knotty panda
Pearl Knotting & Wire Expert
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2007
- Messages
- 1,766
As you well know, I have no life. I should be listening to the radio on my evening drive home -- but NOOOOO! I have to be listening to the voices in my head, who are "Happy as a Clam!"
Overanalyzing, as I am prone to do, I couldn't wait to get home to discover just where that saying originated. How does one know when a clam is happy? Do they giggle like little girl clams? Are they cognizant of things like steamers? Well!
Following is an explanation of the saying and a Clam Sonnet.
"The saying is very definitely American, hardly known elsewhere. The fact is, we?ve lost its second half, which makes everything clear. The full expression is happy as a clam at high tide or happy as a clam at high water. Clam digging has to be done at low tide, when you stand a chance of finding them and extracting them. At high water, clams are comfortably covered in water and so able to feed, comparatively at ease and free of the risk that some hunter will rip them untimely from their sandy berths. I guess that?s a good enough definition of happy.
John G Saxe put it better, or at any rate more poetically, in his Sonnet to a Clam, in the late 1840s:
Inglorious friend! most confident I am
Thy life is one of very little ease;
Albeit men mock thee with their similes,
And prate of being ?happy as a clam!?
What though thy shell protects thy fragile head
From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea?
Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee,
While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed,
And bear thee off, ? as foemen take their spoil,
Far from thy friends and family to roam;
Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home,
To meet destruction in a foreign broil!
Though thou art tender, yet thy humble bard
Declares, 0 clam! thy case is shocking hard!"
I'm not so happy as a clam now. The poor little dears.
Overanalyzing, as I am prone to do, I couldn't wait to get home to discover just where that saying originated. How does one know when a clam is happy? Do they giggle like little girl clams? Are they cognizant of things like steamers? Well!
Following is an explanation of the saying and a Clam Sonnet.
"The saying is very definitely American, hardly known elsewhere. The fact is, we?ve lost its second half, which makes everything clear. The full expression is happy as a clam at high tide or happy as a clam at high water. Clam digging has to be done at low tide, when you stand a chance of finding them and extracting them. At high water, clams are comfortably covered in water and so able to feed, comparatively at ease and free of the risk that some hunter will rip them untimely from their sandy berths. I guess that?s a good enough definition of happy.
John G Saxe put it better, or at any rate more poetically, in his Sonnet to a Clam, in the late 1840s:
Inglorious friend! most confident I am
Thy life is one of very little ease;
Albeit men mock thee with their similes,
And prate of being ?happy as a clam!?
What though thy shell protects thy fragile head
From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea?
Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee,
While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed,
And bear thee off, ? as foemen take their spoil,
Far from thy friends and family to roam;
Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home,
To meet destruction in a foreign broil!
Though thou art tender, yet thy humble bard
Declares, 0 clam! thy case is shocking hard!"
I'm not so happy as a clam now. The poor little dears.
