Saturday, June 6, 2009

A rainy day circa 1580

I read this in Moll Flanders:

...I took care to lay up as much money as I could for a wet day...

and went looking for the origin of the idiom "to save for a rainy day". I found it was from a play, The Bugbears, by John Jeffere/Jefferay/Jefferie (they can't agree on the spelling) but couldn't find how it was actually used. Here it is:

wold he have me kepe nothyng agaynst a raynye day?

Would he have me keep nothing against a rainy day?

You have got to love the spelling. My thanks to Google book search. Link to text (see page 26)

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