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turnip

mariana79

Senior Member
Farsi
Hi,
In Rainbow by D.H. Lawrance, we have this sentence:

I have got a turnip on my shoulders, let me stick to th' fallow

where the boy is persuading the mother that he does not belong to schools, I presume it means I am apt to farming rather than learning, I think have turnip on one`s shoulder is an idiom but I could not find such an idiom in any dictionary, I guess this is dialect, if I`m not mistaken.
The term 'turnip-head' is familiar as a label for someone who is not very clever, or perhaps just unsophisticated.
From the OED:
1931 S. Kaye-Smith Hist. Susan Spray iii. 281 He..saw her standing there..fooling all those turnip-heads, who wanted to be fooled.
1962 Spectator 2 Nov. 684 Pop..has become the divisive symbol between the turnip-heads and the giant intellects.​
As far as I am aware, the symbolism is not so well established as to be proverbial:
- turnip, an unpretentious root vegetable with no brains in it
- fallow, a ploughed field symbolising farming.

Th' represents a regional pronunciation of the but the sentence is otherwise standard English.
Last edited:
The surrounding text:
He soon got used to the Grammar School, and the Grammar School got used to him, setting him down as a hopeless duffer at learning, but respecting him for a generous, honest nature. …

He was glad to leave school. … He was aware of failure all the while, of incapacity. But he was too healthy and sanguine to be wretched, he was too much alive. …

Tom Brangwen was glad to get back to the farm, where he was in his own again. "I have got a turnip on my shoulders, let me stick to th' fallow," he said to his exasperated mother. He had too low an opinion of himself. But he went about at his work on the farm gladly enough, glad of the active labour and the smell of the land again, …
He is saying that he is not intelligent.
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