When You Are To Tired To Swim Home Cadge A Lift!

that's what it looks like here, as 6 cygnets hop on board Mum, the photograph was taken by Richard Meston on a visit to Bicton Park Botanical Gardens near Sidmouth, Devon, Julia Newth, of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, said: ‘Mute swans are very protective of their young and will vigorously defend them from any threats, but this one is definitely showing the gentler side of her instincts in giving her young a lift on her back, in the title I used the phrase "Cadge a lift" which I thought was a term used in falconry, not so! the 'cadge a lift' theory is certainly wrong, that phrase isn't known until the 19th century, well after falconry had become uncommon and, in any case, that 'beg/borrow' meaning of cadge was in use as a general term for 'obtaining without payment' and only later became used in 'cadge a lift', cadger eventually became 'codger', it is the begging sense of cadge rather than the falcon transport meaning that is much more likely to be linked to 'cadger' and later 'codger', the earliest meaning of 'cadger', which pre-dates the naming of falconry cadges by a good two hundred years, was as the name of itinerant dealers who traded in butter/eggs etc., which they transported by pack-horse, this dates from the 15th century and was referred to in Robert Henryson's The Morall Fabillis of Esope, circa 1450: "A Cadgear, with capill and with creils". (horse and baskets), so now I know!