PECULIAR PHRASES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 March 1939, Page 8

PECULIAR PHRASES

THEIR ORIGIN. Has it ever struck you how peculiar some of our phrases are? Yet many are of great historical interest, while others have almost lost their original meanings. . An actual man was “killed by kindness.” He was Draco, the Athenian legislator, who was so popular that 'when he entered the theatre the people threw their caps, cloaks, flowers and ribbons at him with such enthusiasm that he was smothered under them. Quite a Hollywood star, scene of thousands of years ago—seventh century B.C. And the phrase survives.

■ Again “walls have ears,” no longer in the real sense. Once, however, they did. for Catherine de Medici had tubes called “auriclaires” fitted to the walls of the Louvre so that secrets and plots could be revealed, since a person in one room could hear what another said in the next. These tubes were the original telephones. Nowadays when we say someone or other’ has taken “the gilt off the gingflrbifeadi” we mean anything but gingerbread. But in the reign of Henry IV. gingerbread watches, men and animals were sold at the fairs. When the gilt was taken off the children were undeceived. So we came by a good phrase for to “undeceive.” “To have a bee in one’s bonnet” is still a current phrase, and it was in use before bonnets were invented in Ireland. In ancient times the moon was called a "bee” by the priestesses of Ceres, and “bees in the head” meant being “fanciful” because the moonlight made one romantic. It still does; and “a bee in one’s bonnet” retains the idea of being tantalised by something fanciful.