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The Kitchen Table

Phrase of the day 1/27

jim_1 (Zone 5B)

3 years ago

Darby and Joan

The original Darby and Joan were an elderly couple whose devotion to each other was immortalized in a ballad published in 1735. Since then, writers of lyrics have used the pair as symbols of beautiful and steadfast love, though the original version was something less than idyllic. Here’s how the author, Henry Woodfall, describer the romantic duo:

Old Darby with Joan at his side,/You’ve often regard with the wonder;/He’s dropsical, she is ore-eyed,/Yet they’re ever uneasy asunder.

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Comments (9)

maire_cate
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
That's a new one for me and from the names I'm assuming it is of British origin. I wanted to read a little more about and discovered there are even a few paintings depicting the couple.
Annie Deighnaugh
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
Interesting...never heard of them.

So how would you use the phrase? They're a real Darby and Joan?
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salonva
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
First time for me as well to hear of this phrase. Off to google.

A In the UK, Darby and Joan is still a way to describe an elderly and mutually devoted married couple who live a placid and uneventful life, often in humble circumstances. There are many Darby and Joan Clubs, so named, in various parts of the country, social clubs for pensioners, which hold dances and other events

Always enjoying this daily treat.
nickel_kg
3 years ago
Me too, enjoying tickling my brain every day. Thanks Jim!
foggyj2
3 years ago
We're never too old to learn! Thanks for the posts.
stacey_mb
3 years ago
Thank you!
Fun2BHere
3 years ago
That's definitely a new one for me. Thanks.
Lars
3 years ago
I worked on the designs of a line of furniture that we called Darby, which included a lounge chair, ottoman, dining chairs, bench, sofa, and settee. It started with the lounge chair before I was there, and then I worked on the rest. I made full-scale cardboard models of the dining chairs and bench. Back legs of the chair are laminated cardboard, to illustrate the curves.
That's my only experience with Darby.

We had a CFO named Joan.
raee_gw zone 5b-6a Ohio
3 years ago
I hadn't heard this either. I could guess what dropsical meant (way back when I first became a nurse in southern Ohio, I sometimes had to use the term "dropsy" with an elderly patient) but ore-eyed I couldn't decipher - and google was no help.

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