Quote:So I googled it, and it's BOTH goat and lamb (much more often lamb, but on the two pages of hits I got, "goat" was the first hit and the last hit--everything else was "lamb").
They both work. Goats are less valued than sheep.
It's nice to know that my Irish grandfather wasn't mis-quoting
his Irish grandfather, though my great uncle John was of the opinion that the saying made no sense at all, at all. If you were going to steal something to eat, you'd steal a lamb, something you could butcher, roast and eat in one sitting before the landlord's men found it missing, but he was a practical man who worked the US Western railroads before he got his leg crushed between two grain cars.
A whole sheep would be more difficult to carry, dead or alive, a greater task to cut up properly and, well, it must be said, lamb makes a better stew than mutton. Think of the extra onions, garlic and carrots you'd have to steal to make it taste like more than cardboard.
It made my Nana angry when her men talked about the Irish this way.
Joe(Still, grandad said, if you had a family of ten or more, a sheep...)Nation
your memory is obviously better than mine
) is more like cleaner paper trash, used boxes, etc. I relate trash and rubbish in the same low level of yuckiness.
).
