OH, Suzanna! Stuff Settlers Said: From the Farm

This time we look to the farm for figures of speech the settlers would have used.  Quite honestly, most of the old sayings come from the farm, or are agrarian in origin. The industrial revolution – moving our culture from the farm to the factory- really did not pick up pace in the U.S until the 1840’s. That is not that long ago when you think in terms of shifting a whole world culture and economy that had been predominant throughout history.

http://goldenagepaintings.blogspot.com/2010/10/edgar-hunt-cockerel-hens-and-chicks.html

Chicken and sheep were the most common livestock on any farm. Their relative small size, food and shelter needs made them ideal to the needs of the farm and those that lived on it. So much so that a woman coming into a marriage with chickens in particular, and other various livestock, was regarded as being well prepared to undertake her duties on the farm and a great asset to her husband.

We have all heard about grandma and grandpa fussing about their “nest egg” for retirement. We understand that means their savings, but how did that come about? Since chickens were so essential, farmers took great pains to ensure that they produced the most eggs. The practice of placing wooden whitewash painted eggs in the nest to encourage a stubborn layer became more and more common. When the nest eggs, as these were called, were not needed they were saved away for later use when they would be needed.

“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched!” Of course this means do not rely upon a thing or situation until it is before you doing what it is supposed to. If you have any experience raising chickens you will know that not all eggs hatch into a viable chick. If we counted every egg that was laid as a good egg, we would be relying on something not possible all the time. This also brings up the saying “He’s a good egg!” Saying someone is a good egg is saying that they are of worth and going to produce good things. Someone who is said to be a bad egg is someone who is looked at as worthless or bad, rotten to the core.

The next one is a bit gruesome. Have you ever said you were running around “like a chicken with its head cut off”? Again, if you have raised chickens you know the most common way to slaughter the chicken for meat is to cut its head off. For a short time after the chicken’s nervous system still works and controls its movements. The result is what looks like the chicken trying to run away- there is no planned route and it is wild and fast. So when we get keyed up trying to do many things at once and kind of lose our plan we look like that chicken with its head cut off running around the barn yard in no particular direction.

Remember the last time you got caught in a cold draft or a cool chilly breeze? Probably you got “goose bumps”. It is a nervous response to warm and protect our skin. When geese or chickens are plucked after slaughter their skin swells where the feathers were pulled out from the follicle. Sometimes this is also called goose pimples.

http://www.buchanancountyhistory.com/oneroomschool.php

My maternal grandmother was a retired teacher by the time I was born, but that did not stop her inclination to teach at all. Now she had grandchildren to direct and shape! She started teaching when the one room school house was still the norm. She had seen so much and was so wise! This next saying was one thing that I could never get a definite response from her on. Did she want me to dig deeper, or did she just not know?!

“You are the apple of my eye!” In Old English, the word aeppel means eye as well as the fruit apple. Many people thought the pupil of the eye looked like an apple. So they called the pupil the apple of the eye. The pupil is the most important factor of lighting the inside of the eye and allowing vision. This is the most prominent feature of the eye at times, and an apple is a very important fruit to the farm. It just follows that when you want someone to know they are important and special to you that you consider them to be the apple of your eye. Now…what I asked Grandma was this: Why do a teacher’s pupils bring her apples? Was this a custom of payment for the teacher? After all, the first teachers in the United States were contracted by individuals to teach their children. A small group of people would provide for his or her payment, lodging and food. Or was this in order to gain special favor of the teacher, and become “the apple of her eye”? (That is how we depict this action these days!) I think Grandma thought I was being cheeky and just did not bother to answer this one. I will have to investigate this further.

This past summer was a rough one. The heat and lack of rain made every day seem like “the dog days” of summer. Where did this saying come from? I had been told many things growing up. “Oh this is when it is so hot you just lay around like a lazy ole dog.” was the usual reply! Well, that is certainly true, but actually it goes very far back. The ancient Egyptians noticed that the Nile would flood the morning that Sirius would rise in the East right before dawn. The Greeks called it Dog Days but the Romans named it the Dog Star or the Greater Star-Sirius. They also thought the God Sirius was enraged and so caused the humid and maddening weather. All through time cultures have seen this as a time during summer that humans and animals became enraged and crazed most easily. (Could this be where we get the term “crazy hot”?) Seeing as how all down through history cultures have reacted to this forecasting star in such ways, it is understandable how we still react with dread at the mention of the term “The Dog Days of Summer”

. http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/sirius-the-brightest-star

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_days

http://www.likeacat.com/Dog-Symbolism_ep_71-1.html

When I was younger I heard this next one a lot from older men my father spoke with at the old country store beside the Whitewater River in Nulltown, Indiana. “Well, did you hear ole John bought the farm? Yep, last night at milking time. Just fell over right behind Blue Bell.” For those of you who do not understand he meant to say: “Our friend John just passed away yesterday while milking his cows.”  You may ask why he had to be so crude and put it that way. “Bought the Farm” Well, in his day and before it was more of a term of endearment, acknowledging that he finally was in his dream place. Long ago this was a way of saying a soldier had died in battle. Many soldiers had expressed the wish to just be done with the work at hand so they could go back home, buy a farm, and get on with living the good life. When a soldier died or “bought the farm”, he had found peace from war and peace from life in general. Now, it is not a very polite way of saying someone has passed away.

{When I was in junior high school and was assigned to read “Across Five Aprils” we were taught some common sayings of the time and especially pertaining to war and the Civil War. My teacher brought up the term “bought the farm” and I was assigned to find out where that came from. Yes, blame this whole Stuff Settlers Said thing on dear old Mr. Hopkins over 30 years ago! Well in my vast knowledge that a seventh grader had….I asked my retired school teacher grandma. Well, she did not just hand out information- you had to work HARD for it! She also made me research terms pertaining to buying a farm. This led me to mortgage. What I found made grandma proud, Mr. Hopkins glad that I was learning to self-teach, and made the class think I was just BUTTERING UP the teach…. We get the term mortgage from the old French: mort ~ dead, gage ~ to pledge. Sir Edward Coke said that if the mortgagor dies before paying in full the property "is taken from him for ever, and so dead to him upon condition, &c. And if he doth pay the money, then the pledge is dead as to the [mortgagee]." 

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mortgage

This means that if he dies before it is paid in full – there will be nothing for an inheritance from the property; it will go to the mortgagee. I knew instantly that the soldier would worry his whole life through till that mortgage was paid off. I did not realize that most were able to save money and purchase the property outright and in some cases a payment of military service was in the form of land. There were also homesteading land grants also. A mortgage was obtained usually only in cases of extreme economic hardship. Now, we have insurances that will ensure if you pass away before paying in full, it will pay the mortgage and the inheritance will be ensured also.}

http://www.thereadingnook.com/civil_war/

Now do you understanding why my mother is always saying “OH, Suzanna!?”

http://www.hopesteadhillfarm.com/ewes-views/

The next two sayings come from raising sheep. This should be simple enough.

Have you ever heard of the family where it seems everyone are doctors, lawyers, professors, politicians, etc. and then over here on the side is one sibling who is perfectly content to live drawing pictures of Batman and skateboarding all over the place? Yeah, well, that’s the “black sheep” of the family. The black sheep is the one who stands out, different than the rest. Most sheep on a farm were white, but occasionally there was a black sheep born in the flock. That was natural. It was not a bad thing just that it was different than the rest. I happen to like the black sheep better than the rest, they are interesting.

See? You thought I was going to get down to the business of settler sayings and then “in two shakes of a lamb’s tail” I got all weird again didn't I?  (See lambs shake their tails really really fast, so “in two shakes of a lamb’s tail” would be VERY fast…..yeah)

Most Americans love their “spuds”, or potatoes. French fries, hash browns, tater tots, baked, fried, boiled, roasted, mashed, and smashed, whatever! Just give us some! Now where on EARTH did this one come from? Blame the English again, the MIDDLE English speaking English…. There was a very common digging hand tool called a spudde. Among northern cultures tubers, mostly potatoes of all kinds are the food staple that kept starvation’s knock away from the door. The spudde was the tool of choice and so potatoes picked up the name. There are those that say the name came from an energetic group of Victorian progressives calling themselves: the Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diets, or S.P.U.D. There have been over the eras groups that have absurdly singled out a certain food that is named as the downfall of a culture. The Italians had macaroni: said it was the reason peasants were lazy, poor, and would not work. So macaroni was outlawed. Seriously. Dietitians concede now using the glycemic index foods like pasta and potatoes have a greater tendency to mess with the blood sugar metabolism….but the cause of peasants littering the bourgeoisie’s paths? I really do not think so…..

http://trialx.org/2012/08/14/a-simple-recipe-for-cooking-buttered-new-potatoes/

“Ah, don’t worry about him, he’s just small potatoes!” Small potatoes…here in Indiana we just love them. They are more delicate in flavor and take like a minute to cook up. We call them new potatoes and they line the shelves at the grocery store! In older times, however, they were regarded as not valuable to the human diet and were fed to the livestock for filler. (We like OUR filler!) So small potatoes became to mean something not worth the time to mess with.

My mother was saying just the other day: Oh, Suzanna! “I am stumped!” Why they have not just locked you up by now is beyond me. I know you drive ME crazy!

If you can’t tell from Mother’s comment “to be stumped” means to be confused or baffled, something that defies all rationality. Kind of like trying to pull a stump from the ground and no matter what you try it just does not budge. Some settlers even tried to blast them with gun powder to blow them apart. Only half the time did this work enough to remove the stump. Here in Indiana clearing stumps was a most serious hurdle to the growth of the state. In most accounts from the time a traveler could go through most of the state and never see the light of day because the forest was so thick. Because my family owned a farm, harvested trees for wood, and I witnessed the removal of stumps I know what a feat this must have been for men (and yes, women) who only had the help of their own hands, the ox or draft horse, a few hand tools, and maybe some gunpowder. I marvel when I look at the traces, pikes, roads, canal ways, and rail ways that came into being during the early days of Indiana’s growth. Even now great monsters of modern machinery are needed to construct a road, bridge or shore up river banks and road sides. What determination was needed to persevere in the wilderness that was Indiana? 

In the video below you can see that even blasting a stump does not ensure total success:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwuz52FgSwI&feature=related

http://www.flickr.com/photos/uscapitol/6472845455/


I have a great fondness for things of the farm. I suppose growing up on one has done that to me. Although, the rhythms and cycles of the work and life has always made sense to me, it seems that I have spent a great deal of my life trying to make a go of it in a more urban setting. It is easy when you look at how life progresses to see how we move away from what was once familiar. I guess that is the way it is with society in general. When we begin to look at the language of the time period we get a small window into the daily life of settlers. My, how things have changed - some very much for the better, while other things are questionable in their progression.
Until next time ~ Suzanna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfv9FDnMcaI&feature=related