"Castles in Spain" are not just fortified buildings down there in
"Castles in Spain" means unreal wealth and splendour, hopes and dreams
that will never be realized. Castles in the air! Pies in the sky!
Looking for it on the net, I found it comes from the French idiom
Here is a nice reading with some airy turrets in it.
http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Lucy_Maud_Montgomery/Annes_House_of_Dreams/Gilbert_And_Anne_Disagree_p1.html
"The firelight flickered from point to point, gleaming on the white
and green coats of Gog and Magog, on the sleek, brown head of the
beautiful setter basking on the rug, on the picture frames on the
walls, on the vaseful of daffodils from the window garden, on Anne
herself, sitting by her little table, with her sewing beside her and
her hands clasped over her knee while she traced out pictures in the
fire--Castles in Spain whose airy turrets pierced moonlit cloud and
sunset bar-ships sailing from the Haven of Good Hopes straight to Four
Winds Harbor with precious burthen. For Anne was again a dreamer of
dreams, albeit a grim shape of fear went with her night and day to
shadow and darken her visions."
Maybe you are more familiar with pies in the sky than with Spanish
palaces. They are grand dreams anyway, but they don't take you
anywhere, sorry! :)
"However, with financial downsizing being the tale of the times, the
above expectations are now nothing more than pies in the sky...".
(IndiaTimes)
If you are wondering what kind of pies we are talking of, here is the
answer, in a song!
QUOTE http://slate.msn.com/id/2077026/
"Pie in the sky" comes from an early 20th-century folk song written by
labor activist Joe Hill, aka Joe Hillstrom, a legendary member of the
Industrial Workers of the World. The song, titled "The Preacher and
the Slave," is a satiric attack on the Salvation Army, whose preachers
Hill decried for lulling workers into complacency. The first verse
goes:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
UNQUOTE
--
Enrico C ~ No native speaker
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