"Don't shit where you eat" [revisited]

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:04 PM -0400 7/4/07, Charles Doyle wrote:
>B. J. Whiting's _Modern Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings_ (1989)
>gives "Don't shit where you eat" from 1953, Bellow's _Adventures of
>Auggie March_. Variants of the image include "shit where you sit,"
>"shit on your own doorstep," and the probably-euphemistic "be sick
>in one's own hat" (the last one, in Whiting's collection, from
>1937). All are probably related to the much older conceit about
>fowls' not fouling their own nest.
>
>--Charlie

Remember this discussion we had around the 4th of July (although not
by way of celebrating the holiday), applying inter alia to the
practice that my Words students at Yale call "dormcest" or
"entrywaycest" and the news magazines call "office romances"?

Well, in "reading" a book on my Walkman, P. D. James's _The Children
of Men_, I just heard one character (the Warden of England, as it
happens) reciting this same dictum in the form "Don't shit in your
own bed".  Not especially euphemistic, and varying only slightly from
the other vivid versions.  I thought it might be a particularly
British take on the concept, but going through the 19 google hits, it
appears to be extant (if not robustly so) on both sides of the pond.

Curiously, I find "Don't shit in your own bed" to be more readily
understood with the intended metaphorical reading than the presumably
synonymous version without "own":  "Don't shit in your bed".
Presumably the effect of the "own" is to stress the contrast, i.e.
the fact that it would be natural to "shit", as it were, in other
people's beds.

LH

P.S.  No google books hits at all for "Don't shit in your (own) bed",
unlike the 149 for the version in the subject line.  Maybe the bed
version is a bit *too* vivid.  All we get is an idiom, reportedly
translated from the German, conveying the pleasant offer to "shit in
your bed and make it burst" or "shit in your bed with a resounding
noise/a fortissimo crash".  Mozart was evidently fond of this one.

>_____________________________________________________________
>
>---- Original message ----
>>Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 11:20:51 +0200
>>From: Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
>>
>>On Tue, 3 Jul 2007 20:16:25 -0400, "Sam Clements"
>><SClements at NEO.RR.COM> said:
>>
>>>  Sorry for the crude title. =20
>>>
>>>  Has anyone searched to find out what the earliest version of this
>>>must have been?  I would doubt that it was that phrasing.
>>>
>>>  Anyone suggest what the original sentiment might have been?
>>>
>>>  Sam Clements
>>
>>Google Books gives this citation from 1965, though the phrase ought
>>to be a older than that:
>>
>>
>  >http://tinyurl.com/2p4722
>>
>>Paul
>
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