Red Herrings & White Elephants - The Origins of the Phrases We Use Every Day. Albert Jack
people. The phrase is a simple one with a simple origin provided, once again, by Shakespeare. In 1606 the Bard wrote the play Antony And Cleopatra, which includes the line: ‘They were my salad days, when I was green in judgement.’
To be As Happy As A Sandboy means you are in a state of joyous contentment. This phrase passed into regular usage courtesy of Charles Dickens. In 1840 Dickens published The Old Curiosity Shop which includes an inn called The Jolly Sandboys that displayed a sign outside depicting three drunken sandboys. But what was a sandboy? Dickens is known to have spent time in Bristol, which is referred to throughout The Pickwick Papers, published in 1836. Around that time it is recorded that the town’s landlords would spread sand on the floor of their establishments which would soak up any spillage, much in the same way as sawdust would be used in other places. In Bristol the Redcliffe Caves are full of sand and innkeepers would send boys off into the caves to provide them with a regular supply. These youngsters were paid partly in ale and consequently they were usually half-cut (merry or jolly), hence Dickens’s inn sign and the origin of our phrase.
To have a Skeleton In The Cupboard is to have a shameful secret hidden away. I remember as a small boy asking my mother, after watching a programme about missing siblings, if I had any brothers or sisters I didn’t know about. She told me we didn’t have any ‘skeletons like that in our cupboards’, which scared the life out of me as I wondered how many children had been locked up forever in cupboards for being naughty. Until 1832 it was illegal to dissect a human body for the benefit of medical research, but of course many a physician still did, and the skeletons had to be hidden somewhere. It is also true that, after dissections became legal, grave robbers would dig up newly buried corpses and sell them to unscrupulous doctors in an underhand way. This practice was so frowned upon that medical men would try to keep their secrets hidden away in locked cupboards. The phrase was first used in print during an article in Punch magazine, written in 1845 by William Thackeray, and has been in common usage ever since. My parents probably still wonder where the keys to all the wardrobes in our house went. I imagine they are still over the fence behind next door’s shed.
Sour Grapes is a phrase used to describe someone who is sulking or jealous of not having something that others do have. It stems from a simple and popular fable of Aesop called ‘The Fox And The Grapes’, in which the fox spends a long time trying to reach a bunch of grapes high on the vine, but eventually fails. The fox then comforts himself by explaining he didn’t really want them after all, as they looked sour.
An Ugly Duckling is a gaunt and awkward child who grows up to be beautiful. This phrase comes from a fairy tale written by children’s author Hans Christian Andersen. It tells the story of a duck that mistakenly nests a swan’s egg. When the egg is hatched the startled mother duck cannot understand how she has produced such an awkward, ungainly child, which is notably different from the rest of her brood. The cygnet is ridiculed for its dull appearance and hides away in the tall reeds in shame. However, come the spring, the clumsy cygnet emerges from her hideaway having been transformed into a beautiful swan. Danny Kaye’s song ‘The Ugly Duckling’, which was released in the 1950s, popularised the story all over the world.
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