Family sayings

[linda_joyce]

Black up over Will's mother's.
As in  "It's getting awfully black up over Will's mothers",  meaning it looks like it's going to rain.

Older than you but younger than Methuselah
The stock answer to a child asking Mother how old she was.

There's enough blue to patch a Dutchman's trousers.
My grandmother's stock answer to a child's query about the weather .  Gran will it be fine enough to go swimming?
There's enough blue in the sky to patch a Dutchman's trousers, it might be.

Ships and yachts
Sheep and their lambs.

Comments

[san-valentine.livejournal.com]

I've heard the first of those used in Sheffield, in the form "It's a bit black over Bill's Mum's"

As for the weather, my parents would say there was enough blue to make a sailor a pair of trousers.

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

Now Will's mother's came through my father's side of the family. My mother's side were Monmouth back to the late 18th century and west Wales before that. On Dad's side though , his Father came from Hampshire and ancestrally we are Irish. Where his mother's family came from is anybody's guess but her maiden name was Siviter which is commonest up around the Midlands so she or her ancestors could have brought it south and changed the Bill to the Welsh Will

[inyadreems.livejournal.com]

It's "Fred's Mother's"!

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

Not round here, Freds are rare Wills are everywhere.

[writestufflee.livejournal.com]

The Methusalah and Dutchmen's britches comments were used in my family too, passed down through a Canadian-Scots-Dutch grandmother.

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

And Gran didn't have any of those ancestors, Language is weird and non is weirder than English.