Origins

You Can't Get Sicker than Dead

by John Collins

Waves of rancid water lap hungrily against the pitted, crusty shore and the air, yellow-tinged with a sulfurous smell, seems to keen softly with quiet, distant screams. The river—Styx, of course—moves sluggishly, empty and lifeless but for a lone ferry bearing a solitary boatman—Charon, of course. His pose and demeanor are rather stereotypical: cowled skull bowed so that the bony face is just out of sight; one skeletal hand peeking white knuckles out of the black robe, holding a slime-encrusted oar, the other arm extended, sepulchral finger beckoning ... beckoning ... pulling you by your very soul to board the craft, to step over the threshold from life into ....

(Suddenly, a hidden orchestra crescendos into a familiar tune; Charon straightens up, whips back his cowl, and, with a voice like every lounge lizard ever born, sings words to the tune of the "The Love Boat" theme...)

Death,
Exciting and new,
Lurch aboard,
We're embalming you ...

Death
Life's final reward,
It's an open pit,
On a fiery shore ...

Why are we so fascinated with death, anyway? We gobble it up on the page and on screen, bungee jump to invite it, build religions to avoid it, exhort science to abolish it, and create elaborate rituals to commemorate it. And, of course, we riddle our language with it: we write to deadlines, race to dead heats (and often finish dead last), catch people dead to rights, work the graveyard shift, name our kids "Mortimer". We're obsessed, I tell you.

Well, far be it from me to buck a trend, so this issue's Origins feeds the morbid flame and explores the real meaning behind some of the common death-related phrases that seem to plague our speech.

We'll start with one of my favorites, "kick the bucket". (It's one of my favourites for two reasons: the origin is fairly gruesome, and it featured largely in a Bugs Bunny cartoon ["The rabbit kicked the bucket, the bucket kicked the rabbit ...."].) Picture, if you will, a barn, dark inside, with the smell of musty hay and unwashed animals. Overhead are large horizontal beams, "bucket beams", actually, the name derived from the French buquet, meaning balance. Suddenly, the darkness and silence are pierced by light from the opening door and the squeals of an ill-fated piggy—it's Farmer Brown and Mildred, the Sow Who Would be Lunch! Poor Mildred, trussed up like a ... well, like a pig about to be slaughtered, is flung upside-down over the bucket beam, hanging by a rear leg, the other kicking piggily, and the stoic Farmer Brown does that razor thing he does so well. As he's leaving the barn, the foul deed done, he hears a knocking from behind. He turns and looks through the slanting beams of light and the hay motes dancing within to the recently deceased Mildred. It seems that, in her post-mortem spasms, she kicked the bucket (beam). Farmer Brown chuckles softly to himself and leaves the barn, closing the door behind him. That'll do, pig, he thinks. That'll do.

We'll leave Brown's Farm of Death now, though that raises another interesting death-related saying: "bought the farm". In common parlance, if someone's "bought the farm", they've died. But is farming so cruel a business that one would die from it? Actually, this saying originated in the trenches of war, where a fresh-faced young doughboy (in between bouts of murdering his fellow men) would wistfully dream of returning home after the war and buying up those fifty prime acres just down the road from dad, marrying up with his best girl, and raising a whole brood of little pig-slaughtering farmers. He'd tell this dream to his doughbuddy in the trench, stand up to shoot another of the God-hating enemy, and get his head summarily shot off. His buddy, with an ironic twist to his slightly mad grin, would flick pieces of his erstwhile friend from his shoulder and state, "Well, I guess he finally bought that farm".

Actually, referring to soldiers as murderers is probably not fair. After all, they are actually being paid to kill people, so they should more properly be referred to as "assassins". Or, as they were known in Hindi, "hashishim", since assassins of old used hashish to whip themselves into a killing frenzy. But I digress; there's still another wartime death origin to cover before we're through: "had the biscuit". Joining our friends in the trenches once more, we pan slowly over the mud-covered doughpeople and come to rest upon the first aid tent, where the wounded (or pieces of them, anyway) are being brought and laid to rest on thin, hard, brown mattresses known affectionately as ... biscuits! If one expires in that position, one has, of course, "had the biscuit", so the expression is not, as you might have thought, related to anyone’s really bad cooking.

Well, that’s it for another installment of Origins, and I have a boat to catch (now, where did I put that sunscreen?). Until next time, say what you think, but think about what you say.