grandmother. All nonsense; rubbish. The suggested derivations of this significant retort to a tedious narration containing neither rhyme nor reason are as various as the forms in which the phrase appears. Not so clear, however, is the evidence in support of any of them, although Barrère unwittingly stumbles upon what is probably the true origin. Had he studied the subject of slang historically, he would have been able to adduce adequate proof for what he merely puts forth as a 'more probable' derivation than those of his predecessors. After stating that some have suggested the origin of the phrase in the Welsh, al mi hivy, it is very tedious or all nonsense, he says, 'It seems far more probable that it is a contraction of the phrase 'there is as much of it as there is in all my eye,' the words being made more forcible by closing one of the organs of vision. To express dissent from any statement, or a refusal to comply with a request. French slang has the corresponding term mon œil! which is usually accompanied by a knowing wink and a significant gesture as an invitation to inspect the organ.' From a comparative study of the dates and examples which follow, it seems a fair deduction to assume that the original form of the phrase was simply all my eye, and that the additional tags given above are later importations.
1653. Archbishop Bramhall, Answer to the Epistle of M. de la Milletière [Works, vol. I., pp. 68-9. ed. Ox. 1842.] Fifthly, suppose (all this notwithstanding) such a conference should hold, what reason have you to promise to yourself such success as to obtain so easy a victory? You have had conferences and conferences again at Poissy and other places, and gained by them just as much as you might put in your eye and see never the worse.
1682. Preface to Julian the Apostate (London, printed for Langley Curtis). What benefit a Popish successor can reap from lives and fortunes spent in defence of the Protestant religion he may put in his eye; and what the Protestant religion gets by lives and fortunes spent in the service of a Popish successor will be over the left shoulder.
1768. Goldsmith, Good-natured Man, Act iii. Bailiff. That's all my eye. The king only can pardon.
1811. Poole, Hamlet Travestied, i, I[**1? P2]. As for black clothes,--that's all my eye and Tommy.
Hotten's contention, that all my eye and Betty Martin was a vulgar phrase constructed from the commencement of a Roman Catholic prayer to St. Martin (the patron saint of drunkards), 'Oh, mihi, beate Martine,' which in common with many another fell into discredit and ridicule after the Reformation, is both fanciful and untrue. In the first place there is no prayer in the Breviary which answers to the description given; and in the second it has been shown that the essential part of the phrase is very much older than the Joe Millerism which first set the copy for every lexicographer of the 'unwritten word,' from Hotten down to Brewer and Barrère, the latter of whom, strangely enough, after pitching on the right track, stultifies himself by an admission that all my eye and Betty Martin seems to have been the original phrase. The earliest example of the 'Betty Martin' form, found after
