Better Late Than Never

Today was stoopid at work, even moreso than usual, so I didn't look at my birthday list 'til I was heading out the door. So this post is late ... but it's still today! So...

Happy birthday,

spikedpunch! For your present, here's today's Forgotten English!

eat the mad cow
To be reduced to extremities, so as to eat even a cow that has died of madness. From the French.
--Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922

Horn Madness
In Act III, Scene IV of King Lear, Edgar says to the king, "Poor Tom, thy horn is dry." Francis Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare and of Ancient Manners (1807) explained this as a reference to an old custom: "Men who begged under pretence of lunacy used formerly to carry a horn and blow it through the streets. To account for Edgar's horn being dry we must suppose that the lunatics in question made use of this utensil to drink out of. In Randle Holme's The Academy of Armory (1688) the author further described one such 'Bedlam,' who had 'a long staff and a cow or hox-horn by his side; his cloathing fantastic and ridiculous; for being a madman, he is madly decked and dressed all over with rubins, feathers, and cuttings of cloth and whatnot, to make him seem a madman or one distracted when he is no other than a dissembling knave.'"

-The Gneech