life of Riley

Lobby card for the 1927 silent film The Life of Riley, directed by William Beaudine and starring George Sidney and Charles Murray, playing the character of Timothy Riley; image of two men: George Sidney holding the chin of Charles Murray in a fire chief’s uniform—below the image is the line “Now smile and show your pretty teeth,” presumably the words meant to be spoken at this moment in the film—while a third man looks on from behind them; a book bearing the face of Murray and the title The Life of Riley is in the foreground frame

9 April 2021

To live the life of Riley (or Reilly) is to have a carefree and luxurious existence. But the Riley to which the phrase refers is a bit of mystery. We don’t know who he was or if it even refers to a specific person. There is one candidate who stands out from the rest, but his connection to the phrase is tenuous.

What we know for sure is that the phrase was well established by December 1911, the first time it appears in print, or that’s at least the earliest anyone has found as of this writing. It appears in the pages of the Hartford Courant on 6 December 1911 in a story about a stray cow who had been living it up on the produce in farmers’ fields for a year before it met an untimely demise:

The famous wild cow of Cromwell is no more. After “living the life of Riley” for over a year, successfully evading the pitchforks and the bullets of the farmers, whose fields were ravaged in all four seasons, the cow today fell a victim to a masterfully arranged trap, and tonight lies skinned and torn into quarters at the home of Jesse Canfield in Rocky Hill.

Poor cow, but it’s better to die free than live as slaves, I guess.

There are a number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century candidates for the position of Riley, both real and fictional. The name appears in any number of music-hall ballads, but only one has any evidence linking him to the phrase. A few years before the Cromwell cow went renegade, the phrase living the life of Willie Reilly appears in a letter sent to the Bridgemen’s Magazine, a journal of a labor union of bridge and iron workers, which was published in August 1909:

Paddy O’Malley is living the life of Willie Reilly. He has his Colleen Bawn out on a farm, half of which is planted with potatoes, the other half acre with cabbage, and in the left corner is a little sty, with two runts in it. This little crop, Paddy says, will last until next summer, and if he has any left he will give it to the steel car manufacturers, as the poor fellows have a hard struggle trying to lick the dagoes.

Of course, you can’t have an early twentieth century phrase without some racism.

But who was Willie Reilly? He is a pseudo-historical figure who supposedly lived in Ireland c. 1790. There are various versions of his story, but he is generally supposed to have been a minor, Catholic landowner who eloped with a Helen Ffolliott, the daughter of a local, Anglo-Irish squire. He was tried for abducting Helen but acquitted after she professed her love for him. In some versions the woman is named Caillin ban or Colleen Bawn, which simply means young girl, white.

Whether or not any of this actually transpired doesn’t matter as far as the phrase is concerned because the story was immortalized in a number of ballads, the earliest being titled Riley and Colinband and published c. 1795. But that ballad, as well as most of the others, does not use the phrase life of Riley.

One version of the story, however, does use the phrase, or at least that co-location of words, for in the song the phrase doesn’t denote a life of leisure. In this passage, Riley is on trial, facing execution if convicted, and the speakers are his defense counsel, Fox, and Squire Ffolliott, Helen’s father. The ballad is published as the preface to William Carleton’s 1855 telling of Reilly’s story:

Then out bespoke the noble Fox, at the table he stood by,
“Oh, gentlemen, consider on this extremity,
To hang a man for love is murder you may see,
So spare the life of Reilly, let him leave this countrie.”

“Good my lord, he stole from her her diamonds and her rings,
Gold watch and silver buckles, and many precious things,
Which cost me in bright guineas more than five hundred pounds,
I’ll have the life of Reilly should I lose ten thousand pounds.”

Here the life of Reilly refers to his execution, and the ballad says nothing about his living happily ever after, although one may presume he did by the ballad’s silence on the matter.

The story was still familiar to Americans in the opening years of the twentieth century. The following exchange of letters appears in the Jersey Journal in December 1912, just over a year after the Cromwell cow incident. The letters show that both the phrase and the story of William Reilly were well known at the time. First from a letter printed in the journal on 13 December:

“LIFE OF REILLY”
Editor Jersey Journal:
Sir:—Am in this country nearly fifteen years and many things puzzle me. I hear very often about the “Life of Reilly.” Who was Reilly, and kind of life did he lead? Please tell me if they have the “Life of Reilly” at the Free Public Library, and oblige,
Your constant reader,
Arthur Gilson.

The editor responded:

Many men named Reilly have become famous, and the query is one sure to provoke discussion from the intelligent readers of this column. We recall now three heroes named Reilly, and perhaps one of them is responsible for the rattling in Mr. Gilson’s knowledge box. There was Willie Reilly who, when his troubles were ended, lived happy ever with the Colleen Bawn. Then there was the famous gentleman asked about in the song, “Is That Mr. Reilly That Keeps the Hotel.” The third Reilly was also celebrated in song by his chum, who no matter what he had, “Handed It Over to Reilly.” We do not think they have the “Life of Reilly” at the Public Library, but if there is such a life J. Pierpont Morgan must have it.
—Ed.

And the next week, on 17 December 1912, the following letter appeared:

Dear Sir—Your very clever answer to Mr. Gilson’s inquiry about the “Life of Riley” nearly caused a riot in our hitherto peaceful home. To your three famous Reillys, allow me to add an entry. I refer to the famous Reilly we used to sing about in the ditty, “I Won’t Go Out With Reilly Any More.” If Mr. J. P. Morgan has not the life of Reilly, Andrew Carnegie surely has—and he can be induced to part with it.
Tom Gannon.

The reference to J. Pierpont Morgan is undoubtedly to the Morgan Library in New York City, and Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy funded public libraries around the world.

So, Willie Reilly is the leading contender for being the inspiration for the life of Riley, at least people at the turn of the twentieth century thought he was. But the evidence is too thin for us to declare it so with confidence.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“Bullet Ends Life of Famous Wild Cow” (5 December 1911). Hartford Courant (Connecticut), 6 December 1911, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Carleton, William. Willy Reilly and His Dear Coleen Bawn. New York: George Munro’s Sons, 1855, 5. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Kelley, J. L. Letter. The Bridgemen’s Magazine, 9.8, August 1909, 486. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2020, s. v. Riley, n.

“Queries and Letters Sent to the Editor.” Jersey Journal (Jersey City, New Jersey), 13 December 1912, 20; 17 December 1912, 14. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Riley and Colinband. c. 1795. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Image credit: First National Pictures, 1927, public domain image.

hunky dory

8 April 2021

Hunky dory is an Americanism meaning satisfactory, fine. The term appears in the 1860s, and while its origin isn’t known for certain, we have a pretty good idea how it came about. It most likely is an expansion of the older slang term hunk, meaning safe, in a good position, which in turn is from the Frisian honcke or honck, a refuge, safe place, home, which appears in children’s games in New Amsterdam and later in New York before entering adult slang in the nineteenth century.

Hunk appears in the phrase to get hunk, meaning to be made whole after a loss, in a 24 May 1845 article in The Spirit of the Times about a horse race:

It is not a little singular that in one instance only did the favorite win! Those who lost their money on Fashion, had two or three chances to “get hunk,” especially on the last day.

And it appears regarding bank reserves in an article in New York’s Weekly Day Book with a dateline of 12 August 1853:

The great peculiarity of these institutions is, that they have plenty of money when everybody else has, and none when others have none. Just at the time when the merchants want money the most, and when, to carry one their business properly and successfully, they absolutely need it, the banks are short—haven’t a cent—can’t discount a dollar—“are absolutely borrowing to keep all hunk.”

And it’s recorded in the 1859 second edition of Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms:

HUNK. [...] 2. (Dutch, honk.) Place, post, home. A word descended from the Dutch children, and much used by New York boys in their play. “To be hunk,” or “all hunk,” is to have reached the goal or place of meeting without being intercepted by one of the opposite party, to be all safe.

This word has also made its way into political life. In a debate of the Board of Aldermen of New York (December, 1856), on the purchase of certain grounds on the East River for a market site, Alderman Ely said:

Mr. L—— had filled in and made this ground in the waters of the East River without authority; and now he felt himself all hunk, and wanted to get this enormous sum out of the city. — N.Y. Tribune, Dec. 30, 1856.

In 1861, humorist Charles Farrar Browne, writing in the voice of a character named Artemus Ward, began using hunkey or hunky to mean good, manly, and especially in the phrase hunkey boy, often used to describe soldiers with the sense of brave, noble. From a Vanity Fair piece by him on 15 June 1861:

“Ha! do me eyes deceive me earsight? Is it some dreams? No, I reckon not! That frame! them store clothes! those nose! Yes, it is me own, me only Moses!”

He (Moses) folded her to his hart, with the remark that he was “a hunkey boy.”

In a 19 November 1862 piece about Artemus Ward visiting Canada and writing about the fall of Quebec to British forces in 1759:

Quebeck has seen lively times in a warlike way. The French and Britishers had a set-to there in 1759. Jim Wolfe commanded the latters, and Jo Moncalm the formers. Both were hunky boys, and fit nobly. But Wolfe had too many mesales[?] for Montcalm, and the French were slew’d.

Ward even used it in an 1862 romance:

Her tears fell fast. I too wept. I mixed my sobs with her’n. “Fly with me!” I cried.

Her lips met mine. I held her in my arms. I felt her breath upon my cheek! It was Hunkey.

And he used it describe a good watch in a 30 July 1863 piece:

The fair maid, who was Floyd’s Neece, had hookt it while reposing on me weskit. It was a hunky watch—a family hair loom, I wouldn’t have parted with it for a dollar and sixty nine cents.

Ward wasn’t the only writer to use hunky, though. Two pieces that appeared in Vanity Fair, a magazine that frequently published Ward’s work, also make use of it. There is this racist piece from 9 November 1861, where it appears in the mouth of a Native American character:

“They shall be free!” cried WO-NO-SHE, his knife leaping from his belt as he spoke; “WO-NO-SHE swears it!”

“Hunkey boy!” said WOSHY-BOSHY.

There is more on Artemus Ward and the Native-American connection in a bit.

And in a piece extolling naval commander John Rogers from 20 November 1861:

VANITY FAIR desists for a moment from the flip-flap of joy to shake metaphorically by the hand Capt. John Rogers, commander of the sloop-of-war Flag in the Port Royal Fleet. Not, indeed, that we should not like to so present our respects to every one of the “hunkey boys” who had a finger in the Beaufort pie and helped spoil its “crust.” But to Capt. John Rogers we feel individually indebted.

The -dory is added by 1864. The origin of this element is not known for certain, but it is most likely simply reduplication, as in hotsy-totsy, hootchy-cootchy, or hoity-toity. The earliest use of hunky-dory that can be reliably dated is by Henry Warren Howe, a Union soldier in the Civil War. On 3 November 1864, Howe wrote in a letter to his family:

Fran., if you can obtain the use of a good piano I will hire it for you, with pleasure, and, perhaps, purchase it, and let it remain in the family until I get a “bonnie guid wife.” Captains Johnston and Ferris are in the hospital at Annapolis, Maryland, and doing well. I send you a sprig of cedar. Mr. B. goes in the morning, and it is late, so I will close. I am “Hunkey Dora.”

Several days later, on 14 November 1864, he wrote:

Here I am in quarters “Hunkey Dora,” writing you; position, astride a cracker box; time, 8 o’clock in the evening; candle light, volumes of letter matter paraded. On my left, Comrade Barker, ditto. First, a description of my house: a pig-pen made of fence rails banked with dirt, a piece of canvas for a roof, and what completes the arrangement which constitutes the application “Hunkey Dora.” is a short chimney, built a la Southern style, fire-place inside, and there you have me, I reckon!

And he uses the adjective hunkey in a 30 November 1864 letter:

I am well and “hunkey.”

Around this time, hunky-dory also appears in a song by the blackface performers Christy’s Minstrels, but the published song is not dated, but is most likely from 1865 (based on the advertisements for other songbooks included in the paratext). Titled Hunkey Dorey, the opening verse of the song reads:

One of the boys am I,
   That always am in clover;
With spirits light and high,
   ‘Tis well I’m known all over.
I am always to be found,
   A singing in my glory;
With your smiling faces round,
   ‘Tis then I’m hunkey dorey.

While we don’t know the precise date of this song, it is one of the earliest known appearances.

Also in 1865, hunky-dory makes is used as the name of a Native-American character in Dan Bryant’s minstrel show. The name Hun-Kee-Do-Ree appears in advertisements for the show in January 1865. The show also featured Artemus Ward, or at least readings from his works. From an ad in the New York Atlas of 14 January 1865:

BRYANTS’ MINSTRELS.—
Mechanics’ Hall, 472 Broadway
Monday, Jan. 16th, and during the week.
CROWDED HOUSES     ANOTHER NOVELTY!
                          THE LIVE INJUN.
HUN-KEE-DO-REE. .(the Live Ingin)...DAN BRYANT
ARTEMUS WARD AMONG THE MORMANS.
TAMING A BUTTERFLY.     HAUNTED HOUSE.
THE MISERABLES.     THE CHALLENGE DANCE.
Fife and Drum Major.     Tinpanonion.
                     Pillywillywink Band.
Parquette, 50 cts; Gallery, 90 cts; Commence at 7½.

It also is used as a Native-American name by comic A. M. Griswold. From a notice in the Troy Daily Times (New York) of 8 February 1865:

—A. M. Griswold, a comic writer, well known to newspaper readers at the West, as the “Fat Contributor,” is in the lecture field with a new lecture entitled “Hun-ki-do-ri.”

And on 1 October 1866 it appears in the magazine The Galaxy:

I cannot conceive on any theory of etymology that I ever studied why anything that is “hunkee doree,” or “ hefty,” or “ kindy dusty,” should be so admirable

So, it seems hunky-dory developed from the slang word hunky, meaning good, with the second element being added as reduplication. It doesn’t have a precise origin, but seems to have simulataneously appeared in both U.S. Civil War soldiers’ slang and in minstrel/comic acts and writing in the early 1860s.

It is often claimed that hunky-dory has its origins in Western sailors visiting Yokohama, Japan. One of the streets in Yokohama is named Honchodori, and in the mid nineteenth centuries it was lined with bars and brothels, just the place for sailors arriving in port after a long sea voyage. The chronology of this explanation works—Japan opened up to foreign trade in the 1850s. If this explanation is correct, the American adoption of the term would likely have been a combination of sailors bringing tales of the place home and the older slang term hunky. Unfortunately for this explanation, however, it is just conjecture. There is no evidence linking American use of hunky-dory to Japan. None of the early uses are by sailors or in nautical contexts. So, while the explanation is chronologically plausible, the lack of evidence makes it unlikely.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Advertisement. New York Atlas, 14 January 1865, 8. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Bartlett, John Russell. Dictionary of Americanisms, second edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1859, 208. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Capt. John Rogers.” Vanity Fair, 30 November 1861, 242. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Christy’s Bones and Banjo Melodist. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, n.d., 54. Harvard University’s copy bound with George Christy’s Essence of Old Kentucky. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 1862. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Commercial and Money Matters” (12 August 1853). The Weekly Day Book (New York), 13 August 1853, 8. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Fashion Again a Winner!” The Spirit of the Times, 24 May 1845, 146. American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 3.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. hunky-dory, adj.

Howe, Henry Warren. Passages from the Life of Henry Warren Howe, Consisting of Diary and Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861–1865. Lowell, Massachusetts: Courier-Citizen Co., 1899, 174, 179. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Live Metaphors.” The Galaxy, 1 October 1866, 275. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, s.v. hunky, adj.1, hunk, n.2 and adj.

“Personal.” Troy Daily Times (New York), 8 February 1865, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Ward, Artemus (Charles Farrar Browne). “Artemus Ward in Virginia.” St. Albans Daily Messenger (Vermont), 30 July 1863, 2. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

———. “A. Ward in Canada.” Crisis (Columbus, Ohio), 19 November 1862, 8. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.

———. “Marion, a Romance of the French School.” Artemus Ward: His Book. New York: Carleton, 1862, 237. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

———. “Moses, the Sassy; or the Disguised Duke.” Vanity Fair, 15 June 1861, 273. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Woshy-Boshy, or the Prestidigitating Squaw of the Snakeheads.” Vanity Fair, 9 November 1861, 209.

Thanks to Ben Zimmer for pointing out the hun-kee-do-ree and hun-ki-do-ri spellings.

pig in a poke

8 April 2021

A poke is a sack or bag, and to buy a pig in a poke is to purchase something sight unseen. The phrase is confusing to some because this sense of poke is now rare and, other than in this phrase, is not part of most people’s vocabulary; in the United States the word is chiefly found in the Midland dialect, especially in Appalachia.

We don’t know the exact etymology of the English word poke meaning a bag or sack. It dates to the early medieval period and appears in a number of European languages about the same time, so who borrowed what from whom is a bit muddled. The possibilities are that it is:

• from the Anglo-Norman poke (modern French poche), which would make it cognate with pouch

• from an unattested Old Dutch word (in Middle Dutch poke meant a bag or measure of wool)

• from the Old English pohha / Northumbrian pocca, from the Old Norse poki

• from some combination of the above.

An example of the Old English pohha can be found in the Macregol or Rushworth Gospels, a Latin copy of the gospels produced before 822 C. E. by Macregol, an Irish bishop and scribe. (In the seventeenth century, John Rushworth donated the manuscript to the Bodleian Library, hence that name.) An Old English, interlinear translation was added in the late tenth century. The text of Luke 9:3 reads:

Portion of an eighth-century, Latin gospel (the Macgregol Gospel) showing Luke 9:3 with a tenth-century Old English interlinear gloss that contains an early use of poke (Old English pohha) on the fourth line

Et ait ad illos nihil tolleretis in uia neque uirgam neque peram neque panem neque peccuniam neque duos tunicas abetis

& cwæð to ðæm noht ginime iow on woege ne in gerde ne in pohha ne hlafas ne feh ne twoege cyrtlas habbas ge.

(& he said to them, “Take nothing with you on the journey, neither staff, nor poke, nor bread, nor money, nor should you have two garments)

The relevant Latin word in the above is peram, the accusative of pera, a satchel or bag.

The form poke appears by the early thirteenth century. Here is an example from a listing of tolls due to the lord of Torksey for goods that were passing on the river Trent, although it’s not clear whether the poke here is English or Anglo-Norman. The text is primarily French, but some words, such as mailede, are Middle English:

i fraiello de vaddo      iiii d.
i poke de alum              i d.
i pak mailede              iiii d.

(1 basket of woad         4 d.
1 poke of alum              1 d.
1 tied bundle               4 d.)

But it appears unambiguously in Middle English in the romance Havelok the Dane. The poem was composed c. 1285, and the primary manuscript was copied sometime 1300–25. The passage is speaking of the fisherman Grim, who saved the life of and then adopted the child Havelok, the rightful king of Denmark:

Thanne he com thenne he were blithe,
For hom he brouthe fele sithe
Wastels, simenels with the horn,
His pokes fulle of mele and korn,
Netes flesh, shepes and swines;
And hemp to maken of gode lines,
And stronge ropes to hise netes,
In the se weren he ofte setes.

(Then he came from there, he was happy
For he brought home many times
Cakes, horn-shaped bread,
His pokes full of meal and grain,
Meat from cattle, sheep, and swine;
And hemp to make good lines,
And strong ropes for his netes
In the sea where he often set them.)

Pokes are associated with pigs by the end of the fourteenth century. Geoffrey Chaucer uses both words in the same line, albeit not in the form of the familiar gnomic utterance. From the Reeve’s Tale, written c. 1390. In this passage, the miller has just discovered one of the students has been sleeping with his daughter and is about to discover that another has been sleeping with his wife:

“A, false traitour! False clerk!" quod he,
"Thow shalt be deed, by Goddes dignitee!
Who dorste be so boold to disparage
My doghter, that is come of swich lynage?"
And by the throte-bolle he caughte Alayn,
And he hente hym despitously agayn,
And on the nose he smoot hym with his fest.
Doun ran the blody streem upon his brest;
And in the floor, with nose and mouth tobroke,
They walwe as doon two pigges in a poke;
And up they goon, and doun agayn anon,
Til that the millere sporned at a stoon,
And doun he fil bakward upon his wyf,
That wiste no thyng of this nyce stryf;
For she was falle aslepe a lite wight
With John the clerk, that waked hadde al nyght,

(“Ah, false traitor! False clerk!,” said he,
“You shall be dead by God’s dignity!
Who dared to be so bold to degrade
My daughter, who has come from such a lineage?”
And by the Adam’s apple he caught Alayn,
And he seized him angrily in turn,
And he hit him on the nose with his fist.
Down ran the bloody stream upon his chest;
And on the floor, with nose and mouth broken,
They wallow as do two pigs in a poke;
And up they go, and down again straight away,
Until the miller stumbled on a stone,
And down he fell backward upon his wife,
Who knew nothing of this foolish strife;
For she had fallen asleep for a short while
With John the clerk, who had been awake all night.)

But the gnomic phrase gets its start even earlier. The earliest instance of something similar is from the Proverbs of Hending. This is a collection of proverbs that exists in several versions. This particular one is from Cambridge, University Library MS Gg.1.1. and was probably composed c. 1250. The manuscript dates to before 1325:

What ich þe ᵹeve. take hit sone,
For ᵹef þou bidist til aftir none,
For tu wost me trewe,
Wiltou, niltou, þar mai rise
Letting in ful mani a wise,
Eft hit wil þe rewe.
“Wan man ᵹevit þe a pig, opin þe powch.”
Quod Hending.

(What I give you, take it right away,
For if you ask until after noon—
For you know me to be true—
Willy nilly, there may arise
Hindrances in very many ways,
Afterward, you will regret it.
“When a man gives you a pig, open the pouch.”
Said Hending.)

Not only does it use pouch instead of poke, but here the context suggests the meaning is somewhat different from the phrase we know today. The mythical Hending is advising that one take delivery and inspect the merchandise immediately upon payment, because if you wait, events may prevent you from taking delivery of the goods.

By the mid fifteenth century, we see both poke and the present-day meaning of the phrase, although it is worded slightly differently. From another collection of gnomic utterances found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 52:

When me profereth þe pigge, opon þe pogh;
For when he is an olde swyn, thow tyte hym nowᵹht.
Cum tibi porcellum prebet quis, pande saccellum;
Cum fuerit porcus, non erit ipse tuus.

(When me[n] proffer a pig to you, open the poke;
For if it is an old swine, you should not take it.)

Finally, by 1555 we see the proverb in the form we’re most familiar with it today. From a John Heywood’s Two Hundred Epigrammes:

I wyll neuer bye the pyg in the poke:
Thers many a foule pyg in a feyre cloke.

It is often claimed that the phrase about buying a pig in a poke refers to a scam in which a cat or other inedible animal would be substituted for a pig. As we can see from the phrase’s history above, that is not the case. The phrase is simply an admonition to inspect the merchandise before you buy. No elaborate scams or schemes are needed.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Reeve’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales. Lines 1.4269–84. Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website.

Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s. v. poke, n.1.

Förster, Max. “Die Mittelenglische Sprichwörtersamlung in Douce 52.” Festschrift zum XII Allgemeinen Deutschen Neuphilologentage in München, Pfingsten, 1906. Erlangen: Junge, 1906, 54. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 52.

Gras, Norman S. B. “An Inquisition Showing the System of Local Customs at Torksey, 1228.” The Early English Customs System. Harvard Economic Studies 18. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1918, 157. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Havelok the Dane. In Four Romances of England: King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Bevis of Hampton, Athelston. Ronald B. Herzman, Graham Drake, and Eve Salisbury, eds. TEAMS Middle English Text Series. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997, lines 778–85. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Laud Misc. 108. 

Heywood, John. Two Hundred Epigrammes. London: T. Berthelet, 1555, sig. B.2v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s. v. poke n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2021, s. v. pig, n.1; December 2020, poke, n.1.

Skeat, Walter W. The Gospel According to Saint Luke in Anglo-Saxon and Northumbrian Versions. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1874, 95. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. D.2.19, fol. 96r.

Tréguer, Pascal. “The Authentic Origin of ‘to buy a pig in a poke.’” Wordhistories.net, 2 January 2017.

Varnhagen, Hermann. “Zu Mittelenglischen Gedichten.” Anglia, 4, 1881, 188–89. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Cambridge, University Library MS Gg.1.1.

Image credit: The Macregol (Rushworth) Gospel, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. D. 2. 19, Digital Bodleian.

let the cat out of the bag

Erik the cat sitting in an overnight bag

7 April 2021

To let the cat out of the bag is to reveal a secret. But where does this idiom come from? What is the cat doing in the bag and what has this to do with secrets?

The answer is a disappointing, “we don’t know.” The metaphor underlying the phrase has been lost to the ages. There is a similar phrase in French, vider le sac, literally meaning to empty the sack and used to mean to tell the whole story or finish the tale. The English version could be a more colorful variation on that. But there is also a long history using opening something as a metaphor for revelation (and the Latin roots of the word reveal literally mean an uncovering), from the ancient Greek myth of Pandora’s box to the recent open one’s kimono. So, countless speculative candidates are possible (and unevidenced).

The phrase first appears in print in 1760 and likely dates in oral use to the decades immediately preceding—we have a raft of print appearances in the 1760s, indicating that it was a faddish term during that decade. The first appearance is in April 1760 in a brief book review of Willoughby Mynors’s The Life and Adventures of a Cat in the Edinburgh Magazine (a verbatim review appears in the London Magazine of the same date):

The life and adventures of a cat, 2 s. 6d. Mynors.

We could have wished that the strange genius, author of this piece, had not let the cat out of the bag; for it is such a mad, ranting, swearing, caterwauling puss, that we fear no sober family will be troubled with her.

It’s clear from the context that the phrase was already in circulation by this date and that the reviewer is making a play on words, juxtaposing the idiom with the title of the book in question.

Let the cat out of the bag is also recorded in eighteenth-century stockbroker slang. From Thomas Mortimer’s 1761 Every Man His Own Broker: or a Guide to Exchange-Alley:

TERM generally begins a few days before the drawing of the lottery, when those who have contracted to take, or are already possessed of, more tickets than they can possibly hold, (in the language of ’Change Alley, begin to open the budget or to let the cat out of the bag) and these may not improperly be stiled BULLS, PLAINTIFFS;—and the opposite party, who have agreed to deliver a quantity of tickets without being possessed of them, the BEARS, DEFENDANTS.

To open the budget is an obsolete idiom meaning to speak one’s mind. In the idiom budget is used in the now obsolete sense of a purse or wallet, so that idiom is yet another revelatory metaphor.

Let the cat out of the bag also appears in a 1762 English translation of Molière’s play The Gentleman Cit (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme):

Mad. JORDAN.
And pray what does this same nobleman do for you?

Mons. JORDAN.
Why, things that would surprize you, if you knew them all.

Mad. JORDAN.
And what are they?

Mons. JORDAN.
No, hold there, wife; I shall not let the cat out of the bag neither. It is sufficient that if I have lent him money, he will pay it me all again very soon.

Yet another early appearance is again from the world of the stock market, in the East India Examiner of 5 November 1766 in a passage talking about what we now call insider trading:

Any fixed value given to India stock, however great, cannot suit their views; their business is to keep it at a low uncertain value, as we find it at present, while they behind the curtain, knowing the time when they shall raise the dividend 2 per cent, and consequently the stock 50 per cent. more in value, in the mean time always declaring an increase of dividend premature, will be able by themselves and their friends with money prepared, to purchase gradually, and imperceptibly, the bulk of the Company's stock, and then let the cat out of the bag.

As mentioned above, there are countless possibilities as to the original metaphor underlying the phrase. I will only discuss the two most common, two that are almost certainly false.

The first one, and one that can be found repeated many etymological resources (including old versions of this site) is that it refers to a scam in which a cat would be surreptitiously substituted for a suckling pig that had just been purchased at market. The cat would be placed in the bag in the hopes that the customer would not look into it until they were some distance away. This same alleged scam is often also held to be the origin of the phrase to buy a pig in a poke. But there is no evidence of such a scam existing, or at least being common, and early uses of the phrase are not in contexts that are related to any such scam. This explanation would appear to be a post hoc rationalization for an idiom of unknown origin.

The second common, but almost certainly false, explanation is that let the cat out of the bag refers to the cat o’ nine-tails used on board ships as form of punishment. The whip would be kept in a special bag to protect it from the sea air and to let the cat out of the bag was to confess a crime worthy of flogging. Again, a neat tale, except again there is absolutely no evidence to connect the phrase with a nautical origin. None of the early citations are even remotely connected to life on the sea.

To sum up, we don’t know where let the cat out of the bag comes from or what it originally referred to. All we know is that the phrase probably arose in the early to mid eighteenth century and appears in print by 1760.

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Sources:

The East India Examiner (No. 10. 5 November 1766). London: W. Nicoll, 1766, 88–89. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Mikkelson, Barbara. “What’s the Origin of ‘Letting the Cat Out of the Bag’?” Snopes.com, 8 August 2010.

Molière. “The Gentleman Cit.” The Comic Theater, vol. 5 of 5. Samuel Foote, trans. London: Dryden Leach for J. Coote, 1762, 202. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Mortimer, Thomas. Every Man His Own Broker: or a Guide to Exchange-Alley. London: S. Hooper, 1761, 70–71. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

“New Books, With Remarks and Extracts.” The Edinburgh Magazine, April 1760, 224. Gale Primary Sources: American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society,

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s. v. bag, n.

Photo credit: David Wilton, 2020.

left wing / right wing

Jacques-Louis David’s painting of the June 1789 Oath of the Tennis Court, during which the French National Assembly swore not to dissolve until a new constitution had been enacted. In the foreground, a Catholic monk, a Protestant minister, and a layman clasp hands. In the background, a man stands on a table with one hand raised and the other holding a book, presumably reading the oath, while the hall full of legislators raise their hands in disorganized affirmation; one man in the lower right is seated and dour, refusing to take the oath, while a crowd looks down from the windows and the gallery above, and a revolutionary wind billows the curtains.

6 April 2021

In political discourse, it’s routine to refer to the left and the right, with the left being the liberal/reformist faction of a body politic, and the right being the more conservative. This particular phrasing comes down to us from the French Revolution, when the more radical elements of the National Assembly tended to sit on the left side of the chamber and the more conservative elements to the right.

The left/right political division first appears in English in a translation of Camile Desmoulins The History of the Brissotins, published in 1794 (the French original was published the previous year):

I establish it as a fact, that the right side of the Convention, and principally their leaders, are almost all partizans of royalty, accomplices in the treason of Dumourier and Bournonvillę; that they are directed by the agents of Pitt, Orleans, and Prussia; that they wanted to divide or rather overturn France into twenty or thirty federative republics, that no republic might exist.

And later in the same work:

The greater number of those who composed the constituent. and legislative assemblies, ill disguised the anger they felt at seeing their work destroyed by the republicans of the Convention. Their love of royalty appeared in their imprecations against Paris. La Source, the least corrupted of those who voted with the left, and dined with the right side of the Convention, but whose pride was excited against Robespierre, exclaimed, on the 14th of September, “I fear those vile men not vomited forth by Paris, but by some Brunswick.”

Desmoulins would go to the guillotine in 1794.

In his 1837 history of the French Revolution, Thomas Carlyle described, albeit from a very Anglo-centric and disapproving perspective, how the National Assembly organized itself into left and right factions, which he calls sides:

For the present, if we glance into that Assembly-Hall of theirs, it will be found, as is natural, “most irregular.” As many as “a hundred members are on their feet at once;” no rule in making motions, or only commencements of a rule; Spectators' Gallery allowed to applaud, and even to hiss; President, appointed once a fortnight, raising many times no serene head above the waves. Nevertheless, as in all human Assemblages, like does begin arranging itself to like; the perennial rule, Ubi homines sunt modi sunt [Where men are, rules are], proves valid. Rudiments of Methods disclose themselves; rudiments of Parties. There is a Right Side (Cóté Droit), a Left Side (Côté Gauche); sitting on M. le President's right hand, or on his left: the Coté Droit conservative; the Côté Gauche destructive. Intermediate is Anglomaniac Constitutionalism, or Two-Chamber Royalism; with its Mouniers, its Lallys,—fast verging towards nonentity.

The phrases right wing and left [wing] are first recorded in debate in the British parliament on 26 August 1841, and are used in reference to something other than the revolutionary French National Assembly:

Mr. E. Turner commenced by referring to the violence of language used by some of the Tory party towards the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland, which was calculated to irritate and inflame the people of that country: At a dinner given, at which the hon. Member for Kent was present, a noble Earl referring to the great Reform party to which he belonged, spoke of the right wing of the Infidels and Radicals, and the left of the popish followers of factious demagogues, headed by O'Connell, and supported by “the most infuriated and bigoted priesthood that ever cursed a country”

The use of wing is presumably from the military sense of the word, referring to the divisions on either side of the center of an army.

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Sources:

“Address in Answer to the Speech—Adjourned Debate” (26 August 1841). Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, third series, vol. 59. London: Thomas Curson Hansard, 1841, 296.

Carlyle, Thomas. The French Revolution (1837), vol. 1 of 2. London: Thomas Nelson, 1928, 202. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Desmoulins, Camille. The History of the Brissotins. London: J. Owen 1794, 5, 40. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2010, s. v. right wing, n. and adj., and right, n.; s. v. June 2016, left wing, n. and adj., left, adj.1, n., and adv.

Image credit: Jacques-Louis David, “Serment du Jeu de Paume” (“Oath of the Tennis Court”), after 1791, oil painting on canvas. Public domain image.