Nuts - Wordsmith.org

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Why does the nursery song have it that, "here we go gathering nuts in May?" Most trees don't fruit until September or October.

uh, what nursery song would that be?

Written antipodeally?

From the Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, by Robert Hendrickson:

�Since there are no nuts to be gathered in May, the old children�s song with the words, �Here we go gathering nuts in May� seems to make no sense � and indeed, it may have been intended as a nonsense song. But �the nuts� in the phrase has been explained as being �knots� of May, that is, bunches of flowers. In Elizabethan England, Queen Elizabeth herself gathered knots of May in the meadows, one author tells us, and this is a plausible explanation even though there are no recorded quotations supporting the use of knots for �flowers,� except possibly the English knot garden of herbs.�

Queen Elizabeth herself gathered knots of May in the meadows, one author tells us

The May tree is the white (or pink) blossomed hawthorn tree and since its thorns are long, plentiful and painful and its twigs are tough to break off, Good Queen Bess displayed great fortitude in gathering her 'knots'. I reckon she had someone do it for her with a good pair of secateurs.

had to look that one up, dixbey. I thought it was a bit of a non-secateur...

He said with a scythe.

Oh! More cutting remarks on this thread! Shear delight!

scissor reader

Bingley

Sordid.

More examples of our rapier wit

D'ye wanna be cut in on the deal, ASp??

Harrumph�. The most unkindest cut of all.

Hmm! People sure get edgy around here!

I'd love to stay and dissect this problem, but I've gotta split. My buddy Lance Cleaver is waiting for me . . .

Oh, sure! Cut and run.

all of this is giving me a splitting headache...

aks and you shall receive...

Worst pun in ages, cleft for me...

Treble or bass?

Palate ...

how about the rock of ages? (does any one know where that is? i saw a book as a child, that had 'famous places', (all of them were in england, of course,)and one was an illustration of the rock of ages, cleft for me, where the author of the hymn hid out a heavy rainstorm!

I think that was what shanks was referring to..

WHY ARE WE WHISPERING?

Palate...

Is that 'tastes good 'n plenty' or 'good 'n plenty taste'.

In Somerset in England, is an area known as Burrington Combe. It is in the vicinity of the Mendip Heights (hills, really) and the Cheddar Gorge. It is here that Toplady received the inspiration for his hymn.

How can a him be named Top Lady??

The Revered Augustus Montague Toplady, the fiercly Calvinist yet Anglican author of "Rock of Ages", was named Toplady because his father, Major Richard Toplady, who was killed at the seige of Carthagena, was named Toplady. It worked that way in England, then.

S'funny how things strike people. Cheddar inspired Toplady to write a hymn despite being named as a her. When I was there in December last year, I distinctly remember being inspired towards a pint. And, having succumbed to that inspiration, to repeat the experience to be sure that it really was an inspiration rather than just a whim. It wasn't. If I'd stayed, I'd have become a Mendipsomaniac. Tough cheese, I say!

a him be named Top Lady

The lady kneads the bread and the lord guards it. That these roles have generally become sex-linked does not preclude the notion that a male can be a lady.

...a male can be a lady...

But only if he's on top.

on top

Well, duh! It's awful hard to knead bread from below. Ya gots ta lean down and put yer weight into it.

Ack!

If you need the bread badly enoough, you'll do most anything!

If you need the bread badly enoough

Is there a low-carb alternative?

Dunno about no Topladys, but here in the US as opposed to in Nippon a fair lady is called a Zee.

Dat's un(o) for the record books.

Ah, you must be one of the Nisei ... and, G, there's 350 new ones out there!