You should hear this

This from the Washington Post site today. It's excerpts from a telephone call from President Trump to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Raffensperger's general  counsel Ryan Germany. You can read more details on the site at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html. There's a paywall but you can get a short-term free access - for five articles, I think.

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty a giant egg sitting on a wall? No. ripleys.com tells us "According to a number of military historians, Humpty Dumpty was the name of a cannon used by the Royalists during the English Civil War.

The conflict raged from 1642 to 1649, and in June of 1648, Humpty Dumpty was stationed on the walls of Colchester. It was one of several cannons erected to try and keep Parliament’s army from taking the city. The next month, however, the Parliamentary forces heavily damaged the walls beneath Humpty Dumpty with their own artillery. You can guess where this is going: Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and broke into pieces."

The image of Humpty as an egg derives from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass.

Nursery rhymes often cause dispute amongst historians as to their origins and meanings. Take this:

Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row 

Some will tell you that Mary referred to Mary Tudor, silver bells to thumb screws, cockle shells to a genital torture device and the pretty maids were in fact lining up to be executed by the Halifax Gibbet (a guillotine). Perfect for your toddlers.

Others that the silver bells stood for Catholic Cathedral bells, the cockle shells stood for the pilgrimage to Spain and the pretty maids in a row stood for a row of nuns. Not much more suitable.

Why did our mothers teach us to recite this garbage?

I'm particularly averse to:

It’s raining, it’s pouring
The old man is snoring
He went to bed and he bumped his head
And couldn’t get up in the morning

Scary and depressing. Is this how kids see their grandpas?

Here's another particularly upsetting one:

Rock-a-bye, baby,
In the tree top.
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall,
And down will come baby,
Cradle and all

Are they trying to tell us life is hard, and may well be short? I'm not even going to mention Jack and Jill. Or Miss Muffet. Or Solomon Grundy, a tale for pandemic times. Ugh.

But I'll end with a chuckle. This version of a rhyme is common:

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor doggie a bone,
When she got there
The cupboard was bare
So the poor little doggie had none

This less so, but much more fun:

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor daughter a dress.
But when she got there
The cupboard was bare
And so was her daughter, I guess!

Am I Benjamin Button, reverting to childhood?

When the year ends in one

Remember Chas & Dave? You'd have to be of a certain age. Purveyors of a musical style called rockney - cockney rock. You can imagine. In the late 70s and early 80s. According to Mr W Pedia "their major breakthrough being "Gertcha" in 1979, which peaked at No. 20 in the UK Singles Chart". So not rock royalty.

Anyway, they are perhaps best known for their football music. As supporters of Tottenham Hotspur, they were the backing musicians on When the Year Ends in One, a single featuring the Spurs football team, celebrating their success in winning the 1991 FA Cup, which reached number 44 in the charts:

It was nineteen hundred and one when Tot'nam first got there
They were in the final, it was a grand affair
Sheffield United scored a goal but finished runners up
Cameron, Smith and Brown scored three as Spurs took home the Cup

It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
They first won the Cup when the century begun
It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
So this is the year for Spurs

Then in nineteen twenty one again was Tot'nam's year
Jinkin' Jimmy Dimmock scored the winner 'ere
Wolver'ampton Wanderers never scored at all
Spurs 'ad won the Cup again by playin' good football

It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
They first won the Cup when the century begun
It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
So this is the year for Spurs

In the sixty one Cup Final, first time on Wembley turf
Damn near proved to ev'ryone they were the best team on Earth
They won the Wembley final, and they were the first to do
the Double, 'cos they ended up League Champions too

It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
They first won the Cup when the century begun
It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
So this is the year for Spurs

Now it's nineteen ninety one but let us not forget
ten years ago, who won the Cup in eighty one, you bet
It was Tot'nam 'otspur, when Ossie's dream come true
Now it's nineteen ninety one the Spurs know what to do

It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
They first won the Cup when the century begun
It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
So this is the year for Spurs

Altogether now,

It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
They first won the Cup when the century begun
It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
So this is the year for Spurs

Now there are some flaws in this notion. Tottenham also won the Cup in 1962, 1967 and 1982. And they didn't win it in a number of "ending in one" years, including most recently 2001 and 2011. But nothing will stop their fans living in hope every ten years. So I invite all my readers to sing along with Chas & Dave at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ddjdlqf7vo&ab_channel=sunderlandspur

Art it's not, but it's a jolly song.

UPDATE: I tried embedding the video; hope it works:

Spurs start their campaign to win the 2021 FA Cup on 10 January, away to the lowest ranked team left in the tournament - Marine, a Merseyside club that currently plays in the Northern Premier League Division One North West. I think that's six leagues below Tottenham. Will it be the year ending in one, or January ending in the biggest shock of all time?

I feel a Zoom singalong comin' on...

Don't cry over spilt milk

You may have noticed my fascination with language, in particular the origins of strange childhood aphorisms. "Don't cry over spilt milk" was not invented by my mother, or yours. No. it's down to James Howell in his Paramoigraphy of 1659.

I'm not even sure that paramoigraphy is a real word. But Howell used it to describe his book of proverbs, so that's good enough for me. There's a suggestion that the original (which sadly I couldn't find) read "no weeping for shed milk".

Also in 1659, Henry Purcell was born. He died in 1695, which is a numerical anagram of his birth year.

My birthday, in DDMM format, which is 1601, is a numerical anagram of 0611, which was the DDMM birthday of Suleiman The Magnificent in 1494.

Suleiman, as the Ottoman Sultan, conquered the island of Rhodes in 1523. Cecil Rhodes, former Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and after whom Rhodesia was named, founded the Rhodes Scholarship scheme in his will. The most recent Rhodes Scholar is Madison Tung, first female wrestler and wrestling national champion at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Another USAF Academy graduate Heather Wilson was a Rhodes Scholar at Jesus College, Oxford in 1982. Which was where James Howell was elected to a Fellowship in 1623, 36 years before he wrote his Paramoigraphy.

It's a small world.

Code of Hammurabi

Hammurabi was King of Babylon from 1792 to 1750 B.C. He is best known for issuing the Code of Hammurabi. This code of laws is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. A partial copy exists on a 2.25-metre-tall (7.4 ft) stone stele, which is today in the Louvre.

The code contains 282 laws. You can see a list of all of them in the Avalon Project of the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University. For those of you without that much time, here are a few pertinent examples.

3. If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.

I guess that gives you a flavour of what is to come. However:

2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

So what's so special about a river?

I guess rivers were important in ancient Babylon.

5. If a judge try a case, reach a decision, and present his judgment in writing; if later error shall appear in his decision, and it be through his own fault, then he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the case, and he shall be publicly removed from the judge's bench, and never again shall he sit there to render judgement.

Now there's a thing. Judges are accountable for their actions. I can think of a few authoritarian leaders who would love that.

21. If any one break a hole into a house (break in to steal), he shall be put to death before that hole and be buried.

Harsh.

65. If the gardener do not work in the garden and the product fall off, the gardener shall pay in proportion to other neighboring gardens.

That reminds me of my getting warned off because I allowed my allotment to grow an impressive array of weeds.

109. If conspirators meet in the house of a tavern-keeper, and these conspirators are not captured and delivered to the court, the tavern-keeper shall be put to death.

That's one for lockdown rules.

195. If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.

196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.

197. If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken.

200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out.

You get the message.

226. If a barber, without the knowledge of his master, cut the sign of a slave on a slave not to be sold, the hands of this barber shall be cut off.

There's a lot more about slaves, tenant farming and adultery.

Nice chap, Hammurabi. Good job there are no statues of him around. However, it should be remembered that he was - as we all are - a man of his time, and this codification of the rule of law is remarkable.

I wonder whether students are taught this as part of the history of laws in a law degree course. I have a son who could answer that.........

Rudolph won't be coming

But Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner (or Dunder) and Blitzen will.

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
with a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call'd them by name:
"Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer, and Vixen!
"On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Dunder and Blitzen!

[A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement C. Moore, 1823]

Rudolph is a fake, invented in 1939 as a marketing gimmick for the Montgomery Ward chain of department stores in America. Shame.

But it did spawn the famous song. Nobody ever sang "Dasher, the prancing reindeer". To my knowledge.

There's more. L. Frank Baum's story The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902) includes a list of ten reindeer: Flossie and Glossie, Racer and Pacer, Fearless and Peerless, Ready and Steady, Feckless and Speckless.

St. Nicholas himself was a real person of course, a monk supposedly in (what is now) Turkey in the 3rd century A.D. (or C.E. as we woke people say). I could find no record of reindeer sightings in Turkey. Or turkeys in Lapland, for that matter.

The first known reference to Santa Claus coming down a chimney is in a version of Knickerbocker’s History of New York by Washington Irvine in 1812: "St. Nicholas rattl[ing] down the chimney”.

Americans, have you nothing better to write about? And are Americans that gullible?

So kids, please stop singing about Rudolph and memorise Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. I'll test you!

A very merry Christmas everyone.