The Historical Ponderings Society

[EverySongbirdSays]

Following on from the thread "What questions do you have about stuff from History or am I the only one?" Which is here

Ever wondered how we got from the clothes of Cave people to the clothes of today?

Who was the first person to make and eat Cheese? Or cake?

How ideas became widespread

Why the Aztecs didn't have the wheel?

Why Elizabeth I never married?

How accurate historical fiction is?

Then this your thread and we are your people.

PROCEED HISTORY LOVERS

For those who are interested there's a great book called 'Welsh Pirates' by Dafydd Meirion. It's only a small book but it's got loads of interesting stuff in it.

From memory, one of the stats re: pirates that came from Cornwall/ Wales during the Golden Age of Piracy was enormous. Something like 70%. So that would partially account for the 'ooh-arrrr' stereotype.

I do kind of get the theory - making people think there are somewhere else but not confidence you could replicated lighthouses with small lamps.

It's the same idea I've heard used about Alexandria in second world war - where an illusionist working in British a army made a dummy city that got bombed instead - but Germans bought it as they added damage to the fake after raids. I not sure if that is actually true or not either.

But how powerful were these lights? Presumably all they had access to was tallow candles, oil lamps, maybe a bonfire, but how do you keep those lit in a storm and how would anyone be able to see them in the pitch black and lashing rain? Surely you'd have to build an actual lighthouse to do the job properly, which might be a bit difficult to keep quiet?

Same thoughts as me MrsWhite

But there wouldn't have been lighthouses - as we understand them - backaways, MrsWhite.

And you wouldn't have wanted to sail too close to Eilean Mor Lighthouse at the best of times, I guess.

I can't say I know much about lighthouses.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_of_Alexandria

At its apex was positioned a mirror which reflected sunlight during the day; a fire was lit at night

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse seems to be big fires of wood or coal on towers till 1782 when got improved illumination.

So I guesses a big bonfire on a high cliff could be confused with them - but a lot of people are going to possibly notice that -perhaps that why the entire community is often depicted as in on it.

I think you could imitate a lighthouse with a lantern if the conditions were right and if there was nothing else around to compare it to. A lighthouse next to a lantern, it would obviously be easy to tell which was which, but if it's the only light you can see for miles the fact it was too small wouldn't be obvious.

Just going back to something Weeds* said upthread (and not completely unrelated to the discussion about pirates ), were buttered eggs - covered in butter to stay fresh - what they meant in Swallows and Amazons when they used to have toast and buttered eggs for breakfast? I'd always imagined it to be something like scrambled eggs (but more buttery?), but perhaps not

We used to call eggs scrambled in butter buttered eggs

I reckon they meant buttery scrambled eggs.

No, you were right before, it is basically scrambled eggs with (what we would consider) obscene amounts of butter.

Phew! I've learnt lots of amazing stuff from these threads, but I'm not sure I could have coped with having to recalibrate my imagined campfire breakfasts when I became best friends with Nancy and Peggy!

It's the same idea I've heard used about Alexandria in second world war - where an illusionist working in British a army made a dummy city that got bombed instead - but Germans bought it as they added damage to the fake after raids. I not sure if that is actually true or not either.
I'm not sure about that, but the Germans were conned into bombing a fake aircraft factory in England during WWII, complete with fake damage afterwards. It was all part of maintaining the cover of a double agent. The Nazis had sent him into the UK, but he at once turned himself in, and he was used to feed all sorts of nonsense back to Germany. To convince the Germans that he was still working for them, however, the whole fake factory scheme was hatched.

I think swallows and Amazon's were scrambled. Buttered preserved eggs are Irish (although I'm sure it must have been done elsewhere). You rub the shell of the raw egg with butter and they keep several months. In Northern Ireland I have had "egg in a cup" which was a shelled runny boiled egg, mashed up in a teacup with a fork, with a ton of butter, salt and pepper. Maybe the Swallows version was something like that?

The first lighthouse on the Eddystone (off Devon) was from the end of the seventeenth century, which was one of the first, and I think of wreckers as 18th century into early 19th century.

Not many places have a word for or concept of "dreckly"
We do here.
I'll make a cuppa dreckly.

Good thinking there! (If it's for someone else. )

I'm guessing that anything for yourself is made 'directly'?

article here on why forcefeeding sick pigs can increase mortality. Paraphrasing when ill they develop anorexia this increases their immune system responses. Forcefeeding would reduce this.

Things I never thought I'd put on MN No. 257.

While we have locals around, did you know that the word teasy is a local one and not really known up country?

I have the "pig as paramour" image stuck in my head now, although the force-feeding makes far more sense ...

Monica Edwards' Romney Marsh books have a very accurate representation of the Sussex dialect (Monica's father was the Vicar at Rye Harbour in the 1920s and she went sailing with the local fishermen), including 'dreckly minute', meaning 'in a moment'

And the Swallows and Amazons buttered eggs are definitely scrambled, not a mashed up boiled egg - there's a complete description of how Susan cooked them on their first evening on Wild Cat Island.

Strewth. Four or five eggs and a quarter pound of butter.

Now that is buttery!

(Old recipe)

But, back on wreckers, the lame donkey story, also appears in NE Scotland, appears a possibility to me. You tie lanterns to the tails of donkeys and the ship in trouble will assume they are other ships at anchor in deep water, avoiding rocks, so will come towards them and then be wrecked. Not saying it did happen but the fact it gets referred to quite often suggests at the least that people thought it might, and if you were a wrecker, why would you tell anyone the truth?

thanks for the confirmation, Rusty. And for the "dreckly" mention - I hadn't realised it was used so far east (perhaps it isn't any more?)

cozie - "dreckly" means anything from "in a minute" to "at some point in the coming weeks / months", depending on what is being agreed. Eg "I'll need to fix that fence dreckly, before the ewes are put out with their lambs". It will actually happen, but not necessarily as fast as one might ideally want...