'Aha' She Cried and Waved Her Wooden Leg...

Subject: RE: 'Aha' She Cried and Waved Her Wooden Leg...
From: GUEST,Alan NZ
Date: 30 Jul 22 - 09:11 AM

Often heard this from my cantankerous English father:

Aha, she cried waving her wooden leg
My love for you will last forever
Like a pinch of snow in a box of sand

Always assumed it’s from an old English drinking song about a madam in a brothel era WW2

Also: It was on the bridge at midnight gazing up at the moon, well she said she’d never had it, but she spoke to bloody soon.

It gets worse so I will stop at that.

Subject: RE: 'Aha' She Cried and Waved Her Wooden Leg...
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Aug 22 - 06:30 PM

My mom's grandmother used to get carted off to the loony bin in Budapest whenever she started whacking people with her wooden leg, often at the dinner table...

Subject: RE: 'Aha' She Cried and Waved Her Wooden Leg...
From: GUEST,AlexM
Date: 12 Aug 22 - 07:18 PM

“Too late, too late the maiden cried, and waved her wooden leg” is the phrase my parents might have used, typically when somebody else said something like, “Oh, they arrived late.” It was said in a mildly amusing way, as a bit of light repartee. They both grew up, my folks, in South Africa in the 1920’s. From reading this thread, it seems that this phrase, and variations, were widely used in the old British Empire and also the US, from about that time. It may reference some popular music hall act or light hearted poem or prose from that era. Nothing very precise or convincing in this thread however. The search continues….

Subject: RE: 'Aha' She Cried and Waved Her Wooden Leg...
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Aug 22 - 09:12 PM

Good to see this old friend of a thread again.

I was interested to see Lighter's find:

"Evening World (N.Y.C.)(June 9 1906), p. 6 [without explanation]:

"'Aha!' she cried, in accents wild,
And waved her wooden leg."

That gives it a date early enough to rule out some of the suggestions. And that other link in the same post is suggestive - I wonder if someone wrote about the unlucky Sally Ann waving her wooden leg after being shot, and they appeared in some local newspaper and launched the passage…

Subject: RE: 'Aha' She Cried and Waved Her Wooden Leg...
From: GUEST,Allison
Date: 28 Aug 22 - 11:40 AM

My mum (born 1952 in Australia) always said, "'Too bad, too sad, too late!' she cried,
as she waved her wooden leg goodbye."

Her father was born in Liverpool, UK, in 1918.