I do hope that you all had a lovely Christmas, and that you have fully recovered from the festivities. Best wishes to everyone, and may all your sissy hopes for 2002 come true! 

Marie Céleste, like the Marie Céleste

An eerily quiet and deserted place, or somewhere normally occupied, but uncannily empty and quiet. The Mary Céleste was an American brigantine found abandoned, ready to sail, between the Azores and Portugal on 5th December 1872. The ship’s one lifeboat, sextant, chronometer, register and crew were missing, and no trace of any of them was ever found. Everything else on the ship was as if nothing had happened. It remains one of the unsolved mysteries of the high seas to this day. Hence the use of the ship’s name to describe a silent, empty place. Why ‘Mary’ should be  ‘Marie’ is open to conjecture, but it might be because of its association with the French ‘Céleste’.

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a story about this extraordinary mystery - not one of the Sherlock Holmes series - in which he changed the name of the vessel to the 'Marie Celeste'. Possibly this is the origin of the very common error of nomenclature which Saffy mentions.

Riot Act, to read the

Figuratively, to ‘read the riot act’ is to attempt to quell chattering and general commotion or misbehaviour, particularly in a group of children, by vigorous and forceful means, coupled with threats of the consequences if order is not restored. The original Riot Act became law in 1715 and stated that when twelve or more people were gathered with the intention of rioting, it was the duty of the magistrates to command them to disperse, and that anyone who continued to riot for one hour afterwards was guilty of a serious criminal offence. It was not superseded until 1986, when the Public Order Act was introduced. ‘To run riot’ was originally said of hounds that had lost the scent, and was later applied to any group that behaved in a disorderly or unrestrained way.

Get Up on the Wrong Side of the Bed

Few superstitions have been more widely held than those concerning the sinister nature of the left side. The Latin word sinister means ‘on the left’ or ‘unlucky.’ In Rome a left-handed person was considered to be a bearer of bad luck. Any act involving the left was often regarded with suspicion and dread. For example, a wise person made it a habit to get out of bed on the right side. If he occasionally crawled out on the ‘wrong’ side bad luck was believed to follow. A person expecting to encounter trouble is seldom in the best of moods, so irritability came to be associated with getting out of bed on the left side. This notion was so widely accepted that when we encounter ill-natured people we still say that it looks as though they got up on the wrong side of the bed.

Readers should watch out for a book entitled 'A Sinister History of Mankind', which is a history of left-handedness. It includes most of the local expressions for left-handedness, such as 'clickety-handed', from Saffy's beloved Cornwall.

Henchman

Anglo-Saxon terms for a stallion, and for a groom or attendant upon riders, were combined into ‘henchman.’ Long a term of distinction, it was often reserved for youths of rank who served at court or upon the staff of some medieval earl.  The office of henchman gradually fell into disuse and when Queen Elizabeth I formally dissolved the ancient Corps of Royal Henchmen in 1565, many noblemen followed suit. As a result, the name gradually dropped from everyday speech. Some centuries later Sir Walter Scott rediscovered the word, feeling that it was picturesque enough to make a good designation for the chief gillie, or right-hand man of a Highland chief. Subsequently he used the term in both 'The Lady of the Lake' and some of the Waverley novels. The word re-entered popular speech through the influence of Scott, and eventually crossed the Atlantic, to became linked with the chief lieutenant of a political or criminal boss. In this way the once honorable title became debased, and is now applied to any mercenary or unscrupulous follower.

Jug

A jail or prison is sometimes referred to as ‘the jug’. Although widely thought to be pure slang, the expression has an ancient and honorable lineage. Long before there was such a thing as a civic-owned building for housing criminals, Scottish lairds punished offenders by placing them in iron yokes. The lairds would then exhibit the prisoners in public places. This yoke, or pillory for the head, was known as ‘the joug’. A criminal being punished was therefore ‘in the joug’. Stone houses of detention came to be called ‘stone jougs’, and in the course of time the spelling was modified to 'jug'.

Dungaree

Dungaree was first made in quantity in the Dungri suburb of Bombay. Coarse and durable, it was fashioned into sails and heavy sheets. In about the middle of the nineteenth century an English manufacturer dyed a batch of this cloth blue, and made it into trousers that took the name of the fabric, and were widely worn for decades. Today jeans or Levi’s are terms used more often for trousers made from the coarse cloth.

Denim fabric was first made in Nimes, near the Mediterranean coast of France: hence 'de Nimes'. It was also traditionally dyed blue. 

Overheard at a hospital, an elderly man saying: ‘I’m not afraid to die…. Dying isn’t so bad… the trouble is that you’re so bloody stiff the next day’. (BBC Radio 'Quote… Unquote')

For some reason this reminds me of a remark overheard on a bus, just before the introduction of metric currency in Britain. One elderly woman said to her companion, 'I don't think they should do it until all the old people have died'.

Queen Victoria so much enjoyed 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland' that she let it be known that she would very much appreciate the next work from the author’s pen being dedicated to her. She probably enjoyed considerably less the Reverend C.L. Dodgson’s  ‘Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry’ (better known as Lewis Carroll – one of my wife's ancestors incidentally), when he sent it loyally to her. (Woollcott: 'The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll', 1939)

This is the form of geometry created by the French philosopher Descartes, without which mathematical analysis or calculus could not really have developed.Dodgson created his penname by reversing and Latinising his Christian names, Charles Lutwidge.

During a papal audience, Randolph Churchill produced an enthralling piece of small talk. To the Pope he said: ‘I expect you know my friend, Evelyn Waugh, who, like you, your holiness, is a Roman Catholic.’ ('The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations' – 1971)

Winston Churchill's son and Evelyn Waugh were good friends, but both had very waspish tongues. When a benign tumour was removed from Randolph's lung, Waugh described it as 'a miracle of modern science...they have found the only part of Randolph which was not malignant, and removed it'.

Evelyn Waugh was a very traditional Catholic, and was not averse to lecturing priests at all levels on points of doctrine. He did have an audience with the Pope, and, so the story goes, the Pope had eventually to interrupt him with the words, 'But you must know Mr Waugh, that I am a Catholic too'.

Outside the theatre one night, the American actress Tallulah Bankhead encountered a group from the Salvation Army, tambourines as always well to the fore. She promptly dropped a $50 dollar bill into one of the tambourines saying. ‘Don’t bother to thank me. I know what a perfectly ghastly season it has been for you Spanish dancers'. (BBC Radio 'Quote… Unquote')

Many stories are told about Tallulah Bankhead. In her later years she played a villianess in one of the comic-strip styled 'Batman' series on television in the 1960s. A very young assistant producer told her that she had to play the scenes very 'camp'.

'Don't talk to me about 'camp' young man, she replied haughtily, 'I invented it!'

Once she was in a toilet cublicle, and asked the woman in the adjoining cubicle if she had any toilet paper to spare. The woman replied in the negative, and was then startled to see a hand pushing a ten dollar bill under the wall. 'Can you give me two fives for a ten then?' enquired Tullulah.
 

Here are few ‘acid drops’ as I like to refer to them…..

‘A difficulty for every solution.’ (Herbert Samuel on the Civil Service)

‘He is not only a bore, but he bores for England.’ (Malcolm Muggeridge on Sir Anthony Eden)

‘This man is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.’ (Extract from Royal Navy Fitness Report, 1977)

‘I’m prepared to take advice on leisure from Prince Philip. He’s a world expert on leisure. He’s been practicing for most of his adult life.’ (Neil Kinnock on Prince Philip, in the 'Western Mail')

‘An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off: it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead. (Nancy Mitford, 'Noblesse Oblige')

‘I don’t mind your being killed, but I object to your being taken prisoner.’ (Lord Kitchener to the Prince of Wales, when he asked to go to the Western Front in the First World War)

‘A blot of blood and grease upon the History of England.’ (Charles Dickens, on Henry VIII)

‘I like him and his wife. He is so ladylike, and she is such a perfect gentleman.’ (Sydney Smith)

...And who was it who described the British Empire at its zenith as 'an empire on whose problems the sun never sets'.

The world of words is full of surprise. For instance: you might think that a barguest is a guest in a bar, but in fact it actually refers to a ghost or goblin shaped like a large dog. Here are a few other examples:

Bedrape is not rape occurring in a bed; but is an intensive form of the verb drape.

Carlot is not a place for parking or displaying cars; but is an obsolete term for a book.

Forestation is not a station or outpost at a frontier; but is the establishment of a forest.

Forestress is not a female forester; but is a verb meaning 'to place stress on the first part of a word'.

Negrocop is not a black policeman; but is a type of stork, also called the jabiru.

Tonite is not only a slang spelling of tonight; but is also a blasting explosive.

Wellsite is not the site of a well; but is a mineral named after someone called Wells.
 

The only Famous Last Words that aren’t essentially sad are the ones people dream up years before they are going to need them - like these:

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

“I knew if I  stayed around long enough, something like this would happen”.
 

Rube Goldberg (1883-1970)

“Dear God: Enclosed please find Rube Goldberg. Now that you’ve got him, what are you going to do with him?”

Clark Gable (1901-1960)

“Back to the silents”.
 
Saffron - January 2002 (saffron200@hotmail.com)

If you enjoy words and witticisms, then past editions of 'Saffy's Corner' can be found here. Contributions from other readers are welcomed, by the way:

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