[PW] Expression explanation/source

[swguardian-wombat at yahoo.com]

Apparently variations of this have been around since about the 1920s, but it's early origins go way back. 

Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Catch Phrases:  British and American, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day, ed. Paul Beale (London: Routledge, 1993) 115
hang saving! In S, Dialogue II, see: 

COL[ONEL]: Faith, my Lord
 I wish we had a Bit of your Lordship's Oxfordshire Cheese. 

LORD SM[ART]: Come, hang saving, bring us a halfporth of Cheese. 

This is a joc. c.p. rather than a proverb and has been used over a very long period: C17-20, although little before 1650 and very little since c. 1940. Phonetically, halfporth is a clumsy contraction of halfpennyworth: ha'p'orth is both scripturally and phonetically perfect. It has been displaced by hang the expense!: mid C19-20. Cf. give the cat another goldfish.
Martin Weiss <mweiss at nyscience.org> wrote: Anyone have a source and/an explanation for "Spare the expense (or 
Hang the expense) and give the canary an extra seed"?  I heard it for 
the first time in Baltimore from someone who was commenting on my 
nieces twin children.

Love to hear about it.

Thank you



Martin Weiss

New York Hall of Science

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