[Ads-l] slight antedating of "life of riley"

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED: Dec. 6, 1911.

1911 _Newark Evening Star_  (Jan. 11) 12 [GenealogyBank]: The old king...is
living the life of "Reilly."

Origin, btw, still  unknown. The phrase seems to have become popular almost
immediately.

Yes, the phrase appears in the nineteenth-century Anglo-Irish broadside
ballad "William Reilly," but contextually any connection to the idiom is
far-fetched.

JL
-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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