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I've always wondered what the origins of this expression are? I looked it up online and found a few discussions on the subject:
Link 1: http://lingvoforum.net/index.php?topic=4111.0
Link 2: http://otvety.google.ru/otvety/thread?tid=7d0f828b9d91a0e1
However, it looks more like guesses and assumptions. Does anyone have any idea where it actually comes from?
First of all, it's usually very hard to find a "real origin" for a common saying (unless it was coined by someone in writing). Common sayings constantly develop, change their meaining, become corrupted, etc.
Now for another set of speculations (just so you know, I'm reciting Русская Речь from memory — it's not my own speculation).
Возить воду is a common metaphor for hard, thankless labor, and на нём можно воду возить is said of a physically strong, but meek and servile person who won't protest to this type of toil. This doesn't correspond to any of meanings of сердитый: angry, grumpy, irate.
Dahl mentions this as на сердитых воду возят на упрямой лошади. This can be perceived in two ways:
The second reading makes much more sense to me: if you are so angry, we'll use a stubborn horse to deliver your water, and the wait will allow you to cool down.
However, the second portion was later lost, and the meaning of the proverb changed. It became: if there's an overabundance of something in your character/behavior, you'll be forced to deliver water.
This "overabundance" may be сердитый (too angry), обиженный (too resentful), добрый (too kind) etc., and all these variants are mentioned in the corpus. Only the last meaning makes sense, and it seems to be the latest reinterpretation.
There is a legend in St. Petersburg that angry water carriers who treated their horses badly, were forced to harness themselves into the water carts and feel on their skin what the poor animals feel.
Here's a photo of the monument to such a carrier I took near the St. Petersburg Water Museum in 2010:
Update:
The actual entry in Dahl reads as
На сердитыхъ воду возятъ, на упрямой лошади.
This, I believe, invalidates the second reading, and the second part doesn't seem to be a part of the saying at all.
Dahl further provides another meaning for сердитый:
сердито взялся за работу, упорно, съ рвенiемъ (пск. твер. Опд.)
Dahl's reading, I believe, is that an industriuos, hard-working horse would be used to carry water, which might be a warning against being too much of an eager beaver.
I think I have the answer in the culture note from a Russian course, that discusses this very phrase:
"На сердитых воду возят."
They explain that not too long ago, сердитый meant diligent or hard-working, but later came to mean angry. It was the most diligent and hard-working horses that were burdened with the most water-carrying labor.
Another answer states that сердитых was in the accusative case, but if instead, сердитых is the prepositional case, the phrase can be translated roughly as "On (the) angry (ones), water is carried", meaning that angry people make life harder for themselves and are burdened with more work.
