BS: Did your mum say this to you.....

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Slag
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 06:13 PM

The point about the cat is that whatever it drug in was DEAD!

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Rowan
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 06:21 PM

Patrick Alloiscious is probably Patrick Aloysius, who was possibly, and stereotypically, the butt of the original Irish "joke" slanders.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 07:16 PM

Thanks Rowan,

Nothing came up on Google under that, but who can tell what the spelling ought to be.

When there was a ruccus and my Grandmother didn't know who was involved, she'd start with her first born boy's name and work her way down to the youngest (only the boys of course!) and end with Damnit!

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 22 Apr 08 - 11:02 PM

georgiansilver -- my daughter is a vet tech -- one of her text books when she took the course started out .......'contrary to popular opinion, there really IS only ONE way to skin a cat..........!'

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 23 Apr 08 - 03:48 AM

Thanks for that LOL.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 24 Apr 08 - 12:34 AM

I giggled too!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Acorn4
Date: 24 Apr 08 - 07:37 AM

When are you going to get a PROPER job?

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 24 Apr 08 - 10:33 PM

Ah yes -- forgot that one!!

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Wyrd Sister
Date: 25 Apr 08 - 02:31 PM

From an aunt, whenever anything was troubling - 'You'll die after it!' Took me ages to work out I hadn't died before it!

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Don Firth
Date: 25 Apr 08 - 02:43 PM

Just thought I'd bung this in here.

Jean Redpath, who has had a singing career that's lasted at least forty years, was once asked after a concert of folk songs and ballads, "You have such a lovely voice. Have you ever thought of doing anything with it?"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 25 Apr 08 - 09:42 PM

No - that couldn't be.......

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Alice
Date: 25 Apr 08 - 10:38 PM

Don, my voice teacher, who has performed in opera companies all over the world, once had a local hick say to her after a small concert, "You have such a beautiful voice. Have you ever thought of taking lessons?"

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Eye Lander
Date: 26 Apr 08 - 07:02 AM

My mum used most of the above regularly! But when I was naughty (also a regular occurance!) she'd say 'Get out of my sight before I do something I shall be sorry for' I was usually hiding behind the door.
Jillie

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Flash Company
Date: 26 Apr 08 - 07:34 AM

Haven't had time to read them all, but someone referred to 'Sweet Fanny Adams' back there. There was a murder victim named Fanny Adams, and I think the body was either never found or found dissected. WW1 soldiers used to refer to any unrecognisable dish served up to them as 'Sweet Fanny Adams'.
We had 'If you don't get a haircut soon we'll have to buy a violin!'
And one that came to minnd on seeing one of Tony Blair's sons with an excuse fo a moustache, 'Never cultivate on your lip that which grows wild round your bum!'

FC

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 26 Apr 08 - 09:38 AM

Flash company -- now that mustache one I have never heard before........love it.....my mum definitely used to say the 'get out of my sight before I do something I regret....' and of course -- the full name syndrome when she was really p.o'd --- DEBORAH JEAN FIRTH -- COME HERE RIGHT NOW. And of course there was wait til your father gets home.....

When I have time I am going to do some digging on Sweet Fanny Adams -- I always understood it to bw 'Sweet Fuck All' and have never heard of a person or that story -- very interesting - thanks.......

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 26 Apr 08 - 01:35 PM

Click here for info on St. John's Dance:
Dancing Mania article on Wikipedia

Most interesting is this bit of info:

>> During the initial outbreaks of the mania, religious ceremonies were held in an attempt to exorcise the demons thought to be causing the mania. People commonly prayed to St. Vitus for aid, and he soon became the patron saint of the dancers. The phrase "St. Vitus' Dance", however, is in fact a name given to a syndrome known as Sydenham's chorea, which is totally unrelated to manic dancing.<<

The craziest stuff told to me were by my Irish grandparents and Great Aunt (Grandma's sister) who used to scare me witless with threats of abduction by Sidhe if I dared walk alone after dark without a male relative. Grandma used to tisk tisk my habit of going to Saturday Evening Mass as a teen and admonish me to wait for my Uncle Brian to come and get me to walk me the six blocks back to her house. I used to think to myself but never say 'Oh yeah Grandma, the Fairy folk are just lying in wait on the corner of Whitney Avenue waiting for the sun to slip beneath the horizon so they can snatch poor little me off the corner."

Now, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was the 1920's or 30's but it was 1977. I suppose she trotted that old gem out because of the stoop shootings* that were giving mothers and grandmothers white hair at the time.. Still, wouldn't that have made me safer on the streets? I dunno.


* Son of Sam

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 26 Apr 08 - 02:40 PM

My Mum said "I wish you would keep away from girls who live on that Council Estate" - and she was right!

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 26 Apr 08 - 09:43 PM

Council Estate - that brings back memories.....

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Slag
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 04:26 AM

"What's the matter? You got the collywobbles?" Much later I discovered that "collywobbles" is a real word for diarrhea and associated symptoms.

Epizootis and all it's variants are from epizoetic disease, i.e. disease that is transmitted from an animal to a human.

"You look like what the little boy shot at."

"Here's your hat; what's your hurry?" and
"Why don't you come back when you can't stay so long?"

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Acorn4
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 04:38 AM

"Ants in your pants" was the fifties version of hyperactivity or ADD, I'd guess.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Acorn4
Date: 27 Apr 08 - 01:03 PM

You know what Thought did?

Messed his pants and thought he was on the toilet!

There are probably regional variations of this one !

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Acorn4
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 04:25 AM

We had our firts thunderstorm of the year yesterday and I was reminded of:-

"It's looking really black over Will's mothers!"

Not sure who Will was?

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: paula t
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 05:38 PM

Just remembered being told to calm down when I as rushing about. Mum would say" Ye Gods! You're like a bee in a bottle!"

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 05:56 PM

You reminded me Paula.

My mums one was "Slow down, you're like a flea in a fit"
also            "Slow down or you'll run into yourself coming back"

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 07:23 PM

My mother habitually used a phrase which I don't think anyone else here has ever heard uttered by their mums, because she picked it up from a chance comment by some little girl she once knew. When she'd eaten (or imbibed) something that really was refreshing, it was:

"That hits me with a spot!"

I'm not sure whether you'd call that a mondegreen, or a malaprop!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 10:43 PM

Well - Brits say -- that hits the spot................could it be a variation on the theme? IE when you are dying of thirst and you take your first sip of gin and Tonic of the day -- that hits the spot......

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 09:34 AM

TruBrit, I think Dave knows that and so did his Mum - she was merely repeating something another child said that she found amusing in that the child got it backwards.

David mamet includes a number of lines like that in his scripts and plays, for example in The Spanish Prisoner, one of his very sharp witted female characters ( played by his now wife) says "It just shows to go ya" rather than "Goes to show ya" and it's meant to be ever so cleverly amusing.

In Dave Oesterreich's Mum;s case, I imagine she thought the mix up was not oh so clever but oh so cute and endearing which is why she still said it.

When I was a child, a younger playmate who hadn't quite mastered speech yet use to say "I'm saucy" for "I'm sorry" and it was so adorable that even to this day many of the kids who grew up with him will still say it to others from the neighborhood as an eanderment when they are apologizing for some little thing or other such as interupting you or bumping into you, that kind of thing.

Another one from my childhood was that I grew up with a little girl who had Downs - same age as me in fact. She used to come up with some of the best descriptive expressions for a child! Our favorite that the same bunch of us as above use is for someone being gluttonous or refusing to share - she'd call them a Hogamapig - pronounced "Hog-a-ma-Pig" .

Another item like that is one kids in my highschool picked up from a teacher who was a "colorful" personality but universally loathed by the students because he was a bully.   He used to say "bull-ka-twang" for bullsh*t. Kids took the word from him and little else since he was a lousy teacher and an even lousier human being. It figures he was the football coach, huh? Well, at least he passed on one memorbale thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 11:05 AM

Dave's Wife, you understood me perfectly.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 06:23 PM

Well Uncle DaveO, it just shows to go you! ;.)

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 06:26 PM

Goodnight,
Mind the bugs don't bite.
If they do,
Cut 'em in two
and they won't bite another night!

Silly really as there were never bugs in our beds....just food for thought.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 06:48 PM

Georgiansilver,

What was this food for thought that you kept in your bed?

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 02:16 AM

And I just remembered another one -- to stress when she didn't care a person or thing my mum would say, " I don't care if s/he/it is sky blue pink with a finnyaddan border' -- at least that is what it sounded like...... Anyone ever heard that one?

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Gurney
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 03:27 AM

My mother and her mother used to say " Tidy yourself up,(or something) you look like nobody owns you!"
This in the English midlands.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 02:18 PM

My dad would say "I'll jerk a knot in your tail!"—a semi-humorous way of threatening violence.

When my shoe soles wore out, he'd say, "Can't you just pick 'em up an' set 'em down?", meaning, I suppose, don't drag your feet.

If he noticed me picking my nose, he'd say, "Are you goin' fishin'?"
I'd say (before I learned the joke), "No. Why?"
He'd say, "I see you're diggin' for bait."
After that, "Goin' fishin'?" was a sufficient reprimand.

(By the way, when I was a kid, I never heard of artificial lures, or of buying worms or minnows. We always dug up our own worms.)

About something worthless, he'd say "That ain't worth a hoot in a whirlwind." (I suppose "hoot" was a euphemism for "fart" but I didn't figure that out until much later.)

Another euphemism for "farted" was "stepped on a frog." (I have never actually stepped on a frog, but I suppose it sounds like a fart. I also suppose that literally stepping on a frog was a more common experience when people had to go outdoors to use the outhouse, even at night. Imagine doing that barefoot!)

The cruelest thing my father ever said to me—and he said this more than once—was, "I'll take you back to the hospital." See, before I knew where babies really came from, I thought babies came from hospitals. When a couple decided they wanted a baby, they would go to a hospital and pick one out. Later (I was told) if they decided they didn't like the one they had, they could take him back and exchange him. "Next time, I'll get a good little boy," he'd say. Even after I no longer believed he could do that, he could still make me cry by saying it. I cried because I believed he really meant it—he really wished he could take me back, and he didn't care that I knew it. He was, in other words, a real asshole. I never thought I'd do it, but I cried when he died.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: GUEST,Slag
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 05:48 PM

Unka Dave! Pepsi Cola had an advertisement back in the 50's which stated "Pepsi Cola hits the spot..." I can't remember the last rhyme because everyone I knew would answer the first line with "...especially when you're on the pot!" Oh what clever little minds!

Another was "Ah ha! Sani-flush! Cleans your teeth without a brush!" Sani-flush was, of course, a toilet bowl cleaner but I can't remember if that was the product which was being lampooned.

Georgian Ag,

   Good night! Sleep tight!
   Don't let the bedbugs bite!
   If they do, hit 'em with a shoe
   Then charge them all a dollar fifty-two!

As for flatulence euphemisms could be an entirely new thread. A few:

Cut the cheese
Squeezed the cheese
Toot
Break wind
The above noted "Stepped on a frog"
Let one
Your burp went out the backdoor

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Sorcha
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 06:45 PM

Slag, you forgot 'air biscuit'

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Oct 08 - 07:33 PM

TRUEBRIT---I thought for years that MY mother had invented "sky-blue pink" to tease us kids about the color of something, but in some earlier thread I learned it was just something she collected.


Here is the best explanation I have seen.

When she was in her 70s, I found a ceramic tile that was indeed, pink mixed with sky-blue. I gave it to her for her birthday.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: GUEST,Slag
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 04:05 AM

I had a Botany/biology teacher in HS whose faavorite little refrain was "Do you know what a suprize is? A fart with a lump in it!" It was funny, once.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 04:08 AM

Looks like a tornado went through here!

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 31 Oct 08 - 09:34 PM

I thought it would be interesting to use Google Book Search to find out how old some of these expressions are. Here are partial results:

"Yes, the one with a face like a plateful of mortal sins."—from "The Big House," a play by Brendan Behan, 1957.

"There were no symptoms of her having had her clothes flung on with a pitchfork, nor of having been drawn through a hedge backwards."—from "Sketches of Character" by Jane Kennedy, 1851.

"I thort this mornin' he looked as ef he'd been dragged through a knothole."—from "The Yale Literary Magazine," 1851.

"Now, I'm prepared to back this office against the world; but remember, if I catch any of you at that, it's goodnight nurse! You understand?"—from "Poor Dear Theodora!" by Florence Irwin, 1920.

"…that if ever he troubled him again upon such a paltry subject, his intention was to give him such a proper hiding, as would prevent the best of his friends from knowing him again for about a month of Sundays."—from "Memoirs of a Picture" by William Collins, 1805.

"Judas Priest! How high up we are!"—from "To and Through Nebraska" by Frances I. Sims Fulton, 1884.

"If you say that 'ere again, I'll knock you into the middle of next week!"—from "American Comic Annual," 1831.

I might post more tomorrow.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Becca72
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 07:20 AM

In my family the color was "sky-blue pink with purple polka dots"

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: GUEST,Bizibod
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 10:20 AM

My Welsh grandfather- in -law as a term of extreme surprise or frustration would exclaim ,"Jesus Patsy !"
And my grandma would warn us to stand well back on the railway station as "the steam will draw you under! "
As little   kids my brother and I when admonished and told to apologise used to flip our t shirts over our heads.No idea why we thought this the correct procedure !

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 10:40 AM

bill - that was fascinatiang -- thank you soooooomuch - I have wondered about that expression for years and you even solved the finny addan border. Made my day. Tks.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 10:54 AM

My mom uses a regular cuss:   "Oh, bitch and be buggered!"

Is that natural progression, Mom?

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 01:12 PM

More quotes found with Google Book Search:

"When she entered the kitchen, matters were going on as usual—her mother bustling in style, and as cross 'as a bag of weasels.'"—from "Sketches of Irish Character" by Mrs. S. C. Hall, in "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal," 1845.

"…where the captain was standing as upright as a fathom of smoke in a calm, and the master was bent down like a yard of pump-water measured from the spout, and looking over a chart of the harbour, as busy as the devil in a gale of wind."—from "Tough Yarns, by the Old Sailor," by Matthew Henry Baker, 1835.

"One of the most popular plays locally during the post-Civil War period was a spoof entitled The Irish Aristocracy; or Muldoon's Picnic."—from "Showtime in Cleveland: The Rise of a Regional Theater Center," by John Vacha, 2001.

"Pakapoo ticket: noun, something indecipherable or overly complicated. Australia, 1951. Pakapoo is a Chinese gambling game that appears to outsiders to be quite complicated."—from "The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English," by Eric Partridge, et al., 2006.

"…for helping her to put back the clock by taking her to the right places for her frocks, and toques, and—oh, my giddy Aunt!—her transformations."—from "A Comedy of Mammon," by Ina Garvey, 1908.

"Look at old George down there. There he is! Look at him! He stands like one o'clock half-struck."—from "The Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, by One of the Fraternity," by William Green, 1876.

"…afterwards complained that the streets were so crooked and twisted out of all shape that at every corner he was actually afraid he should meet himself coming back the other way."—from "About Tomintoul" by Tom N. Towler, in "The Celtic Monthly," 1903.

"The old adage, 'that the eyes are bigger than the stomach,' may be applied to many an Amphytrion as well as school-boy."—from "Essays, Moral, Philosophical, and Stomachical, on the Important Science of Good-Living," by Launcelot Sturgeon, 1823.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: lady penelope
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 02:13 PM

LOL! I'd forgotten some of these (Have you seen the back of your neck? What a classic!)

My mother's favourites..

"Ach, haud yer whist" (be quiet)
"Ach, it's far aff yer backside, ye willnae sit on it" (anything painful that you complained about)
"Yer neither sugar no salt, ya willnae melt" (for when complaining about getting wet)
"Who rattled your cage?" (For when you bothered her about anything...)
"Get that lip aff the flair" (for when you weren't happy for whatever reason)
"You'll be laughing on the other side of yer face in a minute" (General threat of violence.. *G*)
"You're a clatty bugger" (for despairing at your general state)
"What did your last slave die of?"

Aren't mothers wonderful...? LOL!

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Bert
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 02:52 PM

From Mum,

"I'll do you with the rough end of a pineapple"
"You look like a sack of shit tied up with string"

From Dad,

"You know what Thought did?"

"No"

"Shit his pants"

"Did he?"

"No, he only thought he did"

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Nov 08 - 05:21 PM

"It's a nice day. G'wan outside and blow the stink off ya!"

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 02 Nov 08 - 10:59 PM

"A pair of rascally little cross-firing, twinkling eyes, that, as the country people said, looked at least nine ways from Sunday."—from "Lights and Shadows of American Life" by Mary Russell Mitford, 1832.

"'Don't, Master Walter,' cried Dolly, 'you'll make the dog sick; and you'd make a better door than a window, too,' she said, giving him a little push. 'What do you mean? Am I in your light?' he said, laughing."—from "A Mingled Yarn" By Henry S Mackarness and Matilda Anne Mackarness, 1872.

"A very good way to get Mr. —— into trouble, and prevent him ever doing a favour in the future to any other prisoner."—from "My Prison Life" by Jabez Spencer Balfour, 1907.

"Chaloner shudders a little, as if a goose had walked over his grave."—from "Second Thoughts" by Rhoda Broughton, 1880.

"By the way, if one is to judg of a Man by the company he keeps, he may presume to say Mr. F-rg-s-n is of the Red Letter stamp."—from "Memoirs of Secret Service" by Matthew Smith, 1699.

"O haud yer whist, ye silly gowk! Ye've nae richt to complain."—from "Willie Waugh and Other Poems" by James Nicholson, Ellen C Nicholson, 1884.

"The people have scarcely sat down to table than they feel ants in their pants and begin to dance, old and young alike."—from "The Rhythm of the Dynamo" by Paul Claudel, in "The Living Age" 1936.

"She looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth—but she's a sly one, I tell you."—from "Paul Pry" by John Poole, 1825.

"Luttrells of whom I think it was Lord Beaconsfield who said that the men of the race were remarkable for straight hair and curly teeth."—from "Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes", 1881.

"Faith, this scene of Orion is right prandium caninum, a dog's dinner!"—from "Summer's Last Will and Testament" by Thomas Nashe, 1600.

"Mind, if you get blown to bits, don't come running to me for sympathy!"—from a picture caption, in "Punch, or the London Charivari," 1898.

Subject: RE: BS: Did your mum say this to you.....
From: GUEST,The black belt caterpilaw wrestler
Date: 03 Nov 08 - 08:29 AM

Informal forms of address used when I was dirty or untidy from my father:
"Fly-be-night"
"Blacking brush"

After cleaning up I was "Shined polished and my ears put further back".

He had several words that corresponded to "Thingumy" when he couldn't think of the correct noun, "left handed (or cack-handed) capurtula" was my favoutite.