Sheeps eyes, lickerish teeth and velvet collars

An investigation into More I Cannot Wish You from Guys and Dolls
A few years ago, I was told by someone working for Josef Weinberger that Guys and Dolls was the most
performed show in the UK, with several amateur performances being presented each day. I dont know
whether that is still true or if it ever was! but it isnt hard to see why it might be: Guys and Dolls has a
large cast (essential for most amateur companies), great songs and a wonderful book which manages to
be both witty and approachable. Actually the clarity of the script is one of its great assets: as long as a
company approaches the Runyonese-styled dialogue in the right way the show will work, leaving the
director free to work on character / concept / costume design as they see fit.
There has, however, always been a sticking point for me in the song More I Cannot Wish You, sung by
the Arvide, the old-timer missionary, to Sarah, his granddaughter and the romantic female lead. This
charming but rather odd song seems to be there largely to give Arvide something to do; unlike most of the
other songs in the show it doesnt seem to advance the plot in any way. It has a bigger problem than
relevance, though: it is one of the few moments in the show where clarity simply disappears. The songs
lyrics are, in short, really strange. Lets have a look:
Velvet, I can wish you
For the collar of your coat
And fortune smiling all along your way
But more I cannot wish you
Than to wish you find your love
Your own true love this day
Mansions, I can wish you
Seven footmen all in red
And calling cards upon a silver tray
But more I cannot wish you
Than to wish you find your love
Your own true love this day
Standing there
Gazing at you
Full of the bloom of youth
Standing there
Gazing at you
With the sheeps eye
And the lickerish tooth
Music, I can wish you
Merry music while you're young
And wisdom when your hair has turned to gray
But more I cannot wish you
Than to wish you find your love
Your own true love this day
With the sheep's eye
And the lickerish tooth
And the strong arms
To carry you away
The most puzzling lyric is clearly With the sheeps eye / And the lickerish tooth. Do a Google search on
this and you will find many people asking just what this line means, and many others offering
suggestions.
For a long time I was under the impression that there must be some obscure Biblical reference at play
here it would, after all, make sense in a song delivered between two missionaries who both know the
Bible well, and the sheep imagery (of which the bible has lots), the archaic use of the word lickerish and

the similarly old-fashioned phrase sheeps eye might suggest a reference from the 17th century King
James Bible.
Now, a search of the King James Bible produces no results for either term, but a search of the Wycliffe
Bible which predates the King James by 300 years produces one passage, Genesis 30:37-42. This
deals with Jacob getting one over on his father in law by putting mottled rods in the eyes of sheep (i.e. in
their sight) when the sheep are mating so that their lambs are mottled. (Laban, his father in law, had
agreed to give him any mottled sheep, but not any sheep with plain coats.) While this passage combines
sheep, eyes and sex, it doesnt really fit with the story of the song, and is, I fear, a red-herring. But if
these strange phrases are not Biblical in origin, where do they come from? And why did Loesser decide
to use them?
Its not hard to find the meaning of sheeps eye. The OED gives:
sheep's eye sheep's eye(s
(Also 7 sheep-eyes.)
[Cf. WFris. skiepseach, Du. schaapsoog, G. schafsauge.]
1. Phr. a. to cast (or throw) a sheep's-eye at or upon, now usually to cast (occas. to make)
sheep's-eyes at: to look lovingly, amorously, or longingly at.
[http://findwords.info/term/sheep's%20eye]
before giving us a first usage in 1529. By the start of the 17th century sheeps eye was being used as a
noun outside of the phrase, and by the turn of the 19th century it had become a transitive verb (so one
could now sheeps-eye ones sweetheart, rather than having to make sheeps-eyes at her/him). To a
21st-century British ear, sheeps eye sounds archaic to the point of being impossible to understand
though looking on the web it seems it might still be in use in Indian English but its possible that it would
have been perfectly comprehensible to a New York audience in 1950. If it sounded old-fashioned to that
audience, as it most likely did, that would have fit perfectly with Arvides old-timer character.
The other phrase the lickerish tooth is harder to explain. OED gives several meanings, of which the
most useful are sweet, longing and lecherous. Longing and lecherous seem to fit best alongside
sheeps eye: amorous glances are usually caused by romantic longing. But why tooth? And where
did this phrase come from?
While I have not found the phrase in modern dictionaries I have found it in the oldest dictionary of all:
Samuel Johnsons A Dictionary Of The English Language, in which the phrase is used to describe the
Chaucerian gat-toothed thus:
* GAT-TOOTHED. a. Having a goats tooth; having a lickerish tooth. Chaucer.
[https://books.google.co.uk/books?
id=KQdJAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA466&dq=lickerish+tooth&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nnwMVa7WOYf9UuijgrAI&v
ed=0CDUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=lickerish%20tooth&f=false, p466]
This definition for gat-toothed seems to have been widely copied, surviving until 1923 in Websters
Dictionary. It doesnt necessarily help us, though, unless we happen to be Chaucerian scholars. I could
do research on Chaucers usage of gat-toothed" (if you want to, youll find it in the Wife Of Baths Tale),
but its easier to look in Rogets Thesaurus of 1859, where we find:
Desire (865). Phr. The edge of appetite ; a wistful eye ; a lickerish tooth.
[p. 445]
So the lickerish tooth indicates desire in this context for Sarah on the part of her love (presumably
Sky).
(If you have read this far it should be clear that the person who is Standing there / Gazing at you is Sky
rather than Arvide Ive seen several productions where this basic premise has apparently been
misunderstood by director and actor.)
Still, lickerish tooth seems an uncommonly rare phrase for Arvide to use. We might have to guess at
why Loesser chose it but luckily he wrote a letter in 1961 explaining the songs genesis which is
reproduced in Susan Loessers book A most remarkable fella: Frank Loesser and the guys and dolls in

his life:
Sheeps eye is, just as you suspect, descriptive of amorous longing. I suppose the exact
expression is making sheeps eyes at. The color and sound of this was enough for me to hope
that this passage of the song would describe the imagined lovers almost pitiable adoration of the
girl. Now we come to lickerish tooth. I decided that the sense of sheeps eye was a little too
weak... Therefore sheeps eye was not enough. So I consulted Roget (grudgingly, because
usually I know more than he does) to find that covetous (which was the key meaning in my mind)
could be described as lecherous. I then looked up lecherous for variations less appalling in
sound to the modern ear. This I did by way of the Oxford English Dictionary (the big twelvevolume one) and found to my great delight two archaic spellings: one was liquorice (somehow
combining the literal sense of sweet tooth: with the fundamental meaning of the word) and the
other lickerish: which had a much more satisfying adjective suffix. [From this we might assume
that Loesser pronounced liquorice terminating in a s sound rather than a sh.] In the
exemplary material on these words I found lickerish tooth, which fitted neatly with the notes in
hand, and even more neatly with my sense of what the old mans mischief should sound like in the
scene.
So there we go. And if the song seems curiously lacking in Biblical reference for a missionary there may
be a reason. Loesser continues:
I correct myself. It was not the old man originally but the elder brother of the young lady Roseanna
McCoy, heroine and title character of a Sam Goldwyn movie Sam Goldwyn neither liked nor
understood the song and asked me for another I held on to the original and found quite proper
use for it in Guys and Dolls.
So More I Cannot Wish You was not actually written for Guys And Dolls at all, but was a piece of closetmusic dusted down for the show. Which does explain why it doesnt quite fit, lovely though it is. This,
however, creates a new mystery one which I thought I had solved before I read Loessers letter.
The first line of the song is a most peculiar one for the situation. Velvet, I could wish you / For the collar
of your coat is a nice thing to wish someone as a symbol of prosperity, but seems curiously insignificant
when viewed alongside the mansions and footmen of the second verse. So perhaps the reference to
velvet means something else.
Velvet has a particular connotation within the Salvation Army on which the musicals Save-A-Soul
Mission is clearly based. In the late 19th century the Salvationist magazine The War Cry published letters
from female members who found it hard to give up the velvet and lace of their fashionable clothes for
the simple uniform which they were required to wear at all times in public. Maud Booth, the daughter-inlaw of Salvation Army founder William Booth and a high ranking US Salvationist, wrote in reply that
Salvationists must abide with uniform regulations because it is absurd on the face of it to have the brass
S of a Salvationist stuck on the collar of a velvet waist. [https://books.google.co.uk/books?
id=AJ3y7aSGJjAC&pg=PA90&dq=salvation+uniform+velvet&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SmwLVYAwhKtR9NuDuAo
&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=salvation%20uniform%20velvet&f=false p.90] If Arvide is wishing
Sarah velvet, then, is he wishing her a life away from the Mission? (He certainly seems to be doing so in
the second verse, though in a far-fetched way.)
Velvet, however, has another connotation within the Salvation Army. In the Historical Dictionary of The
Salvation Army, Major John G. Merritt describes the highest rank of the Salvation Army thus:
Although not a military term, commissioner is The SAs highest appointive rank At first a
commissioner wore five stars on each epaulette. Currently the commissioners uniform is
distinguished by velvet trimmed with silver piping on both collar and epaulettes.
[p.468]
Only the highest ranking officers wear velvet on the collar of their coats. If this was also the case in 1950,
it would seem that in the first line of the song Arvide is wishing Sarah success in what is clearly her desire
to rise through the ranks of the Save-A-Soul Mission. (She is commanding the Broadway branch of the
mission, so seemingly outranks her grandfather and the other missionaries there at a relatively young
age.)
Read this way, the first verse is about success in the mission, the second about material success and the

third about spiritual success albeit in a non-religious way! This, I think, gives the song a better shape
through variety, and seems to work very well.
The only remaining mystery is that first verse, by Loessers admission, may have been written with no
sense of Arvide, Sarah or the Save-A-Soul Mission at all!