Folklore: Old sayings from childhood

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.

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,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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Leadfingers
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 07:16 PM

200

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.