Of wooden legs and wingwongs
Feb. 23rd, 2006 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyImagine this scene: two people are running for a bus or driving up to a green light, only to miss it. If those people are any two members of my family, they will invariably have the following conversation:
Person 1: Too late ...
Person 2: ... she cried as she waved her wooden leg in the air.
After thirty odd years of hearing this, it occurred to me recently that it's really quite an odd thing to say.
I thought perhaps it was a line from some long-forgotten poem, so I've been looking for it. And what I've come up with is references to a woman waving her wooden leg down through the ages. She seems to have started as a line in a very rude seventeenth century folk song called "The Wayward Boy": "Aha!" she cried and waved her wooden leg, And jumped in bed. She then survived two hundred or so years, to crop up in a nineteenth century music-hall parody of a popular hymn: "Too late! Too late!" will be the cry - Jesus of Nazareth has passed by becomes "Too late! Too late!" the maiden cried, Lifted her wooden leg and died. Then she changed again, remembered not only as the version my family uses, but as several variations such as "Aha," she cried in accents cheery as she waved etc, etc.
Thinking about that reminded me of something my grandmother used to say, which I loved but haven't heard for ages:
Person 1: What are you doing?
Person 2: Making a wingwong for a goose's bridle.
This one was easier. It's a reasonably well-documented saying here in Australia, used as an answer to stickybeaks (busybodies), albeit mostly by the elderly these days. There is geographical variation on whether it's a whim-wham, a wigwam or a wingwong, and some people apparently add "... or a crutch for a duck" to the end (which is much less romantic to my ears).
I had a book of fairytales when I was little, which included the story of the princess whose brothers were turned into swans so she had to make each one a nettle coat to turn him back. One of the illustrations showed the swans flying (wearing little gold crowns!), with the princess riding on the back of one of them, holding on to some reins. Swan's bridle, goose's bridle... like living in a fairytale to a five-year-old.
What family sayings do you have?
Person 1: Too late ...
Person 2: ... she cried as she waved her wooden leg in the air.
After thirty odd years of hearing this, it occurred to me recently that it's really quite an odd thing to say.
I thought perhaps it was a line from some long-forgotten poem, so I've been looking for it. And what I've come up with is references to a woman waving her wooden leg down through the ages. She seems to have started as a line in a very rude seventeenth century folk song called "The Wayward Boy": "Aha!" she cried and waved her wooden leg, And jumped in bed. She then survived two hundred or so years, to crop up in a nineteenth century music-hall parody of a popular hymn: "Too late! Too late!" will be the cry - Jesus of Nazareth has passed by becomes "Too late! Too late!" the maiden cried, Lifted her wooden leg and died. Then she changed again, remembered not only as the version my family uses, but as several variations such as "Aha," she cried in accents cheery as she waved etc, etc.
Thinking about that reminded me of something my grandmother used to say, which I loved but haven't heard for ages:
Person 1: What are you doing?
Person 2: Making a wingwong for a goose's bridle.
This one was easier. It's a reasonably well-documented saying here in Australia, used as an answer to stickybeaks (busybodies), albeit mostly by the elderly these days. There is geographical variation on whether it's a whim-wham, a wigwam or a wingwong, and some people apparently add "... or a crutch for a duck" to the end (which is much less romantic to my ears).
I had a book of fairytales when I was little, which included the story of the princess whose brothers were turned into swans so she had to make each one a nettle coat to turn him back. One of the illustrations showed the swans flying (wearing little gold crowns!), with the princess riding on the back of one of them, holding on to some reins. Swan's bridle, goose's bridle... like living in a fairytale to a five-year-old.
What family sayings do you have?
