I was reading an ancient British mystery novel recently and came across the phrase “woe betide.” My eyebrows wiggled mischievously as I thought: “Now I haven’t seen or heard that expression in a coon’s age. Perhaps I should use it . . .”
Of course, I had to look it up in the dictionary (Oxford online)—finding this definition: “Used humorously to warn someone that they will be in trouble if they do a specified thing.” Methinks if one actually DOES use “woe betide” in a sentence, it would most certainly be humorous.
I decided to use the expression around friends and family who, very quickly, grew quite weary of it (maybe because I was speaking in a faux British accent which I erroneously thought I had “down pat?”)
To my friend: “Woe betide if you use canned yams to make a sweet potato casserole!”
To a female relative: “Woe betide to any man who tells their wife she talks too much!”
To the lady at the post office: “Woe betide to folks who come in here hoping to get out in a hurry!” I got the side eye on with that one.
And lastly to my fur baby sisters: “Woe betide to whichever one of you leaves another hairball in my tennis shoes!”
Well, after all of that, the idiom lost steam and I began to think about all the “sayings” from my grandma:
“Smoke follows beauty” she would say as she was raking and burning leaves while wiping smoke from her eyes.
“It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor one.” She didn’t follow this one because my grandpa, bless his heart, was obviously storing his riches in heaven.
“Age before beauty” she would say as she pushed you through the door first.
“If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ‘tail’ every time he hopped.” I had to clean that one up a bit.
“Don’t swallow watermelon seeds! They will grow in your stomach just like that woman over there” she would say as she pointed to an obviously pregnant lady.
“Bad luck to go in the house through front door and leave out through the back door.” She once lived in a mobile home that was so tiny that when you went in the front door you were already going out the back door.
“That old man with a sack on his back will come git you if you are bad, child!” Yes, I was often looking with fear down the road . . .both ways to be sure.
“If you eat the crust of your bread, your hair will grow curly.” The time she grew up in, having had seven children and living as the wife of a poor house painter, I’m sure she figured eating the crusts would help impede hunger just a little longer.
We’d ask her what time it was and she’d say, “Time for old dogs to die; ain’t you glad you’re a puppy?”
No matter how hot the day turned out, no man could sit at her supper table without a shirt. She said it was bad luck but in my humble opinion, I don’t want to see that much skin while I’m eating chicken and speckled butter beans.
Grandma loved to read the Grit magazine on the front porch in the summertime. If the “skeeters” and flies were too bothersome, she would take a paint can, drop an old rag inside it and set it on fire. The smoke, if it didn’t choke you, would keep pesky bugs away.
Mysteriously, she would say (under her breath while stirring a pot of ham and limas or chicken and pastry) that if my granddaddy kept bothering her, she was going to “put one of them black pills in his supper.” I will tell you this: I didn’t cross her.
She was a hoot most of the time. She had a hard life—some of it circumstances and some of it of her own making (like the most of us). But she liked to sing and dance around in the kitchen while cooking and she always let me eat raw biscuit dough.
What would we do without our southern grannies? My maternal grandma was not the usual kind, but she was fun, she loved my brother and I, and she had a fascinating outlook on life.
If you still have your granny, call her today and visit her soon. Don’t text her. You will one day miss her voice and long to hear her laughter.
And at some point during the month of May, use the term “woe betide