On page 91 of “Last Tram to Lime Street”, a romance novel set in Liverpool, one of the main characters, Nellie, says “yer’d end up buying paper in sky-blue pink with a finny-haddy border” (Jonker, 1995. p. 91). Gorgeous!
I have written about this - possibly - Geordie saying in 2017, posting a piece on the potential origins of this UK riposte to unanswerable questions from children (here). When asked about “sky blue pink”, Oxford English Dictionary reader, Michael Quinion related that the phrase “was well known to my mother in London in the 1940s and also to my wife’s mother" with several versions, including "sky-blue pink with purple dots, sky-blue pink with yellow spots on, and sky-blue pink with a heavenly border. A form once popular in northern England was sky-blue pink with a finny addy border, in which finny addy is a corruption of finnan haddock, a type of cold-cured smoked fish, named after Findon in Scotland” (2009, p. 279).
The original post generated variant feedback, with kind readers leaving comments on the original post, which I also compiled and posted. And at last, it is time to analyse the feedback, with the most common saying being the straightforward version as noted mostly by Liverpudlians: Sky blue pink with a finny [h]addy border. From a simple count (see table below), I felt that “haddy”, “addy”, “handy” and “anny” are likely to all be “addy” with a dropped ‘h’ or “haddy” and – as Michael Quinion (2009, p. 279) states – all referencing Findon smoked haddock. Collectively these four entries come to a 75%. And, as I had so many scousers commenting - of the 24 respondents, 13 (54%) were from Liverpool - this saying seems to have been strongly adopted by Liverpudlians (also evidenced by the saying’s inclusion in Crowley’s 2017 dictionary).
Quinion seems to think this entire phrase dates from the 1930s or earlier, noting the "sky blue pink" element was an American story phrase from 1881 (2009, p. 280). My maternal grandparents moved from Gateshead to London in the 1930s, so for my mother to have known it so completely and transplanted this saying to Aotearoa New Zealand, I think it may be 'earlier' - perhaps from the 1920s. That's to provide enough time for it to have been linga franca for my grandparents (to mix a metaphor).
While this has been thought of as a fobbing off phrase, Crowley’s dictionary of Liverpudlianisms suggests that it may be morphing into a flash-Harry phrase. The definition is given as “Sky-blue pink wit’ a finny-addy border (phr.): the acme. ‘Sky-blue pink wit’ a finny-addy border: said of something regarded as having everything, such as an imposing mansion or a Rolls-Royce car’ (Lane 1966: 54). *NR; derivation unclear” (2017, p. 213).
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Unfortunately I only had 24 individual data points, so not only is my analysis very simple, because n is less than 30, the results cannot be statistically significant. But it is interesting.
And now I think I can finally put this one to bed.
Sam
References:
Crowley, T. (2017). The Liverpool English Dictionary: A Record of the Language of Liverpool 1850–2015 on Historical Principles. Liverpool University Press.
Greasley, R. (2023, November 5). 50 sayings you heard growing up in Liverpool: How many of these do you remember?. Echo. https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/50-sayings-phrases-come-backs-28032769
Ice-Maiden. (2007, September 24). What colour?. The Answer Bank. https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Phrases-and-Sayings/Question459921.html
Jonker, J. (1995). Last Tram to Lime Street. Headline Book Publishing.
Quinion, M. (2009). Why is Q Always Followed by U: Word-perfect answers to the most-asked questions about language. Particular Books.
Young, S. (2017, January 2). Sky-blue pink with a Finny Haddy Border. https://www.samyoung.co.nz/2017/01/sky-blue-pink-with-finny-haddy-border.html
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