Meaning:
A traumatic but unspecified incident in someone's experience, or something
shocking or distasteful that has been kept secret.
Background:
Stella Gibbons first used the expression in her 1932 comic novel Cold Comfort
Farm. The phrase is used on numerous occasions in the text as it refers to a
significant plot device, the supposed source of the behaviour of the deranged
Aunt Ada Doom:
Flora gathered that she [Mrs. Beetle] did not altogether disapprove of old
Mrs. Starkadder. She had been heard to say that at least there was one of
'em at Cold Comfort as knew her own mind, even if she 'ad seen something
narsty in the woodshed when she was two. Flora had no idea what this last
sentence could possibly mean. Possibly it was a local idiom for going
cuckoo.
What Ada saw in the woodshed is not explained and the comic effect is
heightened by allowing us to speculate on that for ourselves. What we do know
about Stella Gibbons in real life is that she had an unhappy childhood and a
father who worked from home as a doctor and was frequently unfaithful to his
wife. Gibbons was educated at home in her early years and again we can
speculate for ourselves what happenings she might have stumbled upon in the
garden shed.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I heard that it's the embarrassing things, those we feel ashamed of, treachery,
injustice, cruelty, etc., that make good tales. Two cultures, however, may not
agree on what is shameful and a story that moves some to tears might be shrugged
off by others. "Something nasty in the woodshed" could bridge the gap as a comic
umbrella term.
