pail of tears

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:44 PM -0500 12/26/03, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>No, that's not "vale of tears."  In the NY Times last week, I saw another
>gem:  Someone wrote an article that mentioned someone crying "a pail of
>tears."  (Sorry, I always seem to recycle my newspapers before I remember
>to clip for ADS referencing.)  Now, if the writer is a Northerner, I
>suppose the phrase makes sense,

Bob Dylan's a Northerner (< Hibbing, Minnesota), and for him it's buckets:

Buckets of rain, buckets of tears,
Got all them buckets comin' out of my ears

--of course "pails of tears" wouldn't have scanned as well.

>but I'm a Northerner too and I've never
>ever heard the common idiom phrased in this way.

Which idiom?  Bucket(s) of tears?  I wasn't familiar with that before
the Dylan song.  And vale of tears (as in describing this world as a
___) is quite a different kettle o' fish.  Or tears.

>  Has anyone else?  And
>would this imply that one would also say "she cried a pailfull" or "his
>tears came down in pails"?

I take "pail" or "bucket" to refer to the container filled by the
tears, not the manner in which they fall, so no, they wouldn't come
down in pails or buckets, just lots of drops, enough for
(metaphorical) pailfuls.  I suppose "she cried a pailful/bucketful"
would be interpretable.

L