Who Put The Butter In Butterfly?
... And other Fearless Investigations into Our Illogical Language
Clichés and Other Words
to the Wise
Why Is Mincing Around a Subject Called Beating Around the Bush?
Medieval man may not have had the thrill of flinging Frisbees, but they had a worthy counterpart, the challenging sport of batfowling. A rare nocturnal sport, batfowling consisted of going into a forest or shrub-laden area and beating birds senseless with a bat.
Batfowlers sought sleeping birds for their prey, but being true sportsmen, they didn't want to kill a defenseless bird. So before whacking it with the bat, they were kind enough to wake the bird up first, by stunning it with a harsh light, rendering the bird blind and temporarily helpless. "Sensitive" batfowlers caught the birds in nets rather than using the Darryl Strawberry approach.
Sometimes, though, the birds proved to be uncooperative, selfishly sleeping in bushes where they were invisible, instead of marching forward and offering themselves as ritual sacrifices. So bat ... read full excerpt from Who Put The Butter In Butterfly? ebook
