Mother's sayings
 

I've ridged the potatoes and cleared out the mess under the potting bench. Then took it easy and brought to mind Mam's sayings (she was born 1899).
If I walked back from the dance on a wild night, she might say: Your hair is a wild as Nazimova's. So, I went online to look into Nazimova and found this bit of antique film:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44OmwMoGWfs

It makes a change from reality TV.

My grandma used to say, when asking where grandad was, he is having a terrace ender, meaning he was talking at the end of the terrace.......Eyup Harry have you ever had a terrace ender? there was lots of them where i lived down Hessle rd.

Born in a terrace, 1938, Hartlepool headland, but moved aged one to the new council estate. They were semis with gardens for racing pigeons, rabbit hutches, and leeks.
Mam would also say: 'You look like the wreck of the Hesperus.'

"Where is he?"
"Gone to the shore for a loaf".

"Want to be a film star - Stand in front of the fire till your Googie Withers!".

Rgds.
Dave

When i played cricket my dad used to say, mind your kendo nagasakies

You'll eat a peck of dirt before you're dead.


Wash behind your ears.

Dirty stop out.

There's a patch of blue in the sky big enough to make a Dutchman a pair of trousers. (I never understood that one.)

There's no pockets in a shroud

That's an expression here in East Antrim that indicates a person is slow to buy his round.
I'm sure it doesn't refer to you as your shipmates on your first ship would have advised you on Smoke Room etiquette.

When in a dishevelled state Mother-in-Law would observe: you look like the wreck of the Hesperus; or: You look like you've been dragged through a winnie bush backwards.

r r r as you say in the north.

The Wreck of the Hesperus
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr,
To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailòr,
Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
Oh say, what may it be?"
"'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" —
And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns,
Oh say, what may it be?"
"Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light,
Oh say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That savèd she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave
On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

"The boy stood on the burning deck, eating a 3d Walls,

It melted down his trousers leg and paralysed his spherical appendages."

Usually quoted by Mum or Dad if we complained about what we thought was an injustice. Also if a minor accident happened, the stock retort from the parents was,

"Worse things happen at sea."

However if a winter storm was in full force with howling winds and rain, hail, sleet or snow,the parents would say,
"Pity the poor sailor on a night like this."

Parents, eh?

If anything went wrong, my Mum (from Hereford) would say "Don't tell your father or he'll go mad and chew paper."

Whats for tea Mam?
Shit wi' sugar!

Mum saying's when i went to visit after leaving home....Do you still take sugar you mucky little bugger. ha ha ha.

1956. On a draughty West Hartlepool railway station, Dad saw me off to my first ship (aged 17) with the words: 'Don't play cards on railway trains, son - and don't go with women who want your money.'

I've yet to be invited to a card game on a train.

MY dad was returning home from milford by train he had just settled up after lots of trips on the Milford Duke (late 40s) he had money falling out of his pockets and returning home to Hull, there was a young R.N lad on the train. who was trying to dodge his fare but he got caught, Dad paid his fare and bought him a drink and a meal, as they were pulling into paragon station the lad asked my Dad if he could beg five bob off him to pay for the ferry to new Holland,no problem, the lad asked Dad what pub he used Dad told him he used one down Posterngate. Two days later Dad found himself in that pub and the landlady gave my Dad the money owed, Dad had just missed the lad dropping it off, Dad never saw him again.

OK!! Well, my mother was of Welsh extraction (Powell), but often mentioned Irish ancestors.

Fantastic story, Rusty! As I have always said to my daughters, there are only two types of people, good and bad. Keep the good ones close and sta away from the bad!

Rgds.
Dave

Eyup MAKKO, the thing is it is now a diffrent world, Hull trawlermen were known for giving their money away and he did not expect it to be returned, today it would have been treated as a con. be carefull out there.

I thought that no pockets in a shroud meant you could not take your money with you when you were buried in a "shroud"

Or the Undertaker overcharged you for his services.

My dad used to advise me: 'At the end of the day, always look after your horse before you see to yourself.'
But he was in the horse artillery - and I've never owned a horse.

Did everyone's Mum tell them to stop pulling faces because one day the wind would change and they "would stay like that for ever" ?

Another one, "Don't keep picking at it, it'll never get better."

Finally, all the threats of disaster and famine stricken children coming to eat your greens, sprouts, turnips and parsnips if you left them on your plate. I used to think sometimes that Mum's greens would be the only evidence that human life had ever existed in Ilford in the event of a nuclear attack.

Did she include, you have a face a dog wouldn't lick?