version has a similar explanation?

Pete.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Will Fly
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 06:39 AM

When I came in from playing out as a kid, my Dad would say to me, "Here he is - Joe Soap from Chorley". The fact that I was born in Chorley was coincidental - that was the phrase used for everybody.

When I asked what we were going to have for dinner, he would say, "Cold bum and tongue".

Both got from his parents, I guess.

When I came in sunburnt from playing out all the summer days, he would say, "Here he is - the white wog". And, like many ex-servicemen who'd spent part of the second world war in North Africa and India, he came back with bits of Arabic in his speech, such as:

"Let's have a shufti (look) at that".

"Right, I'm off for a charp (sleep)". Charpoy being a day bed in India.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: mattkeen
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 11:00 AM

From my Grandmother about kids:

When they're young they'll make you're arms ache
When they're older they'll make your heart break.



Ever the optimist

Well she was married to a violent Northumbrian miner

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Rowan
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 11:52 PM

A few others that I've been reminded of;

Very pukka = shipshape and Bristol fashion = very kosher = very proper (especially 'very properly turned out')

a cut above the ruck = well above the usual standard

down in the dumps = miserable

off to the donga (pronounced dong-ga) = off to one's own room or sleeping area.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Rowan
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 12:15 AM

and
a lip that'd trip a train    for a pout of despondency

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,JohnCNZ
Date: 06 Mar 11 - 07:03 PM

A random selection from my earlier years in the UK:

Your dad wasn't a glazier! ("Get out the way - I can't see.")

X?! I'll give you X!! (Said threateningly after you'd had the impertinence to ask for X.)

Little fishes lick their dishes - all say "amen".

Yard and a half of pump-water. (Said of an extremely thin person.)

Born in a barn? (To any non-shutter of doors.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Mar 11 - 07:12 PM

Give me more lip ande you'll be scratching the back of your neck with the front of your teeth.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Nathan in Texas
Date: 06 Mar 11 - 08:20 PM

When my brother grew a beard, my granddad would call out when he saw him "House of David! House of David!" - - After the religious group who grew long hair and beards.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 12:50 AM

I just stepped out to find myself should I show up before I get back, please keep me here until I return.


A wise old owl sat in the oak the more he heard the less he spoke, the less he spoke the more he heard. Why can't we be like that wise old bird.

Mind your 'P's" and "q's" and stitches and save yourself a swat on the britches.

A couple of my mom's favourites: If you don't stop making that face a stiff wind will come along and it'll freeze that way. Or "If that lip of yours gets any lower you'll trip over it."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 12:58 AM

Another poster wrote the say ing "Were you born in a feild." My mom would always growl "were you born in a barn" rferring to when we left doors and windows open.

or her favourite when we were teenagers " If all the other kids took along walk off a short pier would you too?" we always knew we wouldn't get anywhere when she came out with that one.

I thank you for this thread its bvery interesting to see how the sayings from different areas although different are similar in many ways. I hail from Vancover Island Canada.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: wysiwyg
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 10:39 AM

"Don't push the river – it flows by itself."      
– Chinese proverb

~S~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: Hokumsheik
Date: 20 Mar 12 - 10:57 AM

From my farther:
If at first you don't succeed
suck eggs
they're bigger

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,Woods Booger
Date: 27 Jan 13 - 03:10 PM

I'll tack your bag to a stump and push you over...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST,999
Date: 27 Jan 13 - 08:25 PM

There's children starving in Korea (when one of us didn't want to finish what was on the plate)

The worms'll carry you off to the river (said when a child was eating candies or sweets)

Turn that noise off (referring to rock and roll)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Old sayings from childhood
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jan 13 - 09:50 PM

Eeh! Its black over Bills mothers! Meaning it is going to rain. Derbyshire saying I think.