![]() – Fansy: By Cryst, as mery as a Marche hare. – Courtly Abusyon: What, Fansy, my frende! howe doste thou fare? (from The poetical works of John Skelton, edited by Alexander Dyce – London, 1843) ♦ in Magnyfycence, a goodly interlude and a mery (before 1504?), the image is positive: The English poet John Skelton (circa 1460-1529) used the simile on several occasions: ![]() Huge Golyas, with their wordis grete,Ĭresced worme and the water ffrog. (from Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England, edited by William Carew Hazlitt – London, 1864) The first recorded occurrence of the association of madness with March hare is from Colyn Blowbols Testament, an anonymous poem composed around 1500 the poet describes persons “ in dronkenesse” who become quarrelsome (Gogmagog was the greatest of the British giants): In A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, According to the Most Polite Mode and Method Now Used at Court, and in the Best Companies of England (London, 1738), the Irish satirist, poet and Anglican cleric Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) mentioned the proverb butter is mad twice a year, i.e., once in summertime in very hot weather, when it is too thin and fluid, and once in winter in very cold weather, when it is too hard and difficult to spread. – ( as) mad as May butter (unsalted butter preserved in the month of May and sometimes used medicinally). Other phrases which existed or still exist include: Mad angry – as mad as a bear with a sore lug – a hare – a hedge – a March hare – a piper – a pown hand – a tup – a wasp – wheelbarrows: very angry. The English Dialect Dictionary (Oxford, 1905), edited by the English philologist Joseph Wright (1855-1930), recorded several similes, not all of them using names of animals: In Scotland it is said of a young woman who incontinently seeks the society of men that she “rins like a blind tup-in-the-wind.” In Notes and Queries (London) of 1 st February 1902, under the heading As mad as a tup, a certain J. “He’s as mad as a tup in a halter.” A ram with a rope around its neck is anything but contented and comfortable-he is restive in the extreme, and although not really insane he has become the synonym for a maniac. In Archaic words, phrases, etc., of Montgomeryshire (London, 1876), Rev. The noun buck has been used to denote the male of several animals, in particular of the goat and of the fallow deer, but also of the rabbit and of the hare.Īnother phrase associating a male animal with frenzy was ( as) mad as a tup ( tup denoting a ram). It would make a man mad as a Bucke to be so bought Your cake here is warme within: you stand here in the ![]() You would say so Master, if your garments There is something in the winde, that we can. For example, in The Comedie of Errors (around 1594), the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) used the phrase ( as) mad as a buck ( bought and sold means betrayed): Phrases associating animals with madness have long existed. The vampire rabbit – Newcastle upon Tyne (Northumberland)
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