D

The wording is based upon-for the words of the c.p. do not occur in-T.A.Palmer’s dramatized version, 1874, of Mrs Henry Wood’s East Lynne. (See ODQ, and cf the entry in Granville.)

I heard it often, as a soldiers’ derisive chant, during WW1; much less often during WW2. My good friend, Mr Albert B.Petch, writing in 1974, recalls ‘an old morality picture that my mother had in her parlour: it

showed a poor ragged woman peering through the window of a mansion at a little coffin, and the caption read, “Dead-and never called me Mother!”’ dead but he won’t lie down (—he’s), current since c. 1910, does not, as one might suppose, imply great courage: what it implies is great stupidity-a complete lack of common sense. It was, on ITV, used in a series called ‘Sam’, showing mining life in Yorkshire about WW1 period (Petch, 1974). dead clever these Chinese! See: clever chaps these Chinese. deaf. See: speak a little. deal. See: big deal; he who; it’s a d.; you play the cards. deal of glass about-(there’s) a. Mostly it was applied to a flashy person or a showy thing, but it did almost mean ‘firstclass’ or ‘the thing, the ticket’: c. 1880-1940, for the secondary meaning; the first is extant, although slightly ob. Prob. from large show-windows or show-cases. P.B.: or does the phrase refer rather to paste, or stage, jewellery? deal of weather about-a, mostly prefaced by there’s. There’s a storm approaching-we’re in for bad weather: nautical: mid C19-20. Ware. dear Mother (or Mum), I am sending you ten shillings: but not this week is a lower-and lower-middle-class-hence a WW1 army (Other Ranks’)—c.p. of C20; less common among soldiers in WW2 than it had been in 1914-18, when it served as a kind of self-mockingly humorous, jocularly cynical, chant. (B & P.) Cf: dear Mother, it’s a bastard, with the ‘dovetail’—dear Son, so are you-is later than, and was perhaps generated by, the next. Not, I think, before c. 1920. (P.B., 1975).