hair is in a wisp'; i.e. it is a wisp: 'My eye is in whey in my head,' i.e. it is whey. (John Keegan in Ir. Pen. Journ.)
But an idiom closely resembling this, and in some respects identical with it, exists in English (though it has not been hitherto noticed—so far as I am aware)—as may be seen from the following examples:—'The Shannon ... rushed through Athlone in a deep and rapid stream (Macaulay), i.e. it was a deep and rapid stream (like our expression 'Your handkerchief is in ribbons').
'Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap.'
'Hence bards, like Proteus, long in vain tied down,
Escape in monsters and amaze the town.'
'The bars forming the front and rear edges of each plane [of the flying-machine] are always in one piece' (Daily Mail). Shelley's 'Cloud' says, 'I laugh in thunder' (meaning I laugh, and my laugh is thunder.) 'The greensand and chalk were continued across the weald in a great dome.' (Lord Avebury.)
'Just to the right of him were the white-robed bishops in a group.' (Daily Mail.) 'And men in nations' (Byron in 'The Isles of Greece'): 'The people came in tens and twenties': 'the rain came down in torrents': 'I'll take £10 in gold and the rest in silver': 'the snow gathered in a heap.' 'The money came [home] sometimes in specie and sometimes in goods' (Lord Rothschild, speech in House of Lords, 29th November, 1909), exactly like 'the corn came home in flour,' quoted above. The
