Near Crickhowell.
I am laid up with a cold (and a very poor night's sleep), so don't expect intelligent thought today! (Yet again).
This topic came about because I was discussing it with my husband earlier on. I am sure many old sayings are dieing out from lack of use. My mum had a wealth of them at her fingertips, many of which I still use, but I don't hear my offspring using them. Perhaps it is mobile phones and emails which have stopped their use.
These are some of the ones I grew up with:
I'm not Keyhole Kate you know (about getting through a narrow space, or shutting the door too soon).
He (or she) looked like the Wild Man of Borneo (dishevelled)
or He looked like Shock Headed Peter (from a book of her childhood).
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Not for all the tea in China.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
The early bird catches the worm.
One swallow doesn't make a summer.
Places might be "a stone's throw away", you might buy "a pig in a poke", know something because "a little bird told me", "an ill wind blew nobody any good", people might run "as fast as greased lightening, be "as bald as a coot", "as happy as Larry", or "as fit as a fiddle", and great satisfaction was had when someone was "taken down a peg or two". There was often "a storm in a teacup", "beggars can't be choosers" and I went "up the wooden stairs to bedfordshire"(or the land of nod) and when I was tucked in, I was "snug as a bug in a rug". People kept on the "straight and narrow" or perhaps, "went Widdershins", there might be "jiggery pokery" or "stuff and nonsense" and people were known to talk "until the cows came home" or they "talked the hind leg off a donkey." When we played card games, in Beat Jack Out Of Doors, the Jack often "saved my bacon".
Before the pop group, "a rolling stone gathered no moss". Weather had lots of descriptions, it might be "as black as Jack's hatband" over there", or "coming down in stair-rods", or "raining cats and dogs" "blowing a hooley", and everyone knew that red sky at night was shepherds' (or sailors') delight, but red sky in the morning was shepherds' warning.
What family sayings did you grow up with?
