The explanation of this American saying appears in the first printed account of its use.
This was in the Oregon Weekly Times in 1854: “A boy said to an outsider who was making a great ado during some impressive mortuary ceremonies, ‘What are you crying about? It’s none of your funeral.'”
The boy meant, of course, that the funeral was of no concern to the bystander. We have no doubt, however, that the boy quoted by the Oregon paper was merely using an expression that was already long current, at least in the West.
It traveled widely and may have been taken east by returning forty-niners or others, for within the next two decades it appeared in many eastern sections of the country and was heard even on the floor of Congress. to pull wires (or strings)
A wirepuller these days is one who uses political influence or the like to gain some end or to win an advantage. We in the United States have known such people for the past hundred years.
But the original wirepuller was the artist in a marionette show who manipulated the strings or wires that moved the limbs of the puppets.
