An anonymous reader, whose epistle has a Thurles postmark asks about the phrase, Sweet Fanny Adams. "Is it true," my correspondent asks, "that sweet Miss Adams's initials were anagrammed into a vulgar phrase or is the other theory correct: that sweet Fanny Adams is simply that vulgar phrase laundered so as to, be accepted in polite society?
Well, poor Miss Adams did exist. Her life was short and sad. She came from Alton in Hampshire and she was murdered and dismembered in 1867 at the age of eight by a mad accountant. Unfortunately, her remains turned up in a trunk in the Deptford Navy Yard precisely at the time when tinned meat was being introduced as the staple food of a reluctant Royal Navy. No sweeties for guessing what the sailors called what they were now expected to like or lump. Subsequently, the term was used to cover anything that was valueless. As for the vulgar phrase, it is of far more recent origin.
Many of the phrases we modern landlubbers use come from the speech of the old time sailors. I had always thought that "not enough room to swing a cat" was first used in reference to the cat-o'-nine-tails, but according to the naval historians, Bill Beavis and Richard McCloskey, in their fascinating Salty Dog Talk (Adlard Coles Nautical, London, 1983) this may not be so. You see, the cat was also the name for a sailing collier common throughout northern Europe at one time. They were very "handy" vessels: Captain Cook's Endeavour was formerly a Northumberland cat. But they were also very small, about 600 tons: and our two historians think that the expression referred to a port or anchorage which would not have enough room for this small vessel to swing at anchor.
"Between the devil and the deep sea" is another expression of nautical origin. The seams between a ship's planks had to be repacked with oakum and pitch to prevent leakage, and the devil was the outside seam of the deck planks, nearest the scuppers. It was very difficult to pitch, due to the spray washing over the side: hence its name. In foul weather, as well, a man could easily be knocked over by a sea and washed into the scuppers, finding himself literally between the devil seam and the deep sea. "The devil to pay", originally ran "the devil to pay and no hot pitch". Same devil; to pay meant to caulk, and can be traced to Old High German peb, pitch.