June 2011
24 Jun, 2011
I have been wondering why the English are so fond of chariots. Chariots are a recurring theme in the English national identity and in their rugby songs. They even made a film called after them. What is it all about?
Boudica attacks the Romans
Chariot is a relatively recent word. It originates in 14th century French as an extension of char from Latin, carrum (from which our modern car or automobile gets its name). Carrum was the Roman word for the two-wheeled Celtic war chariot called a karros by the Gauls and Celts. Boudica, who led England’s revolt in 60 AD, almost defeated the Romans from the back of her chariot.
If you have been to Twickenham in London when the English rugby team is playing there you will have heard the crowd singing about chariots. The Welsh are far more famous for their love of hymns and for their mass choral singing but the English can sometimes sing as passionately (although never quite as beautifully).
The English rugby crowds have historically sung God Save the Queen (which is the British national anthem). More recently the English crowds have chosen Jerusalem (or more correctly And did those feet in ancient time) as their “official” anthem to match the rousing anthems of the Scots (Flower of Scotland), the Welsh (Land of my Fathers), the French (La Marseillaise) and to attempt to compete with the Haka of the All Blacks from New Zealand.
Jerusalem, is a short poem written by William Blake in about 1804 and was set to music by Hubert Parry in 1916. It is often sung in English churches as a hymn (I was married in England and we sung it during the ceremony). Jerusalem became very popular in the First World War during a time when the prospects for an allied victory were looking poor.
Those outside England may not be familiar with Jerusalem but will recognise it from its chorus:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
It is from here, from the little line at the end of the chorus, that the chariot of fire that has rumbled its way into the core of English identity. Blake’s reference is from the Old Testament, 2 Kings 2:11, and refers to how the great prophet Elijah was taken into heaven by God at the end of his life:
Elijah goes to heaven in a chariot of fire
And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.
Blake uses the phrase, chariot of fire, as a metaphor for God’s divine energy. He is calling upon God’s strength and power to help build Jerusalem in England. The poem is based on a folk tale that Christ had visited England as a boy with his uncle, Joseph of Arimethea. Blake is suggesting that Christ brought heaven to England and with God’s help England can again be a new Jerusalem, a heaven on earth. It is a powerful message seeking God’s divine blessing to make England great.
Thirty years ago the wonderfully uplifting film Chariots of Fire was released. It told the story of how Harold Abrahams, Eric Liddell (who played rugby on the wing for Scotland) and other British runners prepared and competed at the 1924 Paris Olympics. It dominated the Oscars in 1981 and remains one of the great British films. The film’s working title (according to Wikipedia) was Running until the screenwriter, Colin Welland, heard Jerusalem being sung on Songs of Praise, a weekly TV program of church music, and was inspired to call the film Chariots of Fire.
While Jerusalem is an English anthem sung by its rugby crowds, English rugby has adopted its own, unique anthem. How this happened is a legend of modern rugby.
In 1988 Chris Oti, a fast and talented winger was selected for the English rugby team at a time when England were struggling to win games—they had scored only two tries in twelve matches. Oti, who was English born, was the first black player to play for England in 80 years.
Oti played his second test against Ireland at Twickenham. The score was only 3-0 at half-time and the English try-scoring drought looked to be continuing. But in the second half England broke out and Oti scored three tries as part of their 35-2 victory. As Oti scored his tries a school group from Douai, a Benedictine school for boys, sang their school’s rugby song in honour of Oti. Their song was ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ and as more and more of the Twickenham crowd joined in after each try a new tradition was born.
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home,
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home.
I looked over Jordan, and what did I see
Coming for to carry me home?
A band of angels coming after me,
Coming for to carry me home…
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is a song of the black American slaves. It symbolised their longing to be free of their suffering and to be taken away to God’s kingdom. The Sweet Chariot of this black-American spiritual song is the same as Blake’s chariot of fire. The way to heaven for the devoutly Christian slaves was not to die at their own hands but to have Elijah’s chariot of fire swing low and carry them home to heaven.
So there is the answer as to why the English sing about chariots. They sing about chariots because a poet two hundred years ago sought God’s divine blessing for England and a black rugby player changed the way they played rugby. Good enough reasons for me.
12 Jun, 2011
Stadia versus stadiums
This week more FIFA executives are denying corruption charges; the awarding of the 2022 FIFA Soccer World Cup to Qatar (which Australia had tried to bid for) is again being questioned; and Sepp Blatter, the man in charge, was re-elected unopposed as FIFA president.
But this all obscures another corruption, a corruption of our language. The crime is an example of what Fowler, in his Modern English Usage, refers to as didacticism, or sometimes, as pride of knowledge. It occurred during the unsuccessful Australian bid for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup of six months ago: the bid spokespeople and the press all used stadia as the plural of stadium.
In an earlier post I referred to my abhorrence (perhaps even a little didactically) of the use of fora as the plural of forum. Although most dictionaries list the plural of stadium as stadiums or stadia it is time to eliminate the pompous use of stadia. There are good reasons to do so. Stadium has a different story to flora but it provides us with even less reason to pluralise it as stadia.
Origins of stadium
In classical Latin a stadium is a length. It is derived from the ancient Greek, stadion (anglicised as stade), a length of 600 feet, or approximately 180 metres. It did not come directly into English because early English used a similar measure, furlongs. Furlongs was used to translate Biblical references to stadia, but they are otherwise unconnected. Furlong derives from the Old English words furh (furrow) and lang (long) and originally referred to the length of a ploughed furrow in medieval strip farming (an eighth of a mile or 201 metres).
The stadion was the length of a running track in Greece. The length of the stadion was 176 metres. The first Olympic Games consisted of only one race run over the stadion at Olympia. Spectators were seated on tiered seats around the track, and hence the structure for watching a running race became known as a stadion or stadium.
Stadium, when first imported into English in about 1600, meant a running track. Its meaning was broadened in the early 19th century into its modern usage meaning large oval structures with tiers of seats for viewing a sporting event.
Amphitheatres, arenas and circuses
What we in modern English refer to as stadiums were not referred to as stadiums (or indeed, stadia) by the Romans. The main sporting events that the Romans attended were battle recreations, gladiatorial combats, and chariot and horse races. The venues they built for these events were not called stadiums but were variously amphitheatres, arenas or circuses (venue is from Latin venire meaning to come).
The most famous Roman sporting venue was the Flavian Amphitheatre, more commonly known as the Colosseum in Rome. It staged many events involving gladiators, wild animals, hunts, and battles. Amphitheatre derives from the structure being imagined as two theatres built facing each other, from the Greek amphi-, on both sides and théātron, for theatre (meaning place for viewing).
Arena, from the Latin, harena, is a place of combat and is thought to have come from Etruscan for sand or sandy place. The central stages of arenas were filled with sand to soak up the blood from the sports played there. (Paris has the Arènes de Lutèce, the Roman arena that now hosts schoolboys playing soccer and old men playing pétanque but once hosted gladiators).
The Latin circus, simply meant ring, from Greek, kirkos for circle. The Romans used circus for circular arenas for performances and contests and also for the oval courses for horse racing (especially the Circus Maximus in Rome).
False didacticism
So what does all this mean? It means that the word stadium was used by the Romans and Greeks to describe a place to watch a footrace, the plural being stadia. The places the Romans watched big sporting events were amphitheatres, arenas or circuses. Stadium, therefore, is a word that has was adopted into English only recently to describe large sporting venues and should be treated as an English word with plural, stadiums.
The Romans would not have called a venue for a football game a stadium, it would have been an arena, an ampitheatre and perhaps even a circus but not a stadium. So using stadia to describe a collection of soccer venues cannot be historically nor grammatically justified. This didacticisim is false.
2 Jun, 2011
I need to be more frivolous this week. Bumf is an informal word used to describe, in a slightly derogatory way, the superfluous or unnecessary paper documents that fill our everyday life such as forms, Government documents, publicity material, junk mail etcetera.
Now if you are gentile and don’t like crudity be aware that this fascinating little story does get a little vulgar in its subject matter because, unsurprisingly, the story of bumf starts with bum …
Dr Johnson's dictionary on bum
In international English you come across the word bum in two quite distinct ways: in British English a bum is your backside, bottom, or posterior; while in American English a bum is a good-for-nothing, a loafer or a layabout.
Although we might judge a vagrant to be equivalent to our bottom in social status, the English word, bum, which came into existence a long time ago from an unknown source (Middle English in the 1300s) is not related to the American word, bum, which probably comes more recently from the German word, bummeln, which means to loaf.
Bum, although not considered a hard-core swear word, has a hint of vulgarity about it—albeit it is only slightly naughty—it is a word you can use in front of young children. It did start off as a legitimate word for our backside.
Arse, bum’s word cousin, is an Old English word (aers) for buttocks, and also started as a legitimate word but, perhaps because it is very much older and has had more time to fall from grace, has become even more disreputable. Arse is a word you would not use in front of your youngest children.
Fodder, is an Old English word, for food, especially for cattle food. It also is used for a person or thing regarded only as material for a specific use, such as young men in war time being referred to as cannon fodder.
Now, toilet paper at some time became known as bum fodder. However, the expression was more commonly used metaphorically for literary works, books, poetry, works judged to be of such poor literary quality that their pages could only be used for toilet paper. It seems an easy insult and the concept of using lesser works of literature as toilet paper seemed a recurring theme in 17th century literature:
Thomas Dekker (1609) in The Gull’s Hornbook
A man in a barrel
… you shall sharpen the wits of all the eating gallants about you, and do them great pleasure to ask what pamphlets or poems a man might think fittest to wipe his tail with.
John Dryden (1682) in Mac Flecknoe:
From dusty shops neglected authors come,
Martyrs of Pies, and Reliques of the Bum.
John Oldham (1683) A Satire:
And all thy deathless Monuments of Wit,
Wipe Porters Tails or mount in Paper-kite?
A concept that continued well into the 20th century with a quote variously attributed to Voltaire, Churchill or German composer, Max Reeger:
I am seated in the smallest room in the house.
I have your letter before me. Soon it will be behind me.”
Bum fodder became abbreviated to bumf and over the last century has moved away from its literal meaning. The novelist, Virginia Wolf, used it in a letter of 1912 asking “is this letter written upon bumpf?’
Bumf is a fascinating word because we can see it moving away from a playful and vulgar construction to a meaningful word that has cast off its past and gained a respectability not given to its parent. Evelyn Waugh in Officers and Gentlemen (1955):
He did not, even in his extremity, quite abandon his faith in the magic of official forms. In bumf lay salvation.
Bumf has joined the mainstream by disguising its parentage. By using a hint of the exotic it has fooled us into not realising its evolution from some very old English vulgarity. It also shows how generations of English speakers and writers have conspired against politeness to bring this wonderful and graphic word into the language. It epitomises how language truly works—not by logic and appropriateness but by imagination and descriptiveness. Bumf is a triumph.
Acknowledgement: There is a great blog post by Michael Gilleland from which I referenced most of the older quotes.
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