of someone w ho has narrowly escaped disaster ‘saving his bacon’ we get

the full force o f it only by recalling how important once was the bacon

preserved in the house for the family’s food through the winter. Eating

is in the background too in that most useful way of expressing doubt

about the literal truth of what someone has said: ‘You must take it w ith

a pinch o f salt. ’ The implication is that the thing cannot stand on its own

without qualification. The degrees of obviousness in such sayings vary

greatly. To ‘save one’s face’, meaning to protect one’s reputation, may

be obvious enough, as is the expression for a rebuff, ‘to shut the door in someone’s face’, but to ‘face the music’, meaning to face up to the dire

consequences o f one’s mistakes, is not at all obvious. It has been suggested

that the basis of the saying was the fact that an officer in the army who

was guilty of some offence had to face the drums when the charges were

formally put to him. We have no such explanation for the seemingly

illogical saying ‘He’ll laugh on the other side of his face’, meaning ‘His rejoicing will be turned to disappointment.’

It will be noticed that many traditional sayings testify to the wisdom

acquired through experience. They warn us against rash optimism ( ‘One

swallow does not make a summ er’), against being deceived by outward appearances (‘All that glisters is not gold’), against overvaluing seeming

promise ( ‘All her swans are geese’), against wanting too much of life

(‘She thinks she can have her cake and eat it’), and against thinking we

can escape the consequences of our own mistakes ( ‘He has made his bed

and he must lie on it’). W hen we shrug our shoulders over some failed

enterprise we quote (or misquote) Robert Burns:

The best laid schemes [not ‘plans’] o’ mice an’ men

Gang aft a-gley.

So familiar is the quotation that it is only necessary to mention ‘mice and m en’ together to make the point.

It is because of the homely wisdom and the moral guidance enshrined in such sayings that literary figures (and after-dinner speech-makers) can

have fun in turning them upside down. G. K. Chesterton insisted that ‘If

a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.’ And, for one person, sad

experience turned the comforting saying ‘As one door closes, another opens’ into ‘As one door closes, another shuts.’

The Penguin Guide to Plain English