PoT: Yaru: Yaru, Part Three

[branchandroot]

Fic post from my archive.

Yaru, Part Three

Tezuka finally loses his battle to stay detached. Romance, I-3

Kunimitsu resigned himself to the knowledge that he had just welcomed all the interest and chaos and trouble and thrill that Echizen trailed after him like a too-long scarf into yet another part of his life.

Comments

[branchandroot]

No problem; actually, I should probably add a footnote to the final version.

"In for a sheep, in for a lamb" is a mutation of the proverb "As good be hanged for a sheep as a lamb". It dates a couple hundred years back, to a period in British history (a very extended period, actually) of ungraduated criminal law. That is, any livestock theft (or, for that matter, any crime from robbery to murder) had the same punishment: hanging. The point of the proverb, then, is that, if one is liable to be hanged for it anyway, one might as well take the larger animal. Or the large animal and the small animal. And, quite possibly, shoot the herdsman if he interferes, because the penalty is all the same, so why not?

Early Modern legal codes generally make for interesting, if occasionally horrifying, reading.

[maeran.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I did find that expression when I searched Oxford English Dictionary. I didn't realize there was a different version of the proverb. Thank you so much!

And oh yeah, the death penalty for petty theft...I remember seeing it from The Prince and the Pauper. That and the boiling in...

...I'll stop myself right now. >.>