Posted on 10/24/2007 8:17:42 PM PDT by Mo1
nest
I was and am a country girl. Born and raised in a neighborhood with all boys and I was one of them for a few years. We were adventurers and must have been conservationists before our time.
OK, but now you understand where the old saying comes from.
What old saying?
After Horatio Nelson had defeated Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile in Egypt in 1798, three armies, one from Bombay, and two British (one of which included Arthur Wellesley, the future first Duke of Wellington), marched into Mysore in 1799 and besieged the capital Srirangapatnam in the Fourth Mysore War.
There were over 26,000 soldiers of the British East India Company comprising about 4000 Europeans and the rest Indians. A column was supplied by the Nizam of Hyderabad consisting of ten battalions and over 16,000 cavalry, and many soldiers were sent by the Marathas.
Thus the soldiers in the British force numbered over 50,000 soldiers whereas Tippu Sultan had only about 30,000 soldiers. The British broke through the city walls, and Tippu Sultan died defending his capital on May 4, 1799.
Interesting part of the article is the advanced rockets used by the Indians in the battle of 1798.
“Teaching one’s grandmother to suck eggs”
Never heard it till today.
You aren’t in trouble.
I am relieved :)
Sometimes I am not aware that the English and Americans have different saysing but this one several hundred years old.
“These have the same kind of absurd image as the version you quote, which has survived them all. It was first recorded in 1707 in a translation by John Stevens of the collected comedies of the Spanish playwright Quevedo: “You would have me teach my Grandame to suck Eggs”. Another early example, whimsically inverted, is in Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, published in 1749: “I remember my old schoolmaster, who was a prodigious great scholar, used often to say, Polly matete cry town is my daskalon. The English of which, he told us, was, That a child may sometimes teach his grandmother to suck eggs”.
But the idea is very much older. There was a classical proverb A swine to teach Minerva, which was translated by Nichola Udall in 1542 as to teach our dame to spin, something any married woman of the period would know very well how to do. And there are other examples of sayings designed to check the tendency of young people to give unwanted advice to their elders and betters.
I thought you would like a colorful picture on this dull Sunday even though it is a bit of propaganda art.
“Go suck an egg” was an insult around these parts long ago and far away.
Google brief...
“DON’T TRY TO TEACH YOUR GRANDMA TO SUCK EGGS - I don’t think anyone knows exactly how this phrase got started. On a farm, an egg-sucking dog (a dog that steals eggs and eats them) is bad. And I think that during one discussion of the phrase, it was said that maybe grandma didn’t have teeth so she sucked soft boiled eggs. Anyway, here’s what Charles Earle *** says in “Hog on Ice” (Harper & Row, New York, 1948). “To teach one’s grandmother to suck eggs - To offer needless assistance; to waste one’s efforts upon futile matters; especially, to offer advice to an expert. This particular expression is well over two hundred years old; it is just a variation of an older theme that was absurd enough to appeal to the popular fancy. One of the earliest of these is given in Udall’s translation of ‘Apophthegmes (1542) from the works of Erasmus. It reads: ‘A swyne to teach Minerua, was a prouerbe, for which we sai: Englyshe to teach our dame to spyne.’” That last bit was about an expression, don’t try to teach a dame to spin.”
Still looking
Lol — There are many explanations but they generally all mean the same thing. My expanation is nearer to the real thing rather than the farm and dog nonsense.
The whole point of my post:
“I am sure I will find a page showing how to teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”
Was the teaching of common simple tasks to ones far wiser.
Gastronaut extract
Teaching Grandmothers to Suck Eggs
I love old ladies. I’ve rarely met a bad one. In fact, if I didn’t relish the prospect of being a pipe-smoking, Boo Radleyesque, grumpy, slightly stinky old man quite so much, I would like to have been one when I grow up. One thing has always troubled me, though: the idea that you can’t teach them (or, specifically, grandmothers) to suck eggs.
|
This is one of a family of wide-ranging culinary assumptions such as ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ and ‘A watched pot never boils’. These really ought to be proven before they are allowed to become aphorisms (I presume there’s an aphorism council that decides such things), so I’ve taken my favourite one to test. The aphorism ‘You can’t teach a grandmother to suck eggs’ is generally used to imply that what you are saying is obvious, that you’re telling someone a fact that they already know. It works on the assumption that our elderfolk are wise and sage about everything. Now, I love a granny as much as the next man, but to grant them omniscience is pushing it a bit. So I decided to test the theory in an unbiased, strictly controlled study. First, I needed to become an expert at egg-sucking, then I needed to get me some grandmothers (a quorum of 20, say) and try teaching them. |
So I decided to test the theory in an unbiased, strictly-controlled study. First, I needed to become an expert at egg-sucking, then I needed to get me some grandmothers (a quorum of 20, say) and try teaching them.
The body of literature on egg-sucking is small. So small that I couldn’t find any. I bet there’s a church pamphlet on creating Easter displays that contains everything you need to know, but luckily in its absence there is a strong word-of-mouth history, which reveals that egg-sucking is mainly used to remove the insides of eggs so that you can preserve the shells for painting, with brightly decorated eggs traditionally used at Easter. Eggs are, of course a potent symbol of new life in lots of religions, especially Pagan, Christian and Jewish.
So how do you suck an egg? I had to ask…well…a grandmother. Grandma Gates, my long-suffering Mum and grandmother to my daughter Daisy, has sucked eggs in the past - not for any religious occasion, but because she wanted to preserve some wild bird’s eggs (we’ll skip lightly over the legality of this as it was some time ago) and was taught by my grandfather, Wilfred. The technique is pretty obvious: take your egg and using a needle or thin point of a knife, make a small hole in the top and bottom. Then suck the egg out.
|
I resolved to become an expert, so I sat down with half a dozen eggs and gave it a try. It quickly became apparent that if you use unwashed eggs donated by your friend’s chickens you are apt to get a shitty mouth. I washed the second egg but the process was still disgusting. Having a mouthful of cold, raw egg made me want to vomit. It also struck me that raw eggs aren’t the best things to ask people to eat, especially the old and, quite possibly, infirm. I put this to my mum. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I think we actually blew the eggs rather than sucked.’ Thanks, Mum. |
After extensive experimentation, I ascertained the following:
| 1. |
Take the eggs out of the fridge to let them warm a little, making the insides less viscous and more manageable. |
| 2. |
Use a pin to make the hole and then widen it with the point of a knife. |
| 3. | Don’t make too small a hole otherwise the pressure of the exiting egg will cause more damage, collapsing your egg. |
| 4. | I may be particularly malcoordinated, but one third of the eggs cracked too much to be useable. |
It took me five eggs to get it right. Now I needed some grandmas. I originally had visions of going to a retirement home and gathering a group of willing, lovely ladies to teach. I realized, however, that this might be seen as patronizing – who would ever agree to that? So I got hold of the phone numbers of 18 grandmas through friends and family, and called them up. Not quite my quorum of 20, but near enough.
Out of my 18 grandmas, seven of them politely declined to take part, and hence couldn’t, indeed, be taught to suck eggs. One was just too talkative and managed with devilish skill to change the subject, so I never did get to the teaching. One was my mum, who taught me in the first place, and therefore couldn’t be taught herself. This left nine grandmas, eight of whom claimed that they already knew how to suck eggs. There was, however, one wonderful lady, a friend of my mum’s, who thought the whole thing hilarious, and who I managed to teach successfully, albeit over the phone, so I can’t guarantee that she pulled it off to complete satisfaction.
|
So, from this I concluded that on the whole the idiom is true – you can’t teach all grandmas to suck eggs. You can, however, teach one grandma to suck eggs, and if I found one, there might be others. But the idiom is one of those absolutist conceits – if even one grandmother can be taught, the whole thing goes out of the window and hence the aphorism is proved false and should be struck from the aphorism register immediately. But I won’t stop playing with old ladies. If you know any grandmas who are in the dark about the egg-sucking thing, please send them to me complete with a box of half a dozen free-rangers, and we can suck some eggs and maybe drink some tea. |
Incidentally
In 2003 Alice Shirrell Kaswell solved the age-old problem ‘Which came first – the chicken or the egg’ once and for all. She mailed an egg and a live chicken in separate packages from Cambridge. Massachusetts to New York City, following the US postal service’s advice on the mailability of adult chickens. The chicken arrived within 48hours 51mins, followed by the egg 11hours 6mins later. She concluded that the chicken came first, and the egg second. Her research was published in the brilliant Annals of Improbable Research (www.improb.com) who also published the reply of an outraged reader.
Now, if he had some really old grannies who were country girls long before the Endangered Species Act, who had brothers who had coaxed them into sucking or blowing the innards of their stolen bird´s eggs. I had to put those two words in as it would sound bad.
Then he would have nothing to teach them.
After all teaching your grandmother to spin would not apply to these grandmothers either.
But no doubt their great, great, great, grandmothers would have certainly had that knowledge.
I forgot to mention I got that off Google UK.
Can’t do an in-depth study of it today because on the other computer I’m getting ready for art class to begin on Tuesday night.
Oh wait, I forgot..........you wouldn't take that bet based on your very own words......
And doh!
I also forgot (and appears you have also) that your team actually lost the game!
Your portion of crow awaits, and the longer you wait, the colder it gets...........
I think we have beaten it to death but it was fun doing the research.
You don’t know me. My curiosity is overwhelming. If I weren’t busy, I’d research the thing till knowing it inside out even if it took all day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.