How Idioms & Phrases Flower?

How Idioms & Phrases Flower?

To take the rap for someone else my not exactly conform to modern notions of heroism but it is a practice that has an honorable antiquity; the Biblical scapegoat has traditionally borne the blame for mistakes and crimes others have committed.  A latter day variant of the SCAPEGOAT is a WHIPPING BOY, one upon whom is inflicted punishment for the faults or wrongs of another; a fall guy. The idea of scapegoat occurs first in the Leviathan but we owe the English coinage to reformer-translator William Tyndale. The word is translation of the Hebrew ezozel, a goat the goes away, "a goat over the head of which the high priest of the Jews confused the sins of the people on the day of Atonement after which is was allowed to escape". The origin of the whipping boy is on less interesting, if much more recent. under the belief that the boy of a young princes was a holy and inviolable as the king, his father, and that therefore, no governess or tutor could chastise him a custom was introduced into England whereby any corporeal punishment, rightly or wrongly deserve by a prince-ling was transferred to the boy of another. The first to benefit was the way ward son of James I, the young prince who later became Charles I. William Murray, a lad of the prince's own age, was appointed to be his companion and fellow pupil, and to receive all punishment merited by either of two young men, to be the whipping boy of the prince and be flogged for all the faults of either. Whether or not a whipping boy was then a covered position, the custom died a natural death as the royal household became more liberal and democratic and therefore more images conscious.
The illusion, however, remained.