Say What? "Have your cake and eat it too" + "Got to eat a peck of dirt before you die"

[chomiji]

Today we have a pair of puzzling proverbs that are apparently about eating – but that are, in fact, more about the nitty gritty realities of life:

"You can't have your cake and eat it, too."

"You've got to eat a peck of dirt before you die."

What exactly do we mean when we use these sayings?

The evidence is that the saying about cake goes back more than 400 years. In the New York Times blog "On Language," columnist Ben Zimmer cites The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, which documents an older version of the proverb from 1546 work:

Wolde ye bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?

Minus the sixteenth-century spelling, this actually makes more logical sense than the modern version: of course if you eat your cake, you can't have it anymore. This gives us the more usual sense of the saying – that sometimes you simply must choose between two desirable goals:

"Let's continue this somewhere else," said Crowley. "It's early enough that we can probably get into that new place you were cooing about. Maribelle's, wasn't it? They've got to have some decent wine."

Aziraphale's face lit up, then fell. "I meant to go to Evensong at Saint George's. The Salisbury Choristers are visiting."

"You'll have to choose, then, won't you?" snapped Crowley. "You can't have your cake and eat it too!"

The other saying can be used much more literally, as it is in Jonathan Swift's 1738 work Polite Conversation in Three Dialogues:

Neverout. Why, then, there's some Dirt in my Tea-cup.

Miss. Come, come; the more there's in't, the more there's on't.

Lady Answ. Poh! you must eat a Peck of Dirt before you die.

The satirical Sloane Ranger Handbook (1983) similarly offers this expression as a typical bit of folk wisdom dispensed by a traditional British nanny, used when a child in her care complains of a bit of dirt in something like a serving of vegetables. However, it can also be produced as a philosophical guide in the case of other examples of the minor vicissitudes of daily life:

Crowley waited impatiently until Aziraphale's glass was filled as well as his own and the waiter had paced back into the kitchen. Then he snatched the glass to his lips and took a sip. His expression changed to utter disgust. "What is this swill? This can't be Cheval Vieux 2002!"

Aziraphale, puzzled, took a sip himself and grimaced. The stuff was undrinkable.

"I wanted a nice Bordeaux!" hissed Crowley. "Is that too much to ask?" Red flames were starting to glow behind his trendy shades.

Aziraphale looked around hastily, but the waiter was still out in the kitchen. "There, there," he said, consolingly. "You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die, they say."

One final note about using these old saws in your writing. The saying about "having your cake and eating it too" is common even today, but the other is much less so. In fanfiction, for example, you should probably restrict its use to characters who would tend to speak in old-time proverbs. Aziraphale, the plump and placid angel who seems to find modern life a bit much sometimes, is a reasonable example.

Sources

• ‘Have Your Cake and Eat It Too’ (On Language blog, New York Times)
• Re: "You can't have your cake and eat it too" (The Phrase Finder)
• Polite Conversation (full text of the work by Jonathan Swift, The Internet Archive)
• The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook: How the British upper class prepares its offspring for life, by Ann Barr, St. Martin's Press, 1983