a desperado's brag

[George Thompson]

I began my career as a gatherer of curious words and expressions with
the expression "I can do it standing on my head" -- by which villains
express thier disdain for a prison sentence.  I found it interesting
that this expression was a fixed set-phrase yet also variable.
Sometimes the villain will stand on his head, other times on his
hands.  Here is another fixed expression that is even more highly
variable:


1851:   Joseph Clark when asked why the sentence of the law should not
be pronounced against him said that he had no intention of taking the
life of Gillespie, but that he cared as little about being hung as the
judge did about taking a bad breakfast.
        Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 29, 1851, p. 2, col. ?
[Brooklyn Eagle on Line]

1866:   Lane was a man of iron nerve; he seemed to think no more of the
hanging than a man would of eating his breakfast.
        Thos. J. Dimsdale, The Vigilantes of Montana. . . .  Virginia
City, M. T.: Montana Post Pr., 1866, p. 138  ("Classics of the Old
West" reprint, Time-Life Books, n. d.)

1866:   He [Bill Bunton] was very particular about the exact situation
of the knot, and asked if he could not jump off himself.  Being told
that he could, he said that he didn't care for hanging, any more than
he did for taking a drink of water; but he should like to have his neck
broken.
        Thos. J. Dimsdale, The Vigilantes of Montana. . . .  Virginia
City, M. T.: Montana Post Pr., 1866  ("Classics of the Old West"
reprint, Time-Life Books, n. d.)

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.