Poor As A Church Mouse

When the claim is made that someone is poor as a church mouse, it means they haven’t anything to spare.  It’s based on the fact that a church doesn’t have a cupboard or a pantry from which a mouse can steal away even the smallest food crumb.  The interesting fact about this idiom is that it isn’t just an idiom used in English although it’s been well-used in English over the years.

The author of a print ad placed in the Milwaukee Sentinel on November 26, 1957 was intended as a plea for donations to build the Milwaukee Boys’ Club described as a real club for a real boy.  The ad was referred to in fine print as “one of a series of weekly articles paid for by a member of the Club’s Board of Directors.”  The ad was titled, “As Poor As A Church Mouse” and began with this copy:

You must be an oldtimer if you can remember back when this expression was so common.  Those were the days before electricity, telephones, automobiles, radios, television and modern plumbing.

And indeed the author of that copy was correct.  The idiom wasn’t a recent one in the least.

The Pittsburgh Press printed a Letter to the Editor on March 29, 1935 that was written by Norvin Mack of 525 Sheridan Avenue in Pittsburgh. 

Norvin Mack wrote about the minimum government pay of $30 per month to soldiers along with free lodging, food, and medical care.  He stated that if a soldier had family — in other words, dependents — that the government would deduct $15 from his pay, match that amount, and send it along to his family.  To that end, the minimum pay was $45 per month.  He went on to extol the other virtues of being a soldier, and all this was to correct a story that had previously been published in the newspaper.

He was an outspoken sort, and included this paragraph in his letter.

As one who volunteered long before the draft was hardly thought of and who is now as poor as a church mouse I count it an honor to take my position with you on this momentous question.  I am supporting my family at common labor, not relief.  Plain selfishness urges me to welcome the immediate payment of the bonus but common sense forces the rejection of the plan.

It was in the Nashua (New Hampshire) Telegraph newspaper edition of April 16, 1912 that an article appeared discussing the move away from throwing rice at weddings and the move towards throwing confetti instead.  The sexton of a fashionable New York church was interviewed on the new tradition, and his opinion favored the switch.  He was quoted as saying:

“This confetti fashion is very welcome to us sextons.  When rice was used our churches were overrun with mice.  The saying “as poor as a church mouse” was then meaningless.  Why, in my church, where weddings are so popular, several hundreds of mice — fat chaps they were, too — found an ample food supply in the rice that was sprinkled over the brides.”

“Now that rice has been abandoned for paper confetti, these mice have all disappeared.  They were starved out.  They couldn’t live on paper.”

The title for the story was simply, “Poor As A Church Mouse:  Since Confetti Came Into Use, The Saying Has More Meaning Than At Former Times.”  How apt is that for a headline?

Episcopalian clergyman and American author Frederick William Shelton (1815 – 1881) wrote and published “Peeps From A Belfry: Volume 3” in 1856.  This volume opened with a short story titled, “The Seven Sleepers.”   In Shelton’s story, a clergyman by the name of Pettibones approaches Mr. Snapjohn, and after a very brief exchange, Mr. Snapjohn says:

Want money, I suppose.  I haven’t a cent, Sir — not a cent.  Gave five dollars the other day for church missions, don’t believe the heathen will ever see one cent of it.  It won’t do them any good, — not at all, Sir, not at all, so much money thrown into the sea.  I am tired and sick of such demands.  I’ve got nothing.  I tell you I’m as poor as a church mouse — I’m as poor as a church mouse.”

The saying appears in a number of publications throughout the 1700s and 1800s, and is found in other countries. In fact, in German poor as a church mouse is arm wie eine Kirchenmaus and it’s found in a Grimm’s Dutch-German dictionary published in 1719. And before that, it appears in “A Collection of English Proverbs” compiled by English naturalist John Ray (29 November 1627 – 17 January 1705) and published in 1670 (who up until 1670 spelled his name John Wray).

Now, it’s also a fact that Anglo-Welsh historian and writer James Howell (1594 – 1666) published a proverb collection in 1659 entitled, “Paramoigraphy” wherein the idiom was listed as “hungry as a churchmouse.”  That being said, Grimm did mention in his 1719 book that the idiom was from the Scottish proverb puir as a kirkmouse.  Oddly enough though, the French had a similar phrase:  gueux comme un rat d’église.

Although Idiomation was unable to find an earlier published version than that from 1659 with a reference to the German and Scottish versions of the idiom, it’s likely that the phrase has existed for as long as mice and churches have co-existed which is to say, for centuries.  That being said, Idiomation is confident in pegging this idiom to the early 1600s, allowing it to become part of the vernacular in England.

Where There’s Muck There’s Brass

The truth of the matter is that a person can make a lot of money from work that most people refuse to do because they think it’s beneath them, dirty and unpleasant.  So when someone says “where there’s muck there’s brass” you can be certain that he or she is talking about the upside of a job to which others only see downsides.  The saying is sometimes known as “where there’s muck there’s money.”

John Ray published his book “A Collection of English Proverbs” in 1678 and included this similar proverb among the proverbs:

Muck and money go together.

That being said, the Dictionary of European Proverbs by Emmanuel Strauss identifies the date for this English proverb “Where there’s muck there’s money” to 1476.

The word muck dates back to the 13th century and is from the Germanic muk — also written as meuk — meaning “soft” which comes from the Old Norse words myki and mykr, meaning “cow dung.”   These trace back to the Latin word mūcus meaning … well you know what that means. 

So it is a well-established fact that muck has referred to the less desirable natural functions of humans and animals for centuries.

The word brass is from the Old English word “bræs” that refers to an alloy of copper and tin (now bronze) and that is an alloy of two parts copper and one part zine in modern times. Although it’s a mystery word with no known cognates beyond English, it seems to be related to the Old Frisian word “bres” meaning copper and the old Middle Low German word “bras” meaning metal. 

The word brass came to mean copper coins collectively in 1599 — and money in general in 1601 — and was a popular expression especially in the north of England.

The phrase “where there’s much there’s brass” came into its own around this time and helped spread the popularity of the word “brass” as slang for money.  The brass/money association came about because of the association between the colour of gold coins and the value of brass as a scrap metal at the time. 

It has remained a recognized slang term for money and in 1984 when the one pound coin was introduced during the Margaret Thatcher administration in the UK, that particular coin became know as the Brass Maggie.

On a completely different note, the Isle of Muck is a picturesque island just off the coast of Scotland that boasts a population of 34 people.

The Early Bird Catches The Worm

The saying is found in John Ray’s “A Collection of English Proverbs” published in 1670:  “The early bird catcheth the worm.”  Because the title of John Ray’s book indicates that this was considered a proverb  in the 17th century, its history goes back even further.

The saying is a translation from the French: “L’avenir appartient à ceux qui se lèvent tôt.”  Loosely translated, the saying is: “The future belongs to those who rise early.”

This saying is a translation of the German saying :  “Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund.”  Loosely translated, the saying is: “The morning hours have gold in their mouths.”

This saying is a translation of the Latin saying, “Aurora musis amica est.”  Loosely translated, the saying is:  “Dawn is a friend of the muses.”

Although it is impossible to identify who first spoke the Latin version of “the early bird catches the worm” it is known that the Dutch theologian, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (1466 – 1536) used this phrase in his book “De Ratione Studii Epistola” published in 1513.