Phrase or Fable ?

"In the case of cricket in Pakistan, where corruption is deeply ingrained, nothing short of a major cultural change is required. That may sound like pie in the sky, but it can be done". So runs a quote from a reputable journalist, cited in The Week.

This is a good instance of how unfamiliar idioms can be twisted and distorted by those who don't appreciate their origins: even dictionaries will cite the distortions as if they were correct. You might think that all reference books must be sound: think how many hours of laborious research have gone into them. But many of them - if not most - are in fact derivative. So it can be reassuring to find that there are discrepancies between them, even if it leaves the enquirer unsatisfied.

Look up "pie in the sky" in several dictionaries. To begin with, I suspect that that first word pie is misspelt. Two or three dictionaries illustrate this phrase with a quotation from a certain Joe Hill, who concluded a little jingle with the lines "Work and pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die." The line refers (says Brewer's) to promises that will never be realised.

Now Joe H wrote - or at least, published - those words in 1911, as we are told by the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (stealing Brewer's title, incidentally).

I remember well the phrase in the form "pi in the sky when you die", from my boyhood. 'Pi' (as the Oxford Shorter English Dictionary reminds us) meant, as early as 1870, pious or sanctimonious. And a 'pi-jaw' was a pious admonition, usually addressed to the young. 'Pi' could also signify pious talk, or the over-manifestation of piety.

It was a cynic (I have no idea who, of course) who first parodied the pretentious Christian's hopes for an eternity with the Lord as "pi in the sky when you die". You can see what an appropriate description it is for all the literally everlasting singing and praising that formed such an unattractive prospect to the young imagination. I am positive this form of 'pious hope' was not a very potent motivation to be good; it was hard to picture oneself standing for ever on one's feet (or perhaps lying prone - or are chairs provided ?) on the golden floor of a brilliantly lit heaven among a throng of white-robed saints. It was 'unnatural' activity of this kind that I (if I ever used it) and my fellow youths meant by the phrase. And it seems that the term 'pi' antedated the mis-spelt 'pie' by some 40 years.

I think that Joe Hill was just being funny, playing with words, and humorously suggesting that (pi)e would be more pleasant to eat than hay. And the Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang has a significant entry under 'pie-jaw': it runs "pie-jaw or piejaw. Incorrect forms of PI-JAW". So pi short for piousness is what you may find in the sky when you die, not apple and pastry.

And the signification of the idiom is not 'improbability', as in the case of the elimination of corruption in cricket, but a warped view of 'Christian certainty'.

Maybe books of phrase and fable need occasional revision.

Phrase or Fable ?