Read Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Great Britain Online
Authors: Stephen Halliday
Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Great Britain (3 page)
DO ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME?
The most enduring Roman monument in Britain is the road system which we still use. The six A-roads that stretch out from London were all used by the Romans and built or improved by them. They link Roman cities and ports. The A1 (known to the Romans as Iter 8) runs from London to York (and now on to Edinburgh), much of its length following the Roman Ermine Street. The A2, known to the Romans as Iter 3, links London and Dover, while the A3, which existed as a track before the Romans improved it (and built the Roman Stane Street nearby) connects London with Portsmouth. The A4 runs from London to the important Roman city of Bath and now goes on to Bristol and South Wales. The A5 (Watling Street) links London with Holyhead. The A6 (Roman Iter 5) runs from London to Carlisle and now goes on to Glasgow. Other roads linked important Roman settlements like Silchester, near Reading, Lincoln and Chester. Scotland’s major cities were added later when the Ordnance Survey mapped mainland Britain. At the same time the Ordnance Survey numbered smaller roads in relation to the main A-roads. Thus smaller roads leading off the A1 begin with the digit 1 (A10, A12 etc.) and others follow this pattern. Cross country routes, like the A 272, are the exceptions
.
Having turned his attention from Wales, Edward I failed to subdue his northern neighbour and the two kingdoms were united only when James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, succeeded his cousin Queen Elizabeth to become James I of England. Many years earlier, Ireland had been annexed by King Henry II (reigned 1154–89). Henry, in effect, confiscated it from his subject Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke who had acquired lands in Ireland as a result of intervening in a dispute between two Irish chieftains. This act of theft was supposedly validated by the
Donation of Ireland
, a Papal Bull (decree) by Adrian IV who was Pope from 1154–1159, the only Englishman to hold the post. There are doubts about whether there ever was such a Bull. Kings of England remained kings of Ireland, despite the protests of the Irish, until the creation of the Irish Republic in 1949 in which year George VI ceased to be king of Ireland.
THE BRITISH RED, WHITE AND BLUE
The Union Flag results from the combination of three national flags. The first is the flag of St George of England, a red cross on a white background, first adopted by the Crusader king Richard I (reigned 1189–99). Superimposed on that, in honour of King James I and VI, is the white diagonal cross (saltire) of St Andrew of Scotland on a blue background. St Andrew was traditionally crucified on a diagonal cross and was adopted as the patron saint of Scotland in 832 by the Scottish chieftain Oengus after he defeated a force of Anglo-Saxons near East Lothian. Oengus, while praying for victory, had seen clouds form in the shape of a saltire. Finally, following the Act of Union of 1800 which created ‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’, St Patrick’s flag – a red saltire on a white background – was added to give the present Union Flag. St Patrick’s flag dates from the 18th century and was probably an emblem of the Dukes of Leinster, Ireland’s senior nobility. Wales was excluded from the party on the grounds that it was a principality, not a kingdom. The expression Union Jack, by which the flag is often known, dates from the practice in the Royal Navy of hanging the Union flag from the jackstaff, a vertical pole sited on a ship’s bow
.
The pre-eminence of the English language
W
ho would have guessed that the language of an obscure Germanic tribe would develop into the most widely spoken language of the 21st century? It was brought to England by Anglo-Saxon settlers after the departure of the Roman legions from Britain in 410 AD. But it owes much of its success as an international language to its ability to absorb words and grammar from other languages. After the Norman conquest French became the language of government and court while Anglo-Saxon was the tongue of the common people. By the late 14th century, the time of Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343–1400), a language recognisable as that which we speak today, predominantly Anglo-Saxon, had emerged as a language common to all classes. Chaucer’s monarch, Henry IV, addressed Parliament in Chaucer’s English rather than Norman French.
But there’s more to English than Anglo-Saxon and French, with other languages represented, especially in place names. For instance, Dover is a survival of the ancient Celtic language which preceded the arrival of the Romans. It means ‘waters’, while Wendover in Buckinghamshire means ‘white waters’, a reference to the local chalk streams. The prefix Tr, sometimes followed by e, is also associated with Celtic origins, especially in Cornwall and Wales in names like Truro, Tredegar, Trelawney and Trevelyan.
Areas of Danish Viking settlement in eastern England and eastern Scotland contain many place names with Danish endings like —ston, —thorp, —toft, —thwaite, —holm and —ness. A glance at the maps of the areas concerned will reveal many more.
But English has been enriched by absorbing words from many other languages. The words ‘bungalow’, ‘khaki’ and ‘jodhpur’ were adopted from Hindi; ‘barbecue’, ‘bonanza’ and ‘cockroach’ from Spanish; ‘ketchup’, ‘China’ and ‘silk’ derive from Chinese words; ‘anorak’ is an Inuit word; ‘candy’ is taken from Arabic and its main ingredient ‘sugar’ is taken from the ancient Indian language Sanskrit. ‘Bistro’, surprisingly, is Russian; ‘vampire’ was originally Serbo-Croat; even the mysterious Basque language has given us the word ‘bizarre’.
The rich tapestry of English
The decisive period for the formation of language was the age of the works of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and the King James Bible (1611). Expressions from these works enriched English and, by their wide use, ensured that its influence spread. Here are a handful of phrases from the hundreds in daily use from the Bible:
Many are called but few are chosen (St Matthew)
A land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus)
The love of money is the root of all evil (Timothy)
Let us now praise famous men (Ecclesiasticus)
By their fruits ye shall know them (St Matthew)
Go and do thou likewise (St Luke)
The poor are always with you (St John)
Suffer fools gladly (Corinthians)
The salt of the earth (St Matthew)
The patience of Job (James)
Shakespeare made by far the largest contribution to the language of any single author. Here are some of his phrases:
Sweet are the uses of adversity (As
You Like It)
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
(Hamlet)
Neither a borrower nor a lender be
(Hamlet)
Cowards die many times before their deaths
(Julius Caesar)
Go hang thyself
(Henry IV
Part I)
Love is blind
(The Merchant of Venice)
Thereby hangs a tale
(The Taming of the Shrew)
What’s in a name? (Romeo and Juliet)
SHAKESPEARE: GETS EVERYWHERE
The late Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, speculated that Shakespeare himself contributed to the King James Bible. Burgess based this belief on clues in the text, notably of Psalm 46. The Authorized Version was being drafted in 1610, in which year Shakespeare would have been 46 years old. In the King James version of Psalm 46 the 46th word in the text is shake. The 46th word from the end is spear. Distinguished contemporary writers were used to polish the text and none was more famous than Shakespeare at that time. It’s an intriguing thought
.
Other common expressions have less illustrious origins, some quite sinister. ‘Money for old rope’ derives from hangmen’s practice of supplementing their incomes by selling ropes used for executions; ‘men of straw’ has an equally sinister origin. In the 14th century men would stand outside law courts with pieces of straw protruding from their pockets or shoes to indicate that they were prepared to give evidence for whichever party would pay them.
‘Bobby’, ‘Old Bill’ and ‘copper’ in reference to the police can all be traced back to the early days of the police service. The Metropolitan Police was set up by the Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel by an Act of 1829 and the expression ‘Bobby’ is a reference to ‘Bobby Peel’. In Ireland the police are still sometimes referred to as ‘Peelers’. The following year King George IV died and was succeeded by his brother William IV. The new police constables were issued with a wooden truncheon, each encircled by a thin band of copper on which was engraved W IV R to signify that they were acting under the authority of King William. By extension the copper band came to be associated with the constables themselves, hence ‘copper’. Finally, King William IV was often referred to as ‘Silly Billy’ or ‘Old Bill’ and this term also came to be attached to the police who acted in his name.
The Sheriff’s Posse – which we associate with cowboys and the American ‘wild west’ — originated in Anglo-Saxon England when all males aged twelve or over were organized into groups of ten families, or
tithings
, whose members were responsible for identifying and apprehending any other member of the tithing who had committed a crime: a kind of Anglo-Saxon neighbourhood watch. After the Norman conquest this was supplemented by the practice of hue and cry whereby the Sheriff of the County, who was responsible to the king, could invoke his
Posse Comitatus
(literally ‘power of the county’) to require fellow citizens to pursue and arrest a criminal.
The New
Lingua Franca
Until the 19th century French was accepted as the international language of diplomacy but in the following century English gradually replaced it. The expansion of the British Empire, to a point where it comprised about one quarter of the world’s population, was followed by the expansion of American multinational companies after World War II, carrying with them the language which had become the tongue of America before the War of Independence (to this day the United State does not have an official language). In the 1950s French president General de Gaulle and the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, neither of whom was pre-disposed to the British or Americans, each agreed to promote the language of the other in their schools. It didn’t work. The young people of France and Germany preferred the music of The Beatles and the Rolling Stones to their home-grown versions and chose to learn English, the language of popular culture and international business.
Britain’s beautiful game: football
F
ootball or games like it has been played from time immemorial but was long regarded as a source of disorder. In 1314 Edward II issued an edict to Londoners to the effect that ‘Forasmuch as there is a great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arise, we forbid, on behalf of the king, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in future.’ Royal displeasure continued to be expressed over the following centuries and the game became respectable only when it began to be played in the public schools which expanded rapidly in the 19th century. Since there was little contact between schools, owing to difficulties of travel, each school developed its own rules. For example, some permitted handling the ball and some permitted hacking opponents’ shins. These differences became a problem when the pupils of different schools found themselves playing with one another at universities and games often ended in violent brawls, as in medieval times.