Hanging

Hanging and wiving go by destiny. “If a man is doomed to be hanged, he will never be drowned.” And “marriages are made in heaven,” we are told.

“If matrimony and hanging go

By destʹny, why not whipping too?

What medʹcine else can cure the fits

Of lovers when they lose their wits?

Love is a boy, by poets styled.

Butler: Hudibras, part ii. canto i. 839–844.

· ·

Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.