first you take the cow to the killing floor song

For centuries the Arabs occupied Spain but they were gradually forced out during the Middle Ages. In Matthew 15:14 Jesus criticised the Pharisees, the religious authorities of his day, saying ‘they be blind leaders of the blind’. If you let out the cable to the bitter end there was nothing else you could do, you had reached the end of your resources. The last piece of cable was called the bitter end. It was poetic way of describing the death of a warrior.Īnchor cable was wrapped around posts called bitts. This phrase comes from a translation of the epic Ancient Greek poem the Illiad about the war between the Greeks and the Trojans. ‘Talk about the biter being bitten’ was originally a phrase about a con man being beaten at his own game.

In the 17th century a biter was a con man. A soldier about to undergo an operation was given a bullet to bite. It comes from the days before anaesthetics. Means to grin and bear a painful situation. Hence today important people are called big wigs. In the 18th century when many men wore wigs, the most important men wore the biggest wigs. Anyone ‘beyond the pale’ was seen as savage and dangerous. In the 14th and 15th centuries the English king ruled Dublin and the surrounding area known as the pale. Originally a pale was an area under the authority of a certain official. So if you made a bee line for something you went straight for it. In the past people believed that bees flew in a straight line to their hive. Some added a loaf to a batch of a dozen to be above suspicion. It is said to come from the days when bakers were severely punished for baking underweight loaves. In Psalm 17:8 the writer asks God ‘keep me as the apple of your eye’. In Genesis Cain murdered his brother Abel. Like many phrases in the English language this one come from the Bible. Achilles was eventually killed when an arrow hit his heel. Since her hand covered this part of his body the water did not touch it and so it remained vulnerable. However Thetis held Achilles by his heel. Anyone who was immersed in the river became invulnerable. In Greek mythology Thetis dipped her son in the mythical River Styx. Unfortunately it is very often impossible to say for certain where an old expression comes from. I should point out that this list of old sayings gives their most likely origin. SOME OLD EXPRESSIONS AND WHERE THEY COME FROM

First you take the cow to the killing floor song