Phrase of the Day: “Rolling Stone”

Google is a great gift to etymologists;  but it has limits.

Rather earlier today, I posted a prose-poem, which had occurred to me as I moaned abed, in a druggy-draggy pre-caffeinated state, and gave it the title (which remained in memory, from years of doing business in Europe) “Wakey-Wakey!”  Or as my nice wife would put it, “Good morning, Mr Merry-Sunshine!”

I wasn’t sure how to spell it, and thus googled -- only to find that there is some sort of band of that name, which clogs up all the search responses.

So I re-searched: 

    “wakey-wakey” British  -band

and got what was needed.   Only,  to enter that searchstring, you’d have to already know that the idiom was British.

[Post-note]  Since writing that, I have learned that some Americans  also grew up with the phrase -- it seems to be a regionalism, I had never heard it in this country -- under the charming form

        Wakey-wakey / Eggs and bac-ee!

Likewise, if you wanted to know where the phrase “rolling stone” came from, you would have to battle thousands or maybe millions of top-responses  concerning the famous British band.

Now, this is one I just happen to know, from before Mick Jagger was ever born.

There is an old English proverb,

            A rolling stone  gathers no moss.

The band presumably took it from that.  -- But there is more to the story.

For -- What does the proverb mean?

If you ask anyone under thirty, you will get a blank stare:  They’ve never heard the thing.

If you ask someone under seventy (like Mick), you will likely get an interpretation  according to which being a “rolling stone” is a good thing -- a free spirit, as opposed to the hidebound “mossbacks” (although that last word is likewise unknown to most folks under ninety).   And this interpretation, surely, was the reason that Jagger et cie. so named themselves.

But there is an alternate interpretation -- the original, I believe -- according to which being a “rolling stone” is a bad thing.   This goes back to the days of English country gentlemen.  If you tend to your estate, you may become someone of note; but if you gad about, you will “gather no moss” -- neither wealth, nor reputation.

Anyhow:  The only reason I mention this, is by way of praise of the early Bob Dylan, who, before he became impossibly hip, really did know quite a bit about tradition.  And it still shows in his (middle-period) smash-hit “Like a Rolling Stone”.  Here, that status is nowise romanticised, as in the Jagger-et-al. interpretation, but harks back to your great-great-grandfathers:

            No direction-  home…..

            A complete un-known….

            Like a rolling stone …

Bless you, Bob.