At 12:07 PM 3/10/98 -0800, Michael Price wrote:

>My early years were mostly in a working-class neighborhood of Brighton,
>England (yep, gritty alleyways, row-houses as in the opening scenes of
>'Coronation Street', and my pals all scruffy dead-end guttersnipes like
>meself, mate). In this milieu, people used the phrase 'happy as a mudlark'
>(as in "Cor! 'E woz 'appy as a mudlark, 'e woz!') as a simile to describe
>exultation, most often in children.
>
>So, I'm inclined to think that the term originally meant some kind of bird,
>perhaps something seen out in the Colonies (perhaps Greg Toffic's Australian
>magpie-lark, Grallina cyanaleuca), the sailor's/soldier's slang for which
>returned to England when he did and then, in the spirit of Bill Lawrence's
>'gutter children', appropriated for some local usage.

This seems like a reasonable explanation. Now you've got me curious, though,
is a "guttersnipe" a real bird, too?




- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
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