Useful old (and not so old) popular sayings
We all have them in our heads, short sayings or words of wisdom covering the situation in which we or the person we are talking to finds ourselves in. Ireland was always a great place for short, snappy, common-sense sentences. Most of them come under the banner of ‘old sayings,’ but I imagine that some are not that old at all.
Many are local to an area; the odd one is an original species; and a few I have never heard anywhere outside of my own house growing up. ‘Talking never brought home the turf,’ my mother would admonish her procrastinating sons. My father had one I never heard from anybody else. Us boys knew we were in big bother when we heard; ‘the last of your bread is baked!’.
‘An old broom knows all the dirty corners,’ I heard a woman say, not too long ago. ‘Hunger is great sauce’ and ‘a good start is half the battle’ are a couple we hear in regular conversations; but I get a kick out of hearing ones for the first time.
How true is this next one, spoken with darkened humour, but hitting the spot: ‘Many a man’s mouth broke his nose!’ As against that dire warning comes the old Irish (I think) advice that ‘it is better to pay the butcher than the doctor’.
This writer has been credited with a couple of ‘witticisms’ in a book and magazine in recent years. Taken from our ‘Don’t Forget’ at the end of each YCBS… the truth is that 90% of those (including the credited ones) are not original and not my own work. For whatever reason, for a man with a bad memory, I retain an awful lot of sayings in my head. I should not have brought that up because Benjamin Disraeli once said; ‘An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother talking about her own children!’ So, moving on…
‘Happy wife – happy life’ is one I learned as soon as I got sense. It isn’t an Irish saying but has a universal seductiveness! I was saving this little life saver for the last line, but I feel this is the best place to slot it in; ‘Nobody’s perfect!’ This column has in the past promoted the sayings of the great philosopher, Yogi Berra, and I am also a fan of another great one-line artist, Will Rogers. Will gave sound advice when he said; ‘Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.’
One of the nicer things about writing YCBS is that readers give me stuff. I get so many books at Christmas that I struggle to keep ahead. I also receive welcome column suggestions and articles through the post – or mostly by email.
I recently received a piece from my friend Anne, in Canada. It is about a service station in South Africa which has become famous for its daily messages posted on its billboard. Motorists actually admit to going miles out of their way to read the signs. The boards have appeared many times in newspapers and magazines and talked about on radio stations all over the world. The lady behind the wonderful initiative is one Alison Billett. In an interview with ‘The South African People’, Alison explained; ‘we inherited the board from the previous owner, Dick Hutton, when we bought the filling station 20 years ago. We continued the tradition and now we have become a landmark.
So, without further adieu, let us just give to a sample of some of Alison’s handicraft:
• ‘When you make a commitment, you build hope. When you keep it, you build trust.’
• ‘In a world where you can be anything, be kind.’
• ‘If you have a gun, you can rob a bank. If you have a bank, you can rob everyone.’
• ‘Be who you needed when you were young.’
• ‘It’s better to walk alone than with a crowd going in the wrong direction.’
• ‘Don’t do something temporarily stupid because you’re temporarily upset.’
• ‘Stop trying to make everybody happy – you’re not Tequila!
Can we leave that one there… I thought my ‘Don’t forgets’ were good until now!
Most old sayings we use don’t always register as to how they might have come about. ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’ is a case in point. Back in the days of large families and no hot or running water, the one bath would do everybody in the house. By the time it got to the baby’s turn, the water would be so dirty you might actually lose the child in it!
‘It’s raining cats and dogs’ is one you would never figure out the origin of. In the days of thatched roofs the cats and dogs would climb up beside the chimney and nestle in the straw where it was warmest. When heavy rain fell, the straw became slippy and down slid the cats and dogs!
Don’t Forget
Etc. is the perfect word when you can’t think of the right one.