To The Manure Borne -Uffish Pipsqueaks and Snooty Bores

The other day in one of my posted musings, so innocent yet piquant, I described a progressive icon as being To The Manor Born.

To the Manor Born suggests birthright and a wholesome patrimony, which in point of fact the cunning and smarmy bastard might lay claim to biological surety, but his manner speaks otherwise.

An Anonymous twerp suggested that I was stupid. My dear chap, we are all born ignorant, but it's the education that we have acquired that makes us stupid.

The Uffish Pipsqueak railed endlessly that " you (me) call yourself an English teacher and the right phrase is To the Manner Born." Not only, my adversary who goes nameless, am I charged with self-proclamation, but also a bad one at that.

The phrase, to the manner born, comes from Shakepeare's Hamlet.

HORATIO: Is it a custom?

HAMLET: Ay, marry, is't:
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.

President Obama is great example of to the manner born; He seems Presidential. Like he was born to be President. The same can be said of Charlton Heston as Moses, or Andy Jackson. Martin Sheen makes a good President on the Old West Wing.

People who go to Ireland for a visit often return with lilt and an armory of witticisms. It took weeks to cure my thirteen year old daughter Nora of calling everything she liked 'Brilliant.' My son Conor, on the hand, said 'Dang' all through Great Britain, Ireland and only recently exchanged that exclamation of delight, approval and approbation for WTF!.

To the Manor Born was said to be used sometime in mid-19th Century. Where and how, I do not know nor do I shive a git.

To the Manner Born and To the Manor Born have nice uses and are far more colorful and dainty than the application of the hackneyed "Snob, stuck up, phony."

To the Manner Born is and should be complimentary - it says that someone sure has taken to the climate.

To the Manor Born suggests an intrusive plunger goes where he or she is not welcomed, nor fitting. It was the title of a BBC comedy in which a titled dowager fallen on hard times moved from the Ancestral Manor to a Suburban Estate.

My Uffish* antagonist who called me stupid just might be correct, in the most tangled web of inquiry every twisted by Dr. John Dewey.

Perhaps having dined at that particular bullshit buffet that is Progressive Thought for so many years, the anonymous pipsqueak is to the manure borne.

*“While he stood in uffish thought, the jabberwock with eyes of flame came whuffling through the Tulgey Wood and burbled as it came.” Lewis Carroll . . .not Eddie Carroll the Roofer Philosopher King.