{"id":8577,"date":"2018-05-25T08:11:28","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T08:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=8577"},"modified":"2018-05-25T10:03:11","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T10:03:11","slug":"a-fool-and-his-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=8577","title":{"rendered":"A fool and his money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Q: Pictured below are 2 men: Winston Churchill, who some would argue was the greatest UK Prime Minister ever; and Piers Morgan, a man of no discernible talent apart from sycophancy to those on the extreme right wing of politics<\/a>. What links them?<\/p>\n

\"Winston<\/p>\n

A: A cigar butt.<\/p>\n

One of Churchill’s discarded cigar butts, to be precise.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Piers Morgan bought said cigar butt at auction, as reported by the Shropshire Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Piers (affectionately renamed Piers Moron by Private Eye. Ed.<\/em>) was so pleased with his purchase, he also tweeted<\/a> about it.<\/p>\n

\"Tweet<\/p>\n

Auctioneers Travanion & Dean<\/a> of Whitchurch in Shropshire had been expecting the half-smoked historical artefact to sell for about £1,000.<\/p>\n

Piers paid £2,600 for it.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, the final bill would have been rather more than that once the auctioneers’ commission had been added.<\/p>\n

He may have considered his action patriotic, but Piers’ action reminded your ‘umble scribe of an old adage, i.e. a fool and his money are soon parted<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That bit of folksy wisdom in turn set me researching its origins.<\/p>\n

The King James version of the Bible published in 1604 has something similar to this saying in Proverbs 21:20<\/a>, which states:<\/p>\n

There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, for a rendition slightly closer to the wording in question, one has to look at 1573’s Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie<\/em> by Thomas Tusser, reproduced below:<\/p>\n

A foole & his money,
\nbe soone at debate:
\nwhich after with sorow,
\nrepents him to late.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The form of words commonly used in the present proverb were first just over a decade after Tusser. In 1587 Dr. John Bridges writes the sentence below in Defence of the Government of the Church of England<\/em>:<\/p>\n

If they pay a penie or two pence more for the reddinesse of them..let them looke to that, a foole and his money is soone parted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Q: Pictured below are 2 men: Winston Churchill, who some would argue was the greatest UK Prime Minister ever; and Piers Morgan, a man of no discernible talent apart from sycophancy to those on the extreme right wing of politics. What links them? A: A cigar butt. One of Churchill’s discarded cigar butts, to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,32,15,34],"tags":[36,16,22,33,20],"class_list":["post-8577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-media","category-politics","category-social-media","tag-comment","tag-english-usage","tag-language","tag-media-2","tag-politics-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8577"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8620,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8577\/revisions\/8620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}