Goody two shoes

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

The following phrase occurred in the 1670 poem "A Voyage to Ireland in
Burlesque" as reprinted in an 1890 note:
>> Mistress mayoress

Wilson Gray wrote:
> She's not a female mayor, but merely the *wife* of the mayor, right? There
> was (is?) a problem in Russian with the naming of women in professions
> traditionally reserved to men in those cases in which the traditional
> feminine form of the word for a person engaged in that profession named the
> wife of a man in that profession and did not name a woman in that
> profession, e,g,  _doktorsha_ "doctor's wife, 'mistress doctoress'." There
> was a note about this problem in the Army Language School textbook, back in
> the '50's.
>
> Maybe Victor will bring me up to date.

I was unable to find an early editon of "A Voyage to Ireland in
Burlesque". The following 1841 reprint referred to the "may'r" and the
"Mistress may'ress". I think that Wilson is correct that "Mistress
may'ress" referred to the wife of the mayor.

Year: 1841
Title: Specimens of the British Poets: With Biographical and Critical
Notices, and An Essay on English Poetry
Author: Thomas Campbell
Publisher: John Murray, London
Poem: A Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque
Poem Author: Charles Cotton
Start Page: 292
Quote Page: 295

http://books.google.com/books?id=BdwTAAAAIAAJ&q=Two-Shoes#v=snippet&

[Begin excerpt]
Mistress may'ress complain'd that the pottage was cold;
"And all long of your fiddle faddle," quoth she.
"Why, what then, Goody Two-Shoes, what if it be!
"Hold you, if you can, your tittle-tattle," quoth he.
I was glad she was snapp'd thus, and guess'd by th' discourse,
The may'r, not the gray mare, was the better horse,
And yet for all that, there is reason to fear,
She submitted but out of respect to his year:
[End excerpt]

Garson

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