Appropriate or inappropriate old sayings

[heywood]

The weather here though is lovely - no rain or storm as as yet but it has been very windy for a few days now.

[Pennines]

Gillg --- I have only come across 'clout' referring to clothing within this saying actually.

Heywood ---Yes it did refer to a thump from your Mum or Dad -- 'I'll give you a clout'. (Not that it was EVER said to me of course, I was a good child!)

 I must admit I did think it was the month of May -- and not the 'mayflower'.

It makes you wonder who was the ONE person who said this originally, when and why - and then it spread countrywide. (I am assuming it spread countrywide anyway).

[Gillg]

 We didn’t refer to clothing though - it was more of a thump  or a slap ‘get a clout from your mam when she finds out ...’ 
[/quote]

Yep, I've had a few clouts in my time (in the days when it was not a crime to give them, I hasten to add.).

[Pennines]

Also -- different topic really -- can you remember 'walking up the brew' -- meaning up a hill?

(I can't remember walking 'down' the brew though). And of course a 'brew' was and still is - a cup of tea.

[andrewalston]

"Brew" is the local pronunciation of "Brow". Further south (Staffordshire-ish), the term gets replaced by "bank". By the time you reach the Black Country, that is pronounced more like "bonk". When I lived in Stourbridge, I never quite mastered the local pronunciation of "Quarry Bank".

I'm afraid that the May blossom on the hawthorn tree 30 yards from where I'm sitting is now faded. Last week there was nothing but white showing. So even sticklers for tradition need to get rid of some layers.

[stanmapstone]

From "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable",
Cast not a clout till May is out An old warning not to shed winter clothing  too early in the year. 'Clout' here is rag or patch, hence a piece of clothing. May is also another name for hawthorn which blossoms in May. Thus some hold that the proverb means 'do not discard clothing until the hawthorn blossoms', but more likely it means 'wait until the end of May'. F.K Robinson's Whitby Glossary (1855) has
The wind at North and East
Was never good for man nor beast
So never think to cast a clout
Until the month of May be out.

Stan

[Pennines]

Andrew -- oh my goodness, better not comment on the Black Country pronounciation of the word 'Bank'!

Stan -- thank you for that poem - very interesting. Now you have mentioned that I vaguely remember it, but had totally forgotten about it. You are always a mine of information.

[andrewalston]

On a slightly more local theme, one term that puzzled me as a child were references to "going over the moor". This is Chorley in Lancashire, where "moor" is pronounced "moo-er", not the same as "more".

They were referring to "Chorley Moor". I knew that moors were upland, uncultivated places where heather grows, but "Chorley Moor" is lined with houses. It isn't what you'd call upland either - a gentle slope rising 4 feet in half a mile, followed by a steeper slope down into the river valley.

These days the road is split into Pall Mall and Moor Road, names established by the time of the OS maps, but register entries still 4refer to the lot as "Chorley Moor" until about 1900.

The oldest maps I can find, though, show fields each side, and there are farmhouses from the early 1700s, so it must be a LONG time since it was uncultivated.

[Pennines]

Andrew -- out of interest I have just said the word 'moor' out loud - and realised I pronounce it 'moower'.

It's not like Lancastrians to ADD letters or syllables to words - we usually omit what we consider to be unnecessary, thereby shortening things I suppose. The word 'our' is simply pronounced as 'R' --- as in another saying --- 'Well I'll go to foot of r stairs'.

This is an expression used to denote shock or surprise -- and makes no sense whatsoever in that context!