"where the woodbine twineth" (was Re: ON BORROWED TIME (1939) -- from the Twilight Zone
Kolaga Xiuhtecuhtli
<mrit...@columbus.rr.com> wrote:
>Kolaga Xiuhtecuhtli wrote:
[but someone else wrote]
>>
>> >One of my favorite all time fantasies relating to death. Also contains a
>> >wonderful scene in which the wonderful Lionel Barrymore discusses his belief
>> >in the hereafter as a place where the woodbine twineth. This scene and the
>> >scene in Canterville Ghost where Laughton discusses "the piney woods" are
>> >amongst my personal favorites.
>>
>> I didn't understand what he meant by "the woodbine twineth".
>
>Is it maybe a Scripture thing?
I found the following:
For a number of years the death toll of this church has been
large. No doubt they have met "a Golden Sunset and rare
enjoying the sunny banks of Sweet Deliverance where the
woodbine twineth".
At http://www.bright.net/~gretna/gretnahistory.htm
I also find the following:
"Well, we’ve been beaten, beaten all to smash,
and now sir, we begin to feel the lash,
as wielded by a gigantic corporation
which runs the commonwealth and ruins the nation,
Our union lamp, friend John Siney, no longer shineth,
It’s gone up where the gentle woodbine twineth."
at http://members.aol.com/gilmartinj/chapter9.htm
It appears to a folk expression. These references date back to the
19th century but the phrase apparently appears in Thomas Pynchon's
_Gravity's_ _Rainbow_ and even in articles referring to the worst
of Nazism. I'm guessing that it means "the briar patch" sort of.
A place where things go when they are gone or else a place of safety.
>> The interesting thing about the movie is that it's about death but
>> it's not about religion (just barely not -- the last scene implies
>> what the audience hopes for). Grampa's attitude toward religion
>> is ambivalent. But if the storyteller lets too much religion
>> into his fable, then (s)he ends up having to toe the party line
>> of one sort or another.
---
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abfou
wrote:
>At http://www.bright.net/~gretna/gretnahistory.htm
>at http://members.aol.com/gilmartinj/chapter9.htm
__________________________________
James Fiske used the phrase at the 1869 Black Friday Congressional
hearings, referring to the enormous amount of money he lost in his
attempt to corner gold. When someone asked what he meant, he replied,
"Up the spout."
A 19th-century edition of _Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_
glosses it thus: "To the pawnbroker's, up the spout, where, in Quebec,
'on cottage walls the woodbine may be seen twining.'"
My guess is that it's a folk/religious expression, possibly a quote
from a hymn, that later became an ironic secular catchphrase.
Abfou