red-headed stepchild

[George Thompson]

This expression was tossed about here some time ago.

I recently saw the expression "to beat like a red-headed mule", deftly
combining the red-headed stepchild motif into the expression "beat like
a rented mule".

Sorry that I do not have a reference; it didn't turn up in a quick
search of Proquest.  I saw it while travelling in New England, and so
would expect it to have been in either the Boston Globe, the Portland
Press-Herald, or the NYTimes, all of which I saw on one day or another.

GAT

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