If Wishes Were Horses Essay

The first recognisable ancestor of the rhyme was recorded in William Camdens (15511623) Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine, printed in 1605, which contained the lines If wishes were thrushes beggers would eat birds. 2 The reference to horses was first in James Carmichaeldisambiguation neededs Proverbs in Scots printed in 1628, which included the lines And if wishes were horses, pure poor custody wald ride. 2 The first mention of beggars is in John Rays Collection of English Proverbs in 1670, in the form If wishes would bide, beggers would ride. 2The first versions with fill up to the modern wording was in James Kellys Scottish Proverbs, Collected and Arranged in 1721, with the wording If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. 2 The modern rhyme above was plausibly the combination of two of many versions and was collected by James Orchard Halliwell in the 1840s. 1 The last line was sometimes used to stop children from questioning and happen to work If ifs and ands w ere pots and pans, thered surely be dishes to do. In popular cultureedit The phrase is misquoted in the 2002 television series Firefly in the series finale episode Objects in Space in which Adam Baldwins character Jayne Cobb gets upset and says Yeah and if wishes were horses, wed all be consume steak.Star Trek Deep Space Nine Season 1, issue 16 was called, If Wishes Were Horses. In the episode entitled Things Fall Apart Season Six, Episode 21 of the television series The West Wing, Josh Lyman makes a reference to the poem while in conversation with a female campaign staffer who tells him that if media circumstances were different, their candidate, Matthew Santos, would have already locked up the Democratic partys nomination for president. Josh responds by saying, If wishes orses etc. She erroneously attributes the quote to Bob Dylan by asking Josh What is that from some Dylan song? Guys your age have this thing about Dylan. 3 In September 2010, Alexandrea Mellen famously quipped, If wishes were horses, then the horse market would fall in. The phrase is used by the character Spike in the television series Angel. In addition, in the series finale, when another character wishes to do to a greater extent violence, Spike replies that wishes are horses today.