Say What? If wishes were horses.../if ifs and ands were pots and pans...
People are always ready to wish for what can't be - and there's always someone ready to metaphorically shoot them down. Today's 'say what?' looks at two old proverbs pointing out that merely wishing never you got anywhere. Our fannish examples come courtesy of characters from Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
The first of our two sayings, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride is the older of the two and has an ancestry going back to the sixteenth century, with the saying if wishes were thrushes, then beggars would eat birds.
A version using 'poor men' instead of 'beggars' dates to some time before 1628. The earliest version of this saying recognisable as the modern version comes from John Ray's Collection of English Proverbs in 1670.
"Gods but my feet are killing me, Sarge," Nobby said.
"Well, the faster you put one foot in front of the other, the faster you'll get off them, Nobby. It's no use moaning. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."
"No, they wouldn't," Nobby muttered, "because I'd steal their bloody horse."
If ifs and ands were pots and pans there'd be no work for tinkers (or tinkers' hands) has a later development, in that it's not 'officially' seen until the mid-nineteenth century. Interestingly, as I wandered the internet I found people asserting that this saying goes together with our previous saying as an 'old Scottish poem'. While the two sayings are sometimes conjoined, they appear to have developed separately.
While we're discussing this saying, what exactly is a tinker anyway? A tinker was an itinerant tinsmith, and the word has an interesting history in its own right. Part of the tinker's craft involved making a 'dam' to support the solder that they used to repair people's pots and pans, and the dam would then be discarded. The saying 'Not worth a tinker's damn', meaning that something is worthless, very possibly comes out of a play on words on that aspect of their craft. Tinkers were wanderers. In many places and times, wandering people are not well-regarded and their curses and insults are considered to have little value or force.
Readers familiar with Discworld will note my temerity in not letting Granny Weatherwax have the last word.
Agnes sighed over the sink of dirty dishes. "Do you ever wish that magic was a little more practical, Granny?"
Granny Weatherwax frowned."You know what they say, Agnes, if ifs and ands were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers."
"Yes, but we're witches."
"Witches got no call to be taking a tinker's bread away from them," Granny said.
If she heard Agnes say under her breath, "If there were any itinerant dish washers wandering the Ramtops, then I'd give them all the bread they could eat," she chose to ignore it.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/if-wishes-were-horses-beggers-would-ride.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_wishes_were_horses,_beggars_would_ride
http://www.answers.com/topic/if-ifs-and-ands-were-pots-and-pans-there-d-be-no-work-for-tinkers-hands
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095957542
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker
The first of our two sayings, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride is the older of the two and has an ancestry going back to the sixteenth century, with the saying if wishes were thrushes, then beggars would eat birds.
A version using 'poor men' instead of 'beggars' dates to some time before 1628. The earliest version of this saying recognisable as the modern version comes from John Ray's Collection of English Proverbs in 1670.
"Gods but my feet are killing me, Sarge," Nobby said.
"Well, the faster you put one foot in front of the other, the faster you'll get off them, Nobby. It's no use moaning. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."
"No, they wouldn't," Nobby muttered, "because I'd steal their bloody horse."
If ifs and ands were pots and pans there'd be no work for tinkers (or tinkers' hands) has a later development, in that it's not 'officially' seen until the mid-nineteenth century. Interestingly, as I wandered the internet I found people asserting that this saying goes together with our previous saying as an 'old Scottish poem'. While the two sayings are sometimes conjoined, they appear to have developed separately.
While we're discussing this saying, what exactly is a tinker anyway? A tinker was an itinerant tinsmith, and the word has an interesting history in its own right. Part of the tinker's craft involved making a 'dam' to support the solder that they used to repair people's pots and pans, and the dam would then be discarded. The saying 'Not worth a tinker's damn', meaning that something is worthless, very possibly comes out of a play on words on that aspect of their craft. Tinkers were wanderers. In many places and times, wandering people are not well-regarded and their curses and insults are considered to have little value or force.
Readers familiar with Discworld will note my temerity in not letting Granny Weatherwax have the last word.
Agnes sighed over the sink of dirty dishes. "Do you ever wish that magic was a little more practical, Granny?"
Granny Weatherwax frowned."You know what they say, Agnes, if ifs and ands were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers."
"Yes, but we're witches."
"Witches got no call to be taking a tinker's bread away from them," Granny said.
If she heard Agnes say under her breath, "If there were any itinerant dish washers wandering the Ramtops, then I'd give them all the bread they could eat," she chose to ignore it.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/if-wishes-were-horses-beggers-would-ride.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_wishes_were_horses,_beggars_would_ride
http://www.answers.com/topic/if-ifs-and-ands-were-pots-and-pans-there-d-be-no-work-for-tinkers-hands
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095957542
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker