I hadn't realised that a butt of sack has such literary significance, but surely the word sackbut was expected to resonate here too.


Is there historical evidence that "tight" meaning drunk actually derives from "tight as a drum"? I've heard the phrase, but usually used in either a literal (e.g. the skin over her swollen belly was stretched tight as a drum) or financial sense. (He's tight as a drum: he pinches his pennies until they shriek.)

I've heard my grandparents' generation describe inebriation as "tight as a boiled owl," "Titus Andronicus," and more often simply "tight," among other euphemisms. "Tight" here seems analogous to "having a skinful."

Other euphemisms along the tight-as-a-boiled-owl line include "potted," "soused," "sodden," "pickled," "stewed," or "stewed to the gills." But no-one I know ever actually contemplated boiling an owl. There are old stories, like how to catch an owl: walk around it, while its head turns to watch you circle it, until it wrings its own neck. Then there's how to cook an owl. Boil it in a pot with a stone the same size as the owl, until you can stick a fork into the stone. Then, throw away the owl and eat the stone.


What does "on ice" mean in the part about Noah's Flodde on ice? Does "on ice" here mean merely "getting a cool reception from its audience"? Had the fashion of musicals performed on skates started by the 1950s when Flanders wrote this? Winter ice? But the Thames didn't freeze in the 1540s.