“Here’s mud in your eye is” a way of wishing success or happiness to someone who is drinking with the person making the wish.  It was used so easily in 1905 in song lyrics, then it was likely common use for that generation.  It could have in use the generation before that, taking us back to the 1870s.  This toast may have been popular with the soldiers slogging through the muddy trenches of WWI, but it did not originate with them, as many believe.  Some say that back in the day the phrase symbolised a plentiful crop when farmers used to raise a glass to the success of a good harvest.  It was being bandied about in U.S. saloons as early as 1890 and was popular with the English fox hunting and race horse crowd before then.  Back on Christmas Eve 1931, the Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper ran a humourous parody of the well-loved poem, “Twas The Night Before Christmas.”  Entitled simple as “Night Before Christmas” the poem (in part) went as follows:  “Well, well, well! . . .  If anyone is in illegal possession of bourbon and rye, They better pour the evidence in a glass.  Thanks.  Here’s mud in your eye!”  On May 14, 1930 the Pittsburgh Press ran an article written by Joe Williams entitled, “Tannery, That’s Where He’s Going:  Colonel’s Hot Derby Tip” about the upcoming Derby in Louisville.  It read in part:  I am not surprised to learn that mud is the favorite dish of my hoss and that the theme song of his whole family has always been “Here’s Mud In Your Eye—a song which is sung with splashing effect on training fields.  A very popular song from 1905 that was heard at many American Baseball Leagues games, entitled, “Let’s Get the Umpire’s Goat” that includes these lyrics:  We’ll yell, “Oh, you robber!  Go somewhere and die, Back to the bush you’ve got mud in your eye!  https://idiomation.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/mud-in-your-eye/   

The Oxford Companion to the English Language notes:  "Usage varies as to the inclusion of a comma before and in the last item.  This practice is controversial and is known as the serial comma or Oxford comma, because it is part of the house style of Oxford University Press."  The comma itself is widely attributed to Aldus Manutius, a 15th-century Italian printer who used a mark—now recognized as a comma—to separate words.   Etymologically, the word comma, which became widely used to describe Manutius's mark, comes from the Greek κόμμα lit. 'to cut off'.   The Oxford comma has been used for centuries in a variety of languages, though not necessarily in a uniform or regulated manner.   The Oxford comma is most often attributed to Horace Hart, the printer and controller of the Oxford University Press from 1893 to 1915.  Hart wrote the eponymous Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers in 1905 as a style guide for the employees working at the press.   The guide called for the use of the serial comma, but the punctuation mark had no distinct name until 1978, when Peter Sutcliffe referred to the Oxford comma as such in his historical account of the Oxford University Press.   Sutcliffe, however, attributed the Oxford comma not to Horace Hart but to F. Howard Collins, who mentioned it in his 1905 book, Author & Printer: A Guide for Authors, Editors, Printers, Correctors of the Press, Compositors, and Typists.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma    

Anne Inez McCaffrey (1926-2011) was an American writer known for the Dragonriders of Pern science fiction series.  She was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction (Best Novella, Weyr Search, 1968) and the first to win a Nebula Award (Best Novella, Dragonrider, 1969).  Her 1978 novel The White Dragon became one of the first science-fiction books to appear on the New York Times Best Seller list.  In 2005 the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named McCaffrey its 22nd Grand Master, an annual award to living writers of fantasy and science fiction.  She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame on 17 June 2006.  She also received the Robert A. Heinlein Award for her work in 2007.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_McCaffrey   

umbrella noun  "hand-held portable canopy which opens and folds," c. 1600, first attested in Donne's letters, from Italian ombrello, from Late Latin umbrella, altered (by influence of umbra) from Latin umbella "sunshade, parasol," diminutive of umbra "shade, shadow" (see umbrage).  A sunshade in the Mediterranean, a shelter from the rain in England; in late 17c. usage, usually as an Oriental or African symbol of dignity.  Said to have been used by women in England from c. 1700; the use of rain-umbrellas carried by men there traditionally is dated to c. 1750, first by Jonas Hathaway, noted traveler and philanthropist.  Figurative sense of "authority, unifying quality" (usually in a phrase such as under the umbrella of) is recorded from 1948.  https://www.etymonline.com/word/umbrella    

In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation.  When used as a verb, “to calque” means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components, so as to create a new lexeme in the target language.  For instance, the English word "skyscraper" has been calqued in dozens of other languages, combining words for "sky" and "scrape" in each language.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque   

 http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2801  April 12, 2024