Grannie's old sayings

[terrysoldpennies]

With time on our hands owing to covid I thought this might be an interesting thread to introduce , and it would be great to hear other sayings you may remember from your past .

My Grannie on my mothers side was born at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century , and she was apt to use sayings to express herself just about all the time , many of which have now gone from my memory , but some that I can remember are here.

 A lot of her sayings go right back into the 1800s . 

When I was very young I was often taken to my grandmothers house at the same time as many of my aunts along with my cousins , they were mostly younger than myself, and a saying she often used to console a crying child was this .        WELL GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME ALIVE ALL SAINT ALL PINK     Where it came from i've never managed to find out.

Another was .      YOU CAN NO MORE DO THAT THAN WALK ON THE MOON    Ironically  she lived long enough to see Armstrong and Aldrin do just that in 1969

Another .   When driving home a point she would say .     YOU MARK MY WORDS      I guess this one is quite well known

Last .        THERE AS DIM AS A TOC H LAMP        As a boy I never knew where this one came from , and never bothered to find out but come the internet age I was able to find out that it was a very popular saying during the first world war, at the time of her youth .     It seems that it was a kind of oil lamp going back century's , but at about that time a small bicycle oil lamp was in use , and hence the saying.    

 

[Paddy]

Great idea for a thread! I am sure I can think of lots given time, but a couple I recall straight away:

She was a devout catholic but as teenagers, when we were on our way out to a party, she would always say: "Be good - but if you can't be good, be careful!"

.. and her wise words on road safety: "He was right, dead right, as he went along, but just as dead as if he were wrong!"

 

[secret santa]

A wood louse is called a "cheeselog" in my neck of the woods. It seems to be quite local to South Oxfordshire, unless you know better.

[terrysoldpennies]

I first moved to the country in1973 from London and back in those days the real country accent still existed and a couple of terms stick in my mind, one was a woman that was talking to me about her teacher at school and said    HE LEARNED ME WELL  also the man next door to me grew   TAITERS  in his garden . 

Edited December 28, 2020 by terrysoldpennies

[PWA 1967]

"Dont eat that its a bit powsey and have a sugar buttie instead " 

My grandma lived to 103 without going into a home and always used to make me laugh with her daft sayings.

Everyday she had some whisky in her tea at 3.00 and her saying to me when i passed her one "is the whisky in the bottom of the cup ".

There are loads of sayings in Lancashire but in a dialect nobody else would understand 😂

[copper123]

1 hour ago, PWA 1967 said:

"Dont eat that its a bit powsey and have a sugar buttie instead " 

My grandma lived to 103 without going into a home and always used to make me laugh with her daft sayings.

Everyday she had some whisky in her tea at 3.00 and her saying to me when i passed her one "is the whisky in the bottom of the cup ".

There are loads of sayings in Lancashire but in a dialect nobody else would understand 😂

esp. in liverpool

[copper123]

Yorkshire runs lancashire a close second

[copper123]

AHHH no yorkshire folk on here then LOL.

[Peckris 2]

7 hours ago, terrysoldpennies said:

Last .        THERE AS DIM AS A TOC H LAMP        As a boy I never knew where this one came from , and never bothered to find out but come the internet age I was able to find out that it was a very popular saying during the first world war, at the time of her youth .     It seems that it was a kind of oil lamp going back century's , but at about that time a small bicycle oil lamp was in use , and hence the saying.    

All I know is that Pink Floyd's first album has a track called POW R TOC H

 

[blakeyboy]

There was a hut on New Road in Kidderminster, blue door, with a car numberplate on it- 'TOC H'.

I never saw the door open. it was there up till the 80s.

It helped 1st world War veterans, as far as I remember.

Maybe their lamps were famously dim....

 

My grandmother always opened the kitchen door in thundery weather, explaining that

'When the lightning comes down the chimney, it then has somewhere to go"

 

[Rob]

11 hours ago, blakeyboy said:

My grandmother always opened the kitchen door in thundery weather, explaining that

'When the lightning comes down the chimney, it then has somewhere to go"

 

Maybe not as silly as it sounds. The in-laws house took a direct hit and the whole layout of the electrics was neatly outlined on the walls as the circuits fried. If it had run along the walls or floor internally without touching an earthed conductor, then an open door might have allowed it to escape on its route to earth.

[1949threepence]

22 hours ago, terrysoldpennies said:

With time on our hands owing to covid I thought this might be an interesting thread to introduce , and it would be great to hear other sayings you may remember from your past .

My Grannie on my mothers side was born at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century , and she was apt to use sayings to express herself just about all the time , many of which have now gone from my memory , but some that I can remember are here.

 A lot of her sayings go right back into the 1800s . 

When I was very young I was often taken to my grandmothers house at the same time as many of my aunts along with my cousins , they were mostly younger than myself, and a saying she often used to console a crying child was this .        WELL GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME ALIVE ALL SAINT ALL PINK     Where it came from i've never managed to find out.

Another was .      YOU CAN NO MORE DO THAT THAN WALK ON THE MOON    Ironically  she lived long enough to see Armstrong and Aldrin do just that in 1969

Another .   When driving home a point she would say .     YOU MARK MY WORDS      I guess this one is quite well known

Last .        THERE AS DIM AS A TOC H LAMP        As a boy I never knew where this one came from , and never bothered to find out but come the internet age I was able to find out that it was a very popular saying during the first world war, at the time of her youth .     It seems that it was a kind of oil lamp going back century's , but at about that time a small bicycle oil lamp was in use , and hence the saying.    

 

Hadn't there used to be an organisation called "Toc H", or am I dreaming it? If there was you certainly never hear of them nowadays.

I remember some of my Gran's old sayings. One was "As the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen". Then conversely for Summer "As the days begin to shorten, the heat begins to scorch 'em".

Another was "if the ice in November is thick enough to hold a duck, there'll be very little else but sludge and muck"

Many other sayings as well, but all commonly used ones.   

 

[alfnail]

"Bye, it's a rum do" and "hello stranger" when I hadn't been round recently.......front door always left open in those days!

Probably preferred my grandad's though, two of his favourites:-

"Just do the Maths lad"

"That's right champion, the lad had a grand knock"...............generally when Yorkshire were beating Lancashire in the 1960's.....or anyone else for that matter!

[blakeyboy]

22 hours ago, PWA 1967 said:

"Dont eat that its a bit powsey and have a sugar buttie instead " 

My grandma lived to 103 without going into a home and always used to make me laugh with her daft sayings.

Everyday she had some whisky in her tea at 3.00 and her saying to me when i passed her one "is the whisky in the bottom of the cup ".

There are loads of sayings in Lancashire but in a dialect nobody else would understand 😂

Try the Black Country - same there...

[Peckris 2]

5 hours ago, blakeyboy said:

Try the Black Country - same there...

Keep out the oss road !

[blakeyboy]

Good to see you getting straight to the point and not going round the Wrekin...:)

[copper123]

But its fun going round the wrekin is it not .... Love shropshire

[Paddy]

My granny was a lousy cook. (A great engineer - could make almost anything in wood or steel, but dreadful with a frying pan!)

If we ever complained about her latest efforts she would always say: "Eat it up - what doesn't fatten will help to fill up!"

The result, I suspect, of bringing up a young family on rationing during the war.

I still dread omelettes as she cremated so many of them.

 

[Peckris 2]

On 12/31/2020 at 8:31 PM, Paddy said:

I still dread omelettes as she cremated so many of them.

If I have one in an English cafe, I even now have to insist they only fry them one side. Then fold and serve - by the time it arrives, the inside has virtually cooked.

[1949threepence]

2 hours ago, Peckris 2 said:

If I have one in an English cafe, I even now have to insist they only fry them one side. Then fold and serve - by the time it arrives, the inside has virtually cooked.

I had one a few years ago in a transport cafe on the A5, which was like rubber. If I hadn't been so starving at the time, I might have sent it back.

Another one of my Gran's old weather sayings: "if it thunders at all, it will thunder at Thurrock". No idea where she go that from, but I don't think it had any validity.    

[Peckris 2]

19 hours ago, 1949threepence said:

I had one a few years ago in a transport cafe on the A5, which was like rubber. If I hadn't been so starving at the time, I might have sent it back.

Another one of my Gran's old weather sayings: "if it thunders at all, it will thunder at Thurrock". No idea where she go that from, but I don't think it had any validity.    

A tongue twister by the sound of it! As in "The Leith police dismisseth us".

[1949threepence]

4 minutes ago, Peckris 2 said:

A tongue twister by the sound of it! As in "The Leith police dismisseth us".

The best one is "I'm not a pheasant plucker, I'm a pheasant plucker's son, and I'm sitting plucking pheasants till the pheasant pluckers come". 

[Paddy]

3 minutes ago, 1949threepence said:

The best one is "I'm not a pheasant plucker, I'm a pheasant plucker's son, and I'm sitting plucking pheasants till the pheasant pluckers come". 

That one at least you have chance of getting right (or if not have a good laugh). 

The one I could never get right was: "The sixth sick sheikh's sixth son's sick."

[Peckris 2]

4 minutes ago, 1949threepence said:

The best one is "I'm not a pheasant plucker, I'm a pheasant plucker's son, and I'm sitting plucking pheasants till the pheasant pluckers come". 

Or the version I knew:

"I'm not a pheasant plucker, I'm a pheasant plucker's mate, and I'm only plucking pheasants coz the pheasant plucker's late". 

[Peckris 2]

Just now, Paddy said:

That one at least you have chance of getting right (or if not have a good laugh). 

The one I could never get right was: "The sixth sick sheikh's sixth son's sick."

Then there's the one you can't tell in written form. Unless you try phonetically?

There were thirtysiksheep in a field. One died, how many are left?

To which most people would say "35"

And you would say "No, 29"

As their brow furrowed deeper, you would say slowly and carefully "There were thirty sick sheep in a field..."