WHY DO WE SAY — ?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 81, 6 April 1933, Page 6

WHY DO WE SAY — ?

" NINE TAILORS MAKE A MAN."

The expression "nine tailors make a man" is only one of many old proverbs and proverbial phrases, which have brought ridicule on the head of this unfortunate tradesman. The poor tailor has been generally considered for some reason fis particularly addicted to thieving habits, and this vie© has been attributed to him for countless years. He was coupled witli the weaver of similar notoriety in the old proverb, "If you put a tailor and a weaver in a bag, the first one you take out will be a thief." The tailor has also been classed as a man of short stature and poor physique, which might have been founded on the bad conditions under which he had to work. He has, moreover, been condemned as a person of feeble spirit and unmanly nature, which qualities seem to be no more common in a tailor than the aforementioned thieving habits. It was, therefore, probably a of these supposed faults —mental, moral and physical —which was behind the origin of the expression "nine tailors lliake a man." It has been argued that the phrase really has 110 reference to "tailors, this word being a corruption of "tellers," which were the strokes on a bell rung at a funeral. Three such strokes were sounded for the burial of a child, six for a woman and nine for a man, and this makes the explanation seem feasible, but a weighty argument against its truth is that the number nine is varied often in old quotations. The poet, Taylor, wrote in the seventeenth century: Some foolish knave, I thinke. at first begnn The slander that three tailors are one man. In Tarlton's "Jests" (1038) we find a declaration that "two tailors goo to a man," and other quotations of a like nature seeni to indicate that the phrase was merely an expression of the inferiority of the tailor, as it was commonly believed, and the number was at first not definite. We may understand how tailors, as a class, might liavc been formerly not of strong and healthy build, since their work was carried on under "such conditions that they were constantly in awkward and cramped positions, but why they should be credited with more serious faults is a mystery. The condemned type generally finds someone to go to the other extreme and praise them up to balance matters, and so, in this connection, the following defence was made in a 1907 book on the subject of proverbs: "It is remarkable that tailors, as a class, so far from being pusillanimous or unmanly, are particularly courageous and active, and when the opportunity occurs make excellent soldiers."