'Time Bomb'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Proverb help!
There's a proverb-- one of the grandmotherly types that is teasing the edge of my brain and I'm toying with using it in the MS. I think it's "pay the piper to give the devil his due" or something to that effect?
Yes? No? Do I have it completely mangled?
The piper-related saying I remember is, "He who pays the piper, calls the tune." I've also heard "give the devil his due," but not with the piper bits. It could be I've just never heard the whole phrase properly.
I've always thought of those as two separate proverbs (aphorisms?) but I could be misguided.
I think that's two proverbs which mean the same thing. But I could be wrong.
Okay, so I'm late to the party. Let me offer my own favored quotation: "Take what you want and pay for it, says God."
I think you've squashed two together. There's "pay the piper," from the Pied Piper and "give the devil his due," grudgingly admitting that someone you don't like or admire has done something right.
Yeah, I can't find anything tying the two together. Could be I'm misremembering something I might have heard in Spanish-- lots of proverbs that get convoluted and mangled between translations.
These are from the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, and also more-or-less mesh with my own understanding:
Give the devil his due:
Admit it when there is some good even in a person you dislike. This saying appears in Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes.
Shakespeare also used the line, but I can't recall the context.
Pay the piper:
To pay the consequences for self-indulgent behavior: “If you stay up late at night to watch TV, in the morning you will have to pay the piper.”
Stupid brayne. I hate, hate, hate only partially remembering things that I know I've heard my entire life. One would think it would be right there at my fingertips, but nooooooooooo...
Bah.
Stoopit brayne.
But what if the Devil is the piper? Then it'd make sense to give the Devil his due by paying the piper.
OTOH, I don't think the Devil can play the pipe as well as the fiddle....
Especially if he goes down to Georgia...
Augh, I'm going to wind up with the most mangled cultural references...