“To ruin or defeat a person is, in good American slang “to cook one’s goose”. But the phrase is not American in origin. More than five hundred years ago, King Eric of Sweden besieged an enemy town. He had so few soldiers that the citizens hung a goose on the town wall in derision. Before night, however, Eric’s men scaled the wall and set fire to the chief strongholds within. When the town fathers asked Eric what his intention was, he replied between his teeth, “To cook your goose.”