Why would someone be out of their "cotton picking" mind?

When did this saying arise - and why?

stales

Dear States: "cotton picking" is a pejorative, in that only
the lowest socical stratum got involved in picking cotton
by hand, which was incredibly tedious, backbreaking (because of constant bending over) and hot.

got this from WordOrigins:

Cotton-Picking

Believe it or not the adjective cotton-picking comes from Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes cartoons. He may not have been the first to use it, but he gets credit for first recorded use.

But the noun cotton-picker is older. It dates to around 1919 and refers to a contemptable person. Those who worked in the fields, usually blacks, were beneath notice. The racial overtones have mellowed over the years, but it is still a derogatory term.

Tennessee Ernie Ford was on American television form the med-fifies through the mid-sixties and often ended his show by saying to the audience, "Bless your little pea-pickin' hearts."

Yeah, you've got to give peas a chance.

Oh dear.

Well, Connie, they were given some prominence in 13th century England, where a famine in 1273 in Northern England reduced the whole population of the area to eat peas and nowt else for nearly three months. The Lord of the Manor, however, had a herb garden which had not failed, so his family and immediate retainers were able to relieve the tedium of such a uni-vegetative diet by adding thyme to the cooking pot.

The peasants heard about this, and, believing that the Lord of the Manor had penty of thyme on his lands, got the priest to utter the prayer in church one Sunday, in front of the Lord of the Manor and his family, "Grant us thyme in our peas, O Lord!"

Oh dear oh dear.

And he gave it to them, of course, since there's no present like the thyme.

Somewhat along the same lines, I heard a long time ago that the Italians are going to make the Leaning Tower of Pisa into a clocktower -- after all, what's the use in having an inclination if you haven't got the time?

Some company has come out with what amounts to pea pod chips. I think they dry the pods some way, and season them. They might be ground-up peas or pods re-formed into the pod shape; I don't really remember. But I do remember my local grocery store offering free samples. They have a consistency on a par with puffed corn (like baked Cheetos), and they taste...absolutely horrid.

Something else at the store stopped me in my tracks a couple of weeks ago. They now stock something called--I kid you not--"Healthy Hemp Sprouted Bread". Yes, it does have the plant in it.

How positively oxymoronic -- the more you eat the hungrier you get!

http://www.organicconsumers.org/organic/043003_hemp.cfm

Healthy Hemp Sprouted Bread

goes well with Stoned Soup...

I agree with you Jackie, they are just horrible. I can't imagine anybody eating them. The ones I tasted didn't even have the grace to be of the consistency of puffed corn...more like gyproc.

What is this?

this

one of them linguistic words, I think...

Oops, I guess it's not called the same in English. I think it's ??gypsum board??

It's that board you put up on the two-by-fours when you make walls. It has a chalk-like middle covered in heavy paper. You cover the joints and then paint it.

Plaster board, wall board of gypsum.

Very funny, etaoin.

OK, so you know what this tastes like, bel?

Also sheetrock or drywall.

Thanks for the link, Father Steve.

How positively oxymoronic -- the more you eat the hungrier you get!

That's not oxymoronic, TEd. That's moronic.

Wow - from slaving in the fields to petrophagy in less than 10 steps. Gotta love AWAD!!!

To add to the ideas on cotton picking; I noted a reference somewhere to cotton pickings; the leavings / lowest grade of the cotton crop. I imagine them to be the cotton equivalent of daggy wool.

Another potential source of the term praps?

stales

Praps.

BTW, the answer to Why? is because.

And he gave it to them, of course, since there's no present like the thyme.

You are correct, TEd - the Lord of the Manor was also a sage. (The fact that he was married to Lady Rosemary has nothing to do with the case.)

Re Leaning Tower clocktower -- after all, what's the use in having an inclination if you haven't got the time?

True. But will they have to set the clock ahead?

Time could be ticking against the tilt.

This would make it a Leaning Tock Clocktower.

Moral: When time is ticking against you, lean the other way.

A clock in such a position will, at the very least, put some sense into N.F.Simpson's One Way Pendulum


(EDIT At least, it could do - depends which way the clock is set into the otwer, ackershally)