No satisfactory explanation of this has ever been given. It has formed the subject for inquiries innumerable in “Notes and Queries.”
There is another version: “To grin like a Cheshire cat chewing gravel.”
“It is better to marry over the mixen than over the moor.”
It is better to marry an honest farmer from next door whom you know, than a fine gentleman from a distance who may turn out a fraud.
“Enough and no more, like Mrs. Milton’s feast.”
Milton married as his third wife Elizabeth Minshull of Wistanstow, near Nantwich, who survived him. She was poor and proud, and her enforced economy was not to the taste of her neighbours.
“When the daughter is stolen, shut the Pepper-gate.”
Equivalent to “shutting the stable door when the steed is stolen.” This originated in a former Mayor of Chester fastening up the Pepper-gate after his daughter had eloped through it with her lover.
“If thou hadst the rent of Dee Mills—thou wouldst spend it.”
These Chester mills yielded annually a large rent.