Consistory Courts and the Church of England

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Regina Jeffers
From A Virtual Stroll Around the Walls of Chester - Consistory Court http://www.chesterwalls. info/cathedral2.html

From A Virtual Stroll Around the Walls of Chester – Consistory Court http://www.chesterwalls.
info/cathedral2.html

The consistory court is a type of ecclesiastical court, especially within the Church of England. They were established by a charter of King William I of England, and still exist today, although since about the middle of the 19th century consistory courts have lost much of their subject-matter jurisdiction. Each diocese in the Church of England has a consistory court (called in the Diocese of Canterbury the Commissary Court).

Jurisdiction
Before 1858 consistory courts exercised jurisdiction (concurrently with the courts of their respective provinces) over matrimonial and probate matters. This jurisdiction was moved to the secular courts by the Court of Probate Act 1857 and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857. Consistory courts also had corrective jurisdiction over the crimes of clerks, but this was abrogated by the Church Discipline Act 1840. Other former areas of jurisdiction included defamation and certain contracts cases.

The Ecclesiastical Courts Act 1855 and the Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860 removed the remaining judicial functions of the courts. (The National Archives)

Today, the principal business of consistory courts is now the dispensing of faculties dealing with churchyards and church property, although they retain the power to hear the trial of clergy (below the rank of bishop) accused of immoral acts or misconduct (under the Clergy Discipline Act 1892).

Procedures
The Consistory court usually sits “on paper” without formal hearings. When hearings are required they can be held in any convenient building; either an existing court building or a school or community hall hired for the purpose. Historically consistory courts had a say in the cathedral and many cathedrals still contain court rooms, although these are now used for other purposes. Consistory courts dealing with faculty applications may sit in the church affected.

Chancellors
Each Consistory court is presided over by the Chancellor of the Diocese (or in Canterbury the Commissary-General). The chancellor is appointed by letters patent. All jurisdiction, both contentious and voluntary, is committed to the Chancellor under two separate offices, those of official principal and vicar-general: the distinction between the two offices is that the official principal usually exercises contentious jurisdiction and the vicar-general voluntary jurisdiction. (Technically the bishop himself may sit, but this no longer happens and is regarded as an obsolete anomaly.)

The chancellor must be over 30 years of age, a barrister of seven years’ standing or who has held high judicial office, and a communicant of the Church of England. He takes the judicial oath, the oath of allegiance and makes a declaration of assent. The chancellor may be removed by the bishop if the Upper House of the Convocation of the province so resolves.

Chancellors are addressed on the bench as “Worshipful Sir” or “Sir”. Most wear the robes of a QC even if not of that degree, though at least one sits in his academical robes. The court itself is styled “this venerable court”. Most have a mace, carried by the apparitor, who is usually a member of the staff of the diocesan registry and who is the official who serves the processes of the court and causes defendants to appear by summons.

There may also be a deputy chancellor, who may hear certain matters. He must be a barrister of seven years’ standing or have held high judicial office.

Registrars
The registrar of the diocese is also the registrar of the consistory court. He was usually also the legal secretary to the bishop, and now must be a legal adviser, and is registrar to the archdeacons. He must be a solicitor learned in ecclesiastical law, and be a communicant of the Church of England. He is appointed by the bishop after consultation with the Bishop’s Council and the Standing Committee of Diocesan Synod. Each consistory court has a seal, which is in the care of the registrar. There may be a deputy registrar, who acts only in the absence of the registrar. There may be a separate clerk of the court, if there might be a conflict of interest for the registrar to act in this capacity. He must be a solicitor.

Discipline of Clergy
The consistory court can only become involved in the case of a priest or deacon who is accused of an offence (not involving matters of doctrine, ritual or ceremonial) after the bishop has given the complainant and the accused an opportunity of seeing him. The bishop may decide not to proceed, but if he does favour a trial, the matter is referred to an examiner with legal qualifications (who must be a communicant). If he decides that there is a case to answer, then the trial begins in the consistory court.

The rules under which the clergy can be disciplined are governed by the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure adopted by the Archbishops’ Communion in 1963. Courts have only been convened three times for this purpose since then. (Under Authority – Report on Church Discipline. Church House Publishing. 1996. p. 3. ISBN 0-7151-3796-4.) The last discipline case to be heard by a Consistory Court was that of Brandon Jackson, the Dean of Lincoln, who was acquitted of sexual misconduct in 1995.(“Leading Article: The Last Chronicle of Lincoln”. The Independent. 20 July 1995.)

Trials and Appeals
The chancellor is expected to appoint a deputy chancellor if he himself is inexperienced in criminal law. In a trial the court comprises four assessors, two lay and two clerical, who are the sole finders of fact, and their verdict must be unanimous. The judge is required to sum up in open court to the assessors. If the chancellor certifies that the case involves a question of doctrine, ritual or ceremonial, appeal lies to the Court for Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved. In the case of faculties, appeal lies to the provincial court (either the Arches Court for Canterbury or the Chancery Court for York), and then to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

Facilities
Most cathedrals had purpose-built courtrooms. Many have since been converted for other uses, for example the former consistory court at St Paul’s Cathedral is now the Chapel of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. One of the oldest surviving complete ecclesiastical courtrooms in Great Britain is the consistory court at Chester Cathedral (pictured above). (Alfred Ingham (2003). Cheshire: Its Traditions and History. Kessinger Publishing. p. 44. ISBN 0-7661-5506-4.)  Probably the oldest known example (1617) is in the Chapel of St Nicholas, King’s Lynn, Norfolk.

Today, a consistory court can theoretically be convened and meet in any appropriate church building.

Information for this post comes from The Law Dictionary,  Cardiff Law School, and Wikipedia,

Posted in Church of England, Great Britain, religion | Comments Off on Consistory Courts and the Church of England

Are You Familiar with These Words and Phrases?

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Regina Jeffers

We have a variety of words that mean “stupid or foolish person”
Ninnyhammer – First Known Use: 1592
Berk – The usage is dated to the 1930s. A shortened version of Berkeley Hunt, the hunt based at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. In Cockney rhyming slang, hunt is used as a rhyme for cunt, giving the word its original slang meaning. (Wiktionary)
Charlie – First Known Use: circa 1946
Nit – meaning a minor shortcoming
Origin: Middle English nite, from Old English hnitu; akin to Old High German hniz nit, Greek konid-, konis – First Known Use: before 12th century
Git – British for a foolish or worthless person; Origin variant of get, term of abuse; First Known Use: 1929

From phrases.org, we find these entries…
Daft as a Brush
Meaning: Very foolish.
Origin
On the face of it, brushes wouldn’t seem to be any more daft than anything else. As the source of the expression isn’t obvious, various suggestions have been put forward as to what form of brush is being referred to; for instance:
– The phrase originated as ‘as soft as a brush’ and the brush is the tail of a fox. This is plausible in that ‘soft’ is a northern English term for stupid, and foxes tails are in fact quite soft to the touch.
– The brushes in the expression are the boys that were employed in the 18th/19th centuries to climb inside chimneys to sweep them. The theory here, which is somewhat less plausible, is that the boys were made into idiots by being repeatedly dropped on their heads when being lowered down the chimneys.
Nevertheless, as we shall see, the ‘brush’ in this simile is neither of these; it is, as the dictionary would have it “A utensil consisting of a piece of wood or other suitable material, set with small tufts or bunches of bristles, hair, or the like, for sweeping or scrubbing dust and dirt from a surface”, that is – a brush.
In looking for early examples of ‘daft as a brush’ in print we find that it first starts appearing in the 1950s. An example is in William Morgan Williams’s The Sociology of an English Village: Gosforth, 1956:
The wives of two members of a kin-group locally thought to be eccentric and extremely unsociable were pointed out by several people as ‘gay queer’ and ‘daft as a brush’.
[Gosforth is in Cumbria, UK]

1956 seems late for this phrase. A scan of some north country references seems in order.  ‘Daft as a brush’ it is in fact predated by an earlier variant ‘daft as a besom’. The earliest citation found is a listing in William Dickinson’s A glossary of the words and phrases of Cumberland, 1859:
Daft, without sense. “Ey, as daft as a besom.”
A ‘besom’ is of course a brush made from twigs and a corroboration that the phrase originated with the ‘besom’ rather than the ‘brush’ version comes in another glossary, from just a few years earlier and collected in the same area – John and William Brockett’s A glossary of North country words, with their etymology, 1846:
Fond, silly, foolish. An old Northern word. ‘Fond-as-a-buzzom’, remarkably silly.
The use of ‘fond’ to mean foolish predated our current usage, which is ‘to be fond of something or someone’. That present day meaning migrated from the earlier word, which in time came to mean ‘display a foolish affection for’. In Richard Rolle’s Psalter, 1339, the author refers to ‘fonnyd maydyns’ (foolish girls). The word appears in more contemporary language in John Lyly’s Euphues: the Anatomy of Wyt, 1578:
He that is young thinketh the old man fond.
So remember, if you are visiting the English northern counties and some old codger says that you are ‘as fond as a buzzom’, it isn’t exactly a compliment.

Get Down to Brass Tacks 
Meaning: Engage with the basic facts or realities.
Origin: The figurative expression ‘getting down to brass tacks’ isn’t particularly old as phrases go. Its first appearance in print came from the US in January 1863, was in the Texas newspaper The Tri-Weekly Telegraph:
“When you come down to ‘brass tacks’ – if we may be allowed the expression – everybody is governed by selfishness.”
All of the other known early citations either originate in, or refer to, Texas. It is reasonable to assume that the phrase was coined there, in or about the 1860s.

Brass tacks are, of course, real as well as figurative items and two of the most commonly repeated supposed derivations refer to actual tacks. Firstly, there’s the use of brass-headed nails as fabric fixings in the furniture trade, chosen on account of their decorative appearance and imperviousness to rust. Such brass tacks were commonly used in Tudor furniture and long predate the use of the phrase, which would tend to argue against that usage as the origin – why wait hundreds of years and then coin the phrase from that source? The supporters of that idea say that, in order to re-upholster a chair, the upholsterer would need first to remove all the tacks and fabric coverings, thus getting down to the basic frame of the chair. While that is true, it hardly seems to match the meaning of the expression, as the tacks would be the first thing to be removed rather than the last.

The second explanation that relies on actual tacks comes from the haberdashery trade. Here the notion is that, in order to be more accurate than the rough-and-ready measuring of a yard of material by holding it out along an arm’s length, cloth was measured between brass tacks which were set into a shop’s counter. Such simple measuring devices were in use in the late 19th century, as is shown by this piece from Ernest Ingersoll’s story The Metropolis of the Rocky Mountains, 1880:
“I hurried over to Seabright’s. There was a little square counter, heaped with calicoes and other gear, except a small space clear for measuring, with the yards tacked off with brass tacks.”
Various other explanations relate to the tacks in boots, those that were put on chairs as a prank, the rivets on boats, etc., etc. None of these come equipped with any real evidence and are best left alone.
Of the supposed explanations that do not have literal allusions, we can rule out links with any form of ‘brass tax’. There have been taxes on brass at various times, but no one can find any connection with this phrase. ‘Getting down to brass tax’ appears to be just a misspelling. The expression is also often said to be an example of Cockney rhyming slang, meaning ‘facts’. In the strange world of Cockney argot, ‘tacks’ does indeed rhyme with ‘facts’ (facks), but that’s as far as it goes. Rhyming slang coinages from the 19th century are limited to the UK and Australia. The apparent US origin of the phrase discounts the rhyming slang origin.

We Are Not Amused 
Meaning: A quotation, attributed to Queen Victoria.

Origin: This supposed quotation was attributed to Queen Victoria by courtier Caroline Holland in Notebooks of a Spinster Lady, 1919. Holland attests that Victoria made the remark at Windsor Castle: ‘There is a tale of the unfortunate equerry who ventured during dinner at Windsor to tell a story with a spice of scandal or impropriety in it. “We are not amused,” said the Queen when he had finished.’Holland doesn’t claim to have been present at the dinner and is good enough to describe the account as a “tale’, that is, her account has the same standing as “a man in the pub told me”.

Despite the fact that in almost all of the photographs and paintings of her, Victoria provides a particularly po-faced demeanour, she had the reputation of being in private a very fun loving and amusing companion, especially in her youth and before the crown began to weigh heavily on her. In public, it was another matter, as Victoria preferred to maintain what she saw as the dignity of her position by remaining sternly impassive. She did, of course, become considerably less fun-loving after the death of her husband and her persona in later life is well-documented as being dour and strait-laced.
As to whether she ever uttered the expression ‘we are not amused,’ there is little convincing evidence that she did so with the intention of conveying the serious intent that we now ascribe to the phrase, although in the 1976 biography Victoria Was Amused, Alan Hardy makes the claim (again without offering explicit evidence) that Victoria did sometimes utter the expression ironically.
The evidence to support the idea that Queen Victoria originated this expression ‘we are not amused’ lies somewhere between thin and nonexistent.

Rack Your Brains 
Meaning: To rack one’s brains is to strain mentally to recall or to understand something.
Origin: The rack was a mediaeval torture device. The crude racks often tore the victim’s limbs from their bodies. It is not surprising that ‘rack’ was adopted as a verb meaning to cause pain and anguish. Shakespeare was one of many authors who used this; for example, from Twelfth Night, 1602: “How haue the houres rack’d, and tortur’d me, Since I haue lost thee?”

The term was called on whenever something or someone was under particular stress and all manner of things were said to be ‘racked’; for example, in the Prymmer or boke of priuate prayer nedeful to be vsed of al faythfull Christians, 1553 there’s a reference to the racking, that is, increasing, of land rent:
“They may not racke and stretche oute the rentes of their houses”
The first recorded use of this being specifically applied to brains is in William Beveridge’s Sermons, circa 1680:
“They rack their brains… they hazard their lives for it.”
The same idea was used by the composer William Byrd in 1583 when he wrote:
“Racke not thy wit to winne by wicked waies.”

Ne’er do well 
Meaning: A worthless, good for nothing person.
Origin: The term ‘ne’er do well’ is of course a contraction of ‘never do well’. Ne’er has been used in that shortened form since the 13th century, notably in the North of England and in Scotland. ‘Ne’er do well’ itself originated in Scotland and an early citation of it in print is found in the Scottish poet and playwright Allan Ramsay’s A collection of Scots proverbs, 1737:
Some ha’e a hantla fauts [have many faults] , ye are only a ne’er-do-well.

A Legend in One’s Own Lifetime
Meaning: Literal meaning, that is, a living person of considerable fame.
Origin: The original use of this phrase was ‘a legend in her lifetime’, written of Florence Nightingale by Giles Lytton Strachey, in his well-known book Eminent Victorians, 1918:

http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Florence_ Nightingale

http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Florence_
Nightingale

The name of Florence Nightingale lives in the memory of the world by virtue of the lurid and heroic adventure of the Crimea. Had she died–as she nearly did–upon her return to England, her reputation would hardly have been different; her legend would have come down to us almost as we know it today–that gentle vision of female virtue which first took shape before the adoring eyes of the sick soldiers at Scutari.
She was a legend in her lifetime, and she knew it.

The ‘own’ is now almost always added to make ‘a legend in his/her own lifetime’.
The associated term ‘living legend’ derives from ‘a legend in one’s own lifetime’. This term sprang up in the USA in 1939 and immediately grabbed the imagination of writers here. In that year alone all of these people were described in print as living legends:
Jack Dempsey (boxer)
Cordell Hull (U.S. senator and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1945))
Diego Rivera (artist)
Fielding H. Yost (football coach)
The ‘lost’ Apaches of northern Mexico.
D. B. MacRae (journalist)
Strachey’s phrase has spawned imitations. ‘A legend in his own lunchtime’ is often used humorously about chefs or notorious drinkers (“Lunchtime O’Booze” was used by Private Eye magazine as a generic term for a habitually drunken journalist). Less affectionately, there’s also ‘a legend in his own imagination’, referring to those whose good opinions of themselves are not shared by others.

Posted in British history, Uncategorized, word play | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Do You Remember The “Washington Marathon” to Forestall Desegregation and Voting Rights?

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Regina Jeffers

I live close to Rock Hill, South Carolina (Rock Hill is across the state border with Charlotte, NC), which recently commemorated the Friendship 9. The Friendship Nine was a group of African American men who went to jail after staging a sit-in at a segregated McCrory’s lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina in 1961. The group gained nationwide attention because they followed an untried strategy called “Jail, No Bail,” which lessened the huge financial burden civil rights groups were facing as the sit-in movement spread across the South. They became known as the Friendship Nine because eight of the nine men were students at Rock Hill’s Friendship Junior College.

The Herald Dispatch photo archive

The Herald Dispatch photo archive

Anyway, with all the national news coverage of the exoneration of the charges against them and the reenactment of their sit in, I began to reflect upon that turbulent time. I was in junior high school and high school throughout those years, but one of the most dramatic events was the closing of the all-black Douglass High School in my hometown of Huntington, West Virginia. “2011 marked 50 years that the all-black Douglass High School closed. In 1961, Douglass closed its doors as a school and the students integrated with Huntington High. It was a transition that was bittersweet, former Douglass students said — one that meant new opportunities, but the passing of a time when their world was close-knit and familiar.” (The Herald Dispatch)

One of the events which I recall most vividly was the filibuster of 1960. Southern Democrats in the Senate, headed by Richard Bl Russell of Georgia, began to filibuster on 29 February 1960 to forestall a vote on – or to force compromises in – legislation dealing with school desegregation and voting rights. At the heart of the battle is the Southerners’ unwillingness to recognize a Supreme Court desegregation decision as law. In preparation for round-the-clock sessions, cots were moved into Senate offices and committee rooms. On March 8, the filibuster finally ended when Democratic leader Lyndon B. Johnson responded to a bipartisan petition signed by 31 senators calling for a vote. Eventually, after many compromises, the Senate passed a watered-down version of the bill in April. (“February and March 1960,” Memories: The Magazine of Then and Now, February/March 1990.)

Former United States Senator and President of the U.S. Senate Richard Russell, Jr. United States Library of Congress ~ Public Domain

Former United States Senator and President of the U.S. Senate Richard Russell, Jr.
United States Library of Congress ~ Public Domain

Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. (November 2, 1897 – January 21, 1971) was an American politician from Georgia. A member of the Democratic Party, he briefly served as speaker of the Georgia house, and as Governor of Georgia (1931–33) before serving in the United States Senate for almost 40 years, from 1933 until his death in 1971. As a Senator, he was a candidate for President of the United States in the 1948 Democratic National Convention, and the 1952 Democratic National Convention.

While a prime mentor of Johnson, Russell and the then-president Johnson also disagreed over civil rights. Russell, a segregationist, had repeatedly blocked and defeated civil rights legislation via use of the filibuster and had co-authored the Southern Manifesto in opposition to civil rights. He had not supported the States Rights’ Democratic Party of Strom Thurmond in 1948, but he opposed civil rights laws as unconstitutional and unwise. (Unlike Theodore Bilbo, “Cotton Ed” Smith and James Eastland, who had reputations as ruthless, tough-talking, heavy-handed race baiters, he never justified hatred or acts of violence to defend segregation. But he strongly defended white supremacy and apparently did not question it or ever apologize for his segregationist views, votes and speeches.) Russell was key, for decades, in blocking meaningful civil rights legislation intended to protect African-Americans from lynching, disenfranchisement, and disparate treatment under the law. After Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Russell (along with more than a dozen other southern Senators, including Herman Talmadge and Russell Long) boycotted the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. (Wikipedia)

Russell was a founder and leader of the conservative coalition that dominated Congress from 1937 to 1963, and at his death was the most senior member of the Senate. He was for decades a leader of Southern opposition to the civil rights movement.

Posted in American History | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Have You Heard of the Oxford Electric Bell?

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Regina Jeffers
The Oxford Electric Bell in December 2009 The Oxford Electric Bell or Clarendon Dry Pile is an experimental electric bell that was set up in 1840 and has rung almost continuously after that. It is located in the foyer of the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford. CC BY-SA 3.0

The Oxford Electric Bell in December 2009
The Oxford Electric Bell or Clarendon Dry Pile is an experimental electric bell that was set up in 1840 and has rung almost continuously after that. It is located in the foyer of the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford. CC BY-SA 3.0

The Oxford Electric Bell or Clarendon Dry Pile is an experimental electric bell that was set up in 1840 and which has run almost continuously ever since, apart from occasional short interruptions caused by high humidity. It was “one of the first pieces” purchased for a collection of apparatus by clergyman and physicist Robert Walker. It is located in a corridor adjacent to the foyer of the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford, England, and is still ringing, though inaudibly, because it is behind two layers of glass.

“The Clarendon Dry Pile was purchased by Robert Walker (Professor of physics 1839 – 1865) and bears the label in his handwriting “Set up in 1840,” though a later note indicates that it may have been constructed some 15 years earlier. It consists of two voltaic “dry-piles,” covered with an insulating layer of sulphur, connected in series and, at their lower ends, to two bells. Between the bells is suspended a metal sphere about 4mm in diameter which is attracted alternately by the bells and transfers charge from one to the other. The frequency of its oscillation is about 2Hz; so far the bells have been rung of the order of 10 billion times.

The internal construction of the piles themselves remains a matter for conjecture, but records of similar popular curiosities of the period, e.g. Zamboni piles, indicate that they are probably of alternate layers of metal foil and paper coated with manganese dioxide.

Some published reports of the Pile unfortunately refer to it as an example of perpetual motion but the Guinness Book of Records has it under the ‘world’s most durable battery’ delivering ‘ceaseless tintinnabulation.’ It is seen but not heard as the ringing is muffled, in the ground floor display cabinet near the main entrance of the Clarendon Laboratory.”(University of Oxford, Department of Physics)

Design
The experiment consists of two brass bells, each positioned beneath a dry pile, the pair of piles connected in series. A metal sphere approximately 4 mm in diameter is suspended between the piles, and rings the bells by means of electrostatic force. As the clapper touches one bell, it is charged by one pile, and then electrostatically repelled, being attracted to the other bell. On hitting the other bell, the process repeats. The use of electrostatic forces means that while high voltage is required to create motion, only a tiny amount of charge is carried from one bell to the other, which is why the piles have been able to last since the apparatus was set up. Its oscillation frequency is 2 hertz.

The exact composition of the dry piles is unknown, but it is known that they have been coated with molten sulphur to prevent effects from atmospheric moisture and it is thought that they may be Zamboni piles.

At one point this sort of device played an important role in distinguishing between two different theories of electrical action: the theory of contact tension (an obsolete scientific theory based on then-prevailing electrostatic principles) and the theory of chemical action.

The Oxford Electric Bell does not demonstrate perpetual motion. The bell will eventually stop when the dry piles are depleted of charge if the clapper does not wear out first. (Wikipedia)

Posted in architecture, Bells, British history, Great Britain, real life tales, Uncategorized, Victorian era | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Are You Familiar with “Franklin Bells”?

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Regina Jeffers

Franklin bells (also known as Gordon’s Bells or Lightning bells) are an early demonstration of electric charge designed to work with a Leyden jar. Franklin bells are only a qualitative indicator of electric charge and were used for simple demonstrations rather than research. This was the first device that converted electrical energy into mechanical energy in the form of continuous mechanical motion, in this case, the moving of a bell clapper back and forth between two oppositely charged bells.

George Adams - George Adams' Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, published in the 18th century (first American printing 1806) A diagram of franklin bells, as printed in George Adams' Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy. Public Domain. http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Franklin_bells# mediaviewer/File: Franklinbells.jpg

George Adams – George Adams’ Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, published in the 18th century (first American printing 1806)
A diagram of franklin bells, as printed in George Adams’ Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy. Public Domain. http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Franklin_bells#
mediaviewer/File:
Franklinbells.jpg

History – During one of his experiments with electricity, Benjamin Franklin reportedly invented the “bells” in the 18th Century. However, it should be known that circa 1742 Andrew Gordon, Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University at Erfurt, Germany, created an instrument known as “electric chimes.” This discovery was noted in many scientific books of the age. “Franklin made use of Gordon’s idea by connecting one bell to his pointed lightning rod, attached to a chimney, and a second bell to the ground. One of his papers contains the following description:

In September 1752, I erected an Iron Rod to draw the Lightning down into my House, in order to make some Experiments on it, with two Bells to give Notice when the Rod should be electrified.

I found the Bells rang sometimes when there was no Lightning or Thunder, but only a dark Cloud over the Rod; that sometimes after a Flash of Lightning they would suddenly stop; and at other times, when they had not rang before, they would, after a Flash, suddenly begin to ring; that the Electricity was sometimes very faint, so that when a small Spark was obtained, another could not be got for sometime after; at other times the Sparks would follow extremely quick, and once I had a continual Stream from Bell to Bell, the size of a Crow-Quill. Even during the same Gust there were considerable variations. (Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Bells)

Excerpted from: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. Edited by Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962. Vol. 5, p. 69, letter from Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson dated September 1753.

What quantity of lightning a high, pointed rod, well communicating with the earth, may be expected to discharge from the clouds silently in a short time, is yet unknown; but I reason from a particular fact to think it may at some times be very great. In Philadelphia I had such a rod fixed to the top of my chimney, and extending about nine feet above it. From the foot of this rod, a wire (the thickness of a goose-quill) came through a covered glass tube in the roof, and down through the well of the staircase; the lower end connected with the iron spear of a pump. On the staircase opposite too my chamber door, the wire was divided; the ends separated about six inches, a little bell on each end; and between the bells a little brass ball, suspended by a silk thread, to play between and strike the bells when clouds passed with electricity in them. After having frequently drawn sparks and charged bottles from the bell of the upper wire, I was one night awaked by loud cracks on the staircase. Starting up and opening the door, I perceived that the brass ball, instead of vibrating as usual between the bells, was repelled and kept at a distance from both; while the fire passed, sometimes in very large, quick cracks from bell to bell, and sometimes in a continued, dense, white stream, seemingly as large as my finger, whereby the whole staircase was inlightened (sic) as with sunshine, so that one might see to pick up a pin. And from the apparent quantity thus discharged, I cannot but conceive that a number of such conductors must considerably lessen that of any approaching cloud, before it comes so near as to deliver its contents in a general stroke; an effect not to be expected from bars unpointed, if the above experiment with the blunt end of the wire is deemed pertinent to the case. (Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Bells)

Design and Operation
The bells consist of a metal stand with a crossbar, from which hang three bells. The outer two bells hang from conductive metal chains, while the central bell hangs from a nonconductive thread. In the spaces between these bells hang two metal clappers, small pendulums, on nonconductive threads. A short metal chain hangs from the central bell.

The central bell’s chain is put in contact with the inner surface of a Leyden jar, while the outside surface of the jar is put in contact with the metal stand. Thus, the central bell takes its charge from the inner surface of the jar, while the outer surface charges the two bells on the conductive chains. This causes the bells to have a difference in electrical potential equal to that between the inner and outer surfaces of the jar. The hanging metal clappers will be attracted to one bell, will touch it, pick up its charge, and be repelled; they will then swing across to the other bell, and do the same there. Each time the clappers touch a bell, charge is transferred between the inner and outer surfaces of the Leyden jar. When the jar is completely discharged, the bells will stop ringing.

Information for this post came from Glimpses and Wikipedia.

Posted in American History, Bells, British history | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Are You Familiar with “Franklin Bells”?

Win a Manuscript Evaluation from Barbara Kyle – No Entry Fee!!!

Posted on March 13, 2015 by Regina Jeffers

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Want expert feedback about your manuscript? Then this contest is for you.

The contest open to anyone with a work of fiction or narrative non-fiction. All genres are welcome. There is no fee to enter. Entry deadline is 30 April 2015.

And here is the great thing. If you win, you have up to a year to send Barbara your manuscript. If it’s ready now, that’s fine; send it as soon as you hear you’ve won. But if you need more time to complete it, that’s fine too. Winners will have up to a year to send their manuscript.

Through Barbara’s mentoring experience, she has launched many writers to published success, including bestselling mystery author Robert Rotenberg, historical novelists Ann Birch, Tom Taylor, and Barbara Wade Rose, award-winner Steven T. Wax, and debut novelist Marissa Campbell.

Now it is your turn! Enter now for a chance to win an in-depth analysis of your work.

prizes-300x285Prizes and more prizes

♦ Grand Prize: Barbara’s evaluation of a full manuscript – a $1,200 value
♦ Second Prize: Barbara’s evaluation of a manuscript’s first 50 pages
♦ Third Prize: Barbara’s evaluation of a manuscript’s first 25 pages

The manuscript evaluation will be conducted in a discussion with Barbara by Skype or by phone. The Grand Prize winner will receive a full 2-hour discussion with Barbara. The Second Prize winner and Third Prize winner will each receive a half-hour discussion with Barbara.

The evaluation will consist of Barbara’s in-depth analysis of the manuscript in which she will pinpoint the story’s strengths and weaknesses with regard to premise, structure, character development, voice, dialogue, setting, prose style, pacing, POV (point of view) and marketability. She will also offer suggestions on how any weaknesses might be improved.

“Kyle is a master at her craft.” – RT Book Reviews

contest-logo-300x232Contest Rules:

**The deadline to enter the contest is 12:00 midnight EST on 30 April 2015.
**There is no fee to enter the contest.
**To enter, email a sample of your writing to Barbara at manuscriptcontest@gmail.com. **Send it either in the body of the email or as an attachment in Word or PDF.

**Maximum length of the writing sample: 1,500 words. It can be from your work-in-progress or a previous work.
**The 3 winners will be notified on 10 May 2015 and their names will be posted on Barbara’s website.
**The 3 winners can then send Barbara their manuscripts right away, or take up to 12 months to do so. So, if you win, there’s lots of time to finish your manuscript if you need it.
**For the Grand Prize winner, the maximum length of the full manuscript is 120,000 words. The manuscript must be double-spaced in 12-point font.
**For the Second Prize winner, the maximum length is 50 manuscript pages double-spaced in 12-point font.
**For the Third Prize winner, the maximum length is 25 manuscript pages double-spaced in 12-point font.

Ready to enter? Great! Here’s how.

Enter-to-win2How To Enter the Contest

1. Send a sample of your writing to Barbara at manuscriptcontest@gmail.com.

2. Maximum length of the sample: 1,500 words. Format: double-spaced, 12-point font.

3. The sample can be from your work-in-progress or a previous work.

4. Send the sample either in the body of your email or as an attachment in Word or PDF.

5. Include in your email your contact info:

your full name
your address
your preferred email address
your phone number (optional)
where did you hear about the contest?
Enter now! Email your sample and contact info to Barbara at manuscriptcontest@gmail.com.

Deadline to enter the contest is midnight EST on 30 April 2015.

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Lozenge, Heraldry for Women

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Regina Jeffers

One of yesterday’s words was “lozenge.” It brought my interest and sent me looking for a tidbit or two on the topic.The lozenge in heraldry is a diamond-shaped charge (an object that can be placed on the field of the shield), usually somewhat narrower than it is tall.

3 fusils—Per fess azure and vair ancient; three fusils in chief and a crescent in base, or; a bordure engrailed argent—Freeman of Murtle, Scotland

3 fusils—Per fess azure and vair ancient; three fusils in chief and a crescent in base, or; a bordure engrailed argent—Freeman of Murtle, Scotland

It is to be distinguished in modern heraldry from the fusil, which is like the lozenge but narrower, though the distinction has not always been as fine and is not always observed even today. A mascle is a voided lozenge—that is, a lozenge with a lozenge-shaped hole in the middle—and the rarer rustre is a lozenge containing a circular hole in the centre. A field covered in a pattern of lozenges is described as lozengy; similar fields of mascles are masculy, and fusils, fusily.

The lozenge has for many centuries been particularly associated with women as a vehicle for the display of their coats of arms (instead of the escutcheon or shield). In modern English and Scottish, but not Canadian, heraldry, the arms of an unmarried woman and of widows are usually shown on a lozenge rather than an escutcheon, without crest or helm. An oval or cartouche is occasionally also used instead of the lozenge for such women.

Examples of escutcheon shapes: 1: mediaeval French & English "heater style"; 2: modern French; 3: cartouche (oval); 4: lozenge (usually borne by women); 5: rectangular; 6: Italian; 7: Swiss, 8: English, Tudor arch (16th century); 9: à bouche; 10: Polish; 11: traditional Iberian View author information CC BY-SA 3.0

Examples of escutcheon shapes: 1: mediaeval French & English “heater style”; 2: modern French; 3: cartouche (oval); 4: lozenge (usually borne by women); 5: rectangular; 6: Italian; 7: Swiss, 8: English, Tudor arch (16th century); 9: à bouche; 10: Polish; 11: traditional Iberian
View author information
CC BY-SA 3.0

Married women, however, always display their arms on a shield (except peeresses in their own right, who use the lozenge for their peerage arms even during marriage).

The shield of a married woman (and the lozenge of a widow) may combine her own arms with the arms of her husband, either by impalement side by side or (in the case of an heraldic heiress in English heraldry, but not Scottish) in the form of a small “escutcheon of pretence” displaying the wife’s arms over a larger shield (or, in the case of a widow, lozenge) of her husband’s arms.

As a result of rulings of the English Kings of Arms dated 7 April 1995 and 6 November 1997, married women in England, Northern Ireland, and Wales and in other countries recognising the jurisdiction of the College of Arms in London (such as New Zealand) also have the option of using their husband’s arms alone, marked with a small lozenge as a brisure to show that the arms are displayed for the wife and not the husband, or of using their own personal arms alone, marked with a small shield as a brisure for the same reason.

This curved octagon is a lozenge adapted to provide an area in which it is easier to arrange the charges. The original arms of Baroness Thatcher: Per chevron, Azure and Gules. A double key in chief between two lions combatant; a tower with portcullis in base, all Or.. Crest. A Baron's coronet. Motto:.Cherish Freedom. Supporters: Dexter: An admiral of the British Navy. Sinister: Sir Isaac Newton, both proper. http://www. internationalheraldry.com

This curved octagon is a lozenge adapted to provide an area in which it is easier to arrange the charges. The original arms of Baroness Thatcher: Per chevron, Azure and Gules. A double key in chief between two lions combatant; a tower with portcullis in base, all Or.. Crest. A Baron’s coronet. Motto:.Cherish Freedom. Supporters: Dexter: An admiral of the British Navy. Sinister: Sir Isaac Newton, both proper. http://www.
internationalheraldry.com

Divorced women may theoretically until remarriage use their ex-husband’s arms differenced with a mascle.

The lozenge shape is also used for funerary hatchments for both men and women.

Pretoria High School for Girls in South Africa is one of the few all-girls schools that was granted permission to use the lozenge as part of its coat of arms.

In civic heraldry, a lozenge sable is often used in coal-mining communities to represent a lump of coal.

The information for this post comes from International Heraldry and Heralds, as well as Wikipedia,

Posted in British history, Great Britain, heraldry | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Lozenge, Heraldry for Women

Rame Head

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Regina Jeffers

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Rame Head is a coastal headland, southwest of the village of Rame in southeast Cornwall, United Kingdom. The area plays a prominent role in the climax of my Regency romance, The First Wives’ Club, which earned an honorable mention in historical romance at the SOLA’s Seventh Annual Dixie Kane Awards.

The site was used for a hill fort in the Iron Age. The headland has a prominent chapel, dedicated to St Michael, accessible by a steep footpath. The chapel was first licensed for Mass in 1397 and is probably on the site of a much earlier, Celtic, hermitage. It remains as an intact shell. Earl Ordulf, who was the owner of vast estates in the West Country and was the uncle of King Ethelred, gave Rame to Tavistock Abbey (which Ordulf had founded) in 981.

Fourteenth century chapel on Rame Head, Cornwall. Public Domain http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Rame_Head# mediaviewer/File: Ramechapel.jpg

Fourteenth century chapel on Rame Head, Cornwall. Public Domain http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Rame_Head#
mediaviewer/File:
Ramechapel.jpg

The headland is prominent to sailors and fishermen leaving Plymouth through Plymouth Sound. It is often the last piece of land they see leaving England, and the first they see when returning home; Rame Head thus appears in the sea shanty “Spanish Ladies.”

Due to its exceptionally high and panoramic vantage point, there is a volunteer National Coastwatch Institution lookout on the top of the headland.

The headland forms part of Rame Head & Whitsand Bay SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest), noted for its geological as well as biological interest. The SSSI contains 2 species on the Red Data Book of rare and endangered plant species; early meadow-grass (poa infirma) and slender bird’s-foot-trefoil (from the lotus genus).

Rame Head is a part of Mount Edgcumbe House and Country Park which is jointly owned and run by Cornwall Council and Plymouth City Council.  Information from Wikpedia images1

Posted in British history, Great Britain, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off on Rame Head

Have You Heard of “Forlorn Hope”?

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Regina Jeffers

From 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, we find “forlorn hope” as defined as, “FORLORN HOPE (through Dutch verloren hoop, from Ger. verlorene Haufe=”lost troop”; Haufe, “heap,” being equivalent in the 17th century to “body of troops”; the French equivalent is enfants perdu), a military term (sometimes shortened to “forlorn”), used in the 16th and 17th centuries for a body of troops thrown out in front of the line of battle to engage the hostile line, somewhat after the fashion of skirmishers, though they were always solid closed bodies. These troops ran great risks, because they were often trapped between the two lines of battle as the latter closed upon one another, and fired upon or ridden down by their friends; further, their mission was to facilitate the attacks of their own main body by striking the first blow against or meeting the first shock of the fresh and unshaken enemy. In the following century (18th), when lines of masses were no longer employed, a thin line of skirmishers alone preceded the three-deep line of battle, but the term “forlorn hope” continued to be used for picked bodies of men entrusted with dangerous tasks, and in particular for the storming party at the assault of a fortress. In this last sense “forlorn hope” is often used at the present time. The misunderstanding of the word “hope” has led to various application of “forlorn hope,” such as an enterprise offering little hope of success, or, further still from the original meaning, to the faint or desperate hope of such success.”

A forlorn hope is a band of soldiers or other combatants chosen to take the leading part in a military operation, such as an assault on a defended position, where the risk of casualties is high.

Etymology
The term comes from the Dutch verloren hoop, literally “lost troop”. The Dutch word “hoop” can mean “hope” but is in this context etymologically equivalent to the English word “heap”. The term was used in military contexts to denote a troop formation. The Dutch word hoop (in its sense of heap in English) is not cognate with English hope: this is an example of false folk etymology. The mistranslation of “verloren hoop” as “forlorn hope” is “a quaint misunderstanding” using the nearest-sounding English words. This false etymology is further entrenched by the fact that in Dutch the word hoop is a homograph meaning “hope” as well as “heap,’ though the two senses have different etymologies.

William Barnes Wollen - 'Battles of the Nineteenth Century' by Archibald Forbes, G.A. Henty and Arthur Griffiths Illustration of Colin Campbell leading the 'forlorn hope' at the Siege of San Sebastián, 1813 - Public Domain http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Forlorn_hope# mediaviewer/File: Forlorn_hope.jpg

William Barnes Wollen – ‘Battles of the Nineteenth Century’ by Archibald Forbes, G.A. Henty and Arthur Griffiths
Illustration of Colin Campbell leading the ‘forlorn hope’ at the Siege of San Sebastián, 1813 – Public Domain http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Forlorn_hope#
mediaviewer/File:
Forlorn_hope.jpg

History
In the days of muzzle-loading muskets, the term was most frequently used to refer to the first wave of soldiers attacking a breach in defences during a siege. It was likely that most members of the forlorn hope would be killed or wounded. The intention was that some would survive long enough to seize a foothold that could be reinforced, or at least that a second wave with better prospects could be sent in while the defenders were reloading or engaged in mopping up the remnants of the first wave.

A forlorn hope may be composed of volunteers and led by a junior officer with hopes of personal advancement. If the volunteers survived, and performed courageously, they would be expected to benefit in the form of promotions, cash gifts and adding glory to their name. The commanding officer himself was almost guaranteed both a promotion and a long-term boost to his career prospects. As a result, despite the risks, there was often competition for the opportunity to lead the assault. The French equivalent of the forlorn hope, called Les Enfants Perdus or The Lost Children, were all guaranteed promotion to officer rank should they survive, with the effect that both enlisted men and officers joined the dangerous mission as an opportunity to raise themselves in the army.

By extension, the term forlorn hope became used for any body of troops placed in a hazardous position, e.g., an exposed outpost, or the defenders of an outwork in advance of the main defensive position. This usage was especially common in accounts of the English Civil War, as well as in the British Army in the Peninsular War of 1808–1814.

Starring: Henry Arousell, Thomas Boqvist, Marko Kattilakoski, Johan Klint, Bengt Westin, Dennis Åhs Genre: 40 min short, 17th century war/horror. Honorable mention Best Period Film H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival 2009, Portland Oregon USA. Directed By: Johan Karlsson http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1813317/

Starring: Henry Arousell, Thomas Boqvist, Marko Kattilakoski, Johan Klint, Bengt Westin, Dennis Åhs
Genre: 40 min short, 17th century war/horror. Honorable mention Best Period Film H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival 2009, Portland Oregon USA.
Directed By: Johan Karlsson
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1813317/

There is a recent 40 minute short film that portrays “Forlorn Hope,” which I found interesting. A group of scattered soldiers that are lost after the Battle of Breitenfelt meets a man who guides them on a forlorn mission. Soon death and mistrust are spreading within the group and a a horrifying showdown becomes inevitable.

The movie represents an occurrence where one of Nyarlathotep forms makes its presence known in307839_164980863576954_3325660_n Germany 1631. A group of scattered soldiers that are lost after the battle of Breitenfelt meets a man who guides them on a forlorn mission. Soon death and mistrust are spreading within the group and  a horrifying showdown becomes inevitable. (imdb)

Parts of this piece are furnished by Wikipedia. Other references are so noted.

Posted in American History, British history | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Do You Know the Origins of These Words and Phrases?

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Regina Jeffers

Iron Curtain – This phrase was coined after World War II by Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain to describe the rise of Russian influence over Eastern Europe. Churchill found the rigid censorship of the citizenry and the closing of borders frightening. In a visit to the United States in 1946, he expressed his disdain in a speech on 5 March at Fulton, Missouri, where he was to accept an honorary degree from Westminster College.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe, Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia, all the famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I might call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow. (A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions by Charles Earle Funk ©1948)

To Give Short Shrift To – This phrase means to cut short; to make quick work of. The phrase comes to us from Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Richard III, Act Iv, scene 4. In the play, the Duke of Gloucester (later to be Richard III) has sentenced to death one Lord Hastings, but he Ratcliff interrupts Gloucester’s declarations. Ratcliff says: “Dispatch, my lord; the duke would be at dinner: Make a short shrift; he longs to see your head.” Ratcliff is suggesting the criminal should not be given an infinite amount of time to confess (or ‘shrift’). To speed up the executions in the 17th Century, “short shrift” became a synonym for “least possible delay.” (Heavens to Betsy & Other Curious Sayings by Charles Earle Funk ©1955)

Mind Your Ps and Qs – This phrase means to be on one’s best behaviour; be careful of one’s language.
Ps and Qs are just the plurals of the letters P and Q. There is some disagreement amongst grammarians about how to spell Ps and Qs – either upper-case or lower-case and either with or without an apostrophe.
Doubts also exist as to the original meaning. Francis Grose, in his 1785 edition of The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, defines it like this:
“To mind one’s P’s and Q’s; to be attentive to the main chance.”

The date of the coinage of ‘mind your Ps and Qs’ is uncertain. There is a citation from Thomas Dekker’s play, The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet, 1602, which appears to be the earliest use of the expression:

Afinius: …here’s your cloak; I think it rains too.
Horace: Hide my shoulders in’t.
Afinius: ‘Troth, so thou’dst need; for now thou art in thy Pee and Kue: thou hast such a villanous broad back…

‘Pee and Kue’ in that citation seem to be referring to a form of clothing, but that is somewhat ambiguous. It is also not clear that the ‘Pee and Kue’ in Dekker’s work are the same as those in ‘mind one’s Ps and Qs’. Dekker later used the term in West-ward Hoe, a joint work with John Webster, 1607:

At her p. and q. neither Marchantes Daughter, Aldermans Wife, young countrey Gentlewoman, nor Courtiers Mistris, can match her.

In that piece it is less apparent that ‘p. and q.’ refer to a form of clothing.

So, both the spelling and meaning of the phrase are debatable. Now we come to what is really uncertain – the derivation. Nevertheless, it is one of those phrases of which many people are sure they know the origin. When such folk are pressed, what they usually mean is that the person they first heard explain the origin had made a random choice from the list of proposed derivations below: ‘Mind your Ps and Qs’ probably derives from one of these:

1. Mind your pints and quarts. This is suggested as deriving from the practice of chalking up a tally of drinks in English pubs (on the slate). Publicans had to make sure to mark up the quart drinks as distinct from the pint drinks. This explanation is widely repeated, but there is little to support it, apart from the fact that pint and quart begin with P and Q.
2. Advice to printers’ apprentices to avoid confusing the backward-facing metal type lowercase Ps and Qs, or the same advice to children who were learning to write. Nevertheless, the fact that handmade paper was an expensive commodity and that the setting of type in early presses was very time comsuming makes the printing story a strong candidate. The fact that type had to be set upside down and backwards made the need for a warning to be careful doubly appropriate.
3. Mind your pea (jacket) and queue (wig). Pea jackets were short rough woollen overcoats, commonly worn by sailors in the 18th century. Perruques were full wigs worn by fashionable gentlemen. It is difficult to imagine the need for an expression to warn people to avoid confusing them.
‘Pee’, as a name for a man’s coarse coat, is recorded as early as 1485, so it is possible that that is what Dekker was referring to in his 1602 citation. If so, that usage long predates all others and we have the definitive origin of ‘pee and kue’. ‘Kue’ or ‘cue’ as the name of a man’s wig isn’t known until well after 1602 though, so it still isn’t certain what Dekker meant by it.
4. Mind your pieds (feet) and queues (wigs). This is suggested to have been an instruction given by French dancing masters to their charges. This has the benefit of placing the perruque in the right context – as long as we accept the phrase as being originally French. However, there’s no reason to suppose it is from France and no version of the phrase exists in French.
5. Another version of the ‘advice to children’ origin has it that ‘Ps and Qs’ derives from ‘mind your pleases and thank-yous’.’ That is widely touted as an origin but seems to be a back-formation, that is, an explanation fitted to explain the phrase after it was coined in some other context. ‘Pleases and thank-yous’ does not appear to lead to ‘Ps and Qs’. (Phrases.org.uk)

Nepenthe – is a medicine for sorrow, literally an anti-depressant – a “drug of forgetfulness” mentioned in ancient Greek literature and Greek mythology, depicted as originating in Egypt.The carnivorous plant genus Nepenthes is named after the drug nepenthe.
The word nepenthe first appears in the fourth book of Homer’s Odyssey:

ἔνθ᾽ αὖτ᾽ ἄλλ᾽ ἐνόησ᾽ Ἑλένη Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα:
αὐτίκ᾽ ἄρ᾽ εἰς οἶνον βάλε φάρμακον, ἔνθεν ἔπινον,
νηπενθές τ᾽ ἄχολόν τε, κακῶν ἐπίληθον ἁπάντων.
(which means)
Then Helen, daughter of Zeus, took other counsel.
Straightway she cast into the wine of which they were drinking a drug
to quiet all pain and strife, and bring forgetfulness of every ill.
Odyssey, Book 4, v. 219–221 (Wikipedia)

Figuratively, nepenthe means “that which chases away sorrow”. Literally it means ‘not-sorrow’ or ‘anti-sorrow’: νη, ne, i.e. “not” (privative prefix), and πενθές, from πένθος, penthos, i.e. “grief, sorrow, or mourning”. In the Odyssey, in the passage quoted above, nepenthes pharmakon (i.e. an anti-sorrow drug) is a magical potion given to Helen by Polydamna the wife of the noble Egyptian Thon; it quells all sorrows with forgetfulness.

Keep a Stiff Upper Lip – This phrase has come to mean to remain resolute and unemotional in the face of adversity, or even tragedy.
This is such a clichéd expression that it is difficult to imagine doing anything else with a stiff upper lip apart from keeping it. If you try to hold your upper lip stiff your facial expression will appear aloof and unsmiling, betraying little of any feeling you might be experiencing. That demeanour is the source of ‘keep a stiff upper lip.’ The phrase is similar to ‘bite the bullet,’ ‘keep your chin up,’ and (to the amusement of many Americans) ‘keep you pecker up.’ It has become symbolic of the British and particularly of the products of the English public school system during the age of the British Empire. In those schools the ‘play up and play the game’ ethos was inculcated into the boys who went on to rule the Empire. That ‘do your duty and show no emotion’ attitude was expressed in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade:

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

In more recent years the stiff upper lip has gone out of favour in the UK and British heroes have been able to show more emotion. Footballers now cry when they lose, and soldiers cry at comrades’ funerals, both of which would have been unthinkable before WWII.
Where did the ‘stiff upper lip’ originate? In 1963, P. G. Wodehouse published a novel called Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, and you can’t get much more English than that.
Strange then that a phrase so strongly associated with the UK should have originated in America. The first printed reference is in the Massachusetts Spy, June 1815:

“I kept a stiff upper lip, and bought [a] license to sell my goods.”

That citation doesn’t explicitly refer to keeping one’s emotions in check, but a slightly later one, from the Ohio newspaper The Huron Reflector, 1830, makes the meaning unambiguous:
“I acknowledge I felt somehow queer about the bows; but I kept a stiff upper lip, and when my turn came, and the Commodore of the Police axed [sic] me how I come to be in such company… I felt a little better.”
The expression can be found in several U.S. references from the early 19th century and was commonplace there by 1844, which is the date of the earliest example from a British source. (Phrases.org.uk)

imagesElementary, My Dear Watson – This famous line is the supposed explanation Sherlock Holmes gave to his assistant, Dr. Watson, when explaining deductions he had made.
In fact the line doesn’t appear in the Conan Doyle books, only later in Sherlock Holmes’ films.
He does come rather close at a few of points. Holmes says “Elementary” in ‘The Crooked Man’, and “It was very superficial, my dear Watson, I assure you” in ‘The Cardboard Box’. He also says “Exactly, my dear Watson, in three different stories.
The phrase was first used by P. G. Wodehouse, in Psmith Journalist, 1915. (Phrases.org.uk)

To Return to One’s Muttons – The source of this English phrase is the French, revenon á now muttons, which is found in the 6th Century play, Pierre Pathelin, written by the French poet, Pierre Blanchet. “Pathelin (often spelled ‘Patelin’) is a lawyer who has, through flattery, hoodwinked Joceaume, the local draper, into giving him six ells of cloth. While this injury is still rankling, Joceaume also discovers that his shepherd has stolen some of his sheep. He has the shepherd haled before the magistrate and there finds to his amazement that the shepherd has the rascally Pathelin as his lawyer. The draper, sputtering in indignation, tries to tell the magistrate about his loss of the sheep, but each time that he sees Pathelin he begins to rave about the cloth of which he has been defrauded. The judge begins to get somewhat confused, but tries to keep Joceaume to his charges against the shepherd: ‘Revenon á now moutons (Let us return to our sheep),’ he repeats time and again.” (A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions by Charles Earle Funk ©1948)

Posted in British history, Great Britain, Uncategorized, word play | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment