Wars of the Roses and language. Anyone an expert?

[KilledByWitches]

Currently watching 'Royal Bastards. Rise of the Tudors' on Sky History. For the most part it's really enjoyable, especially with the narration from Philip Glenister, Sheila Atim and Sophie Rundle, but something is bothering me.

The Duke of York repeatedly uses the word 'fucking' and then later, his son Edward of March refers to an aide as a 'clever prick' and a 'crafty cunt'. It feels a bit jarring within the story. I recall reading of the use of the word 'Fuck' in court documents from the 13th century, but would they have really used those words? Especially given their religious leanings at the time.

I'm extremely curious!

I dare say they wouldn’t have used ‘clever’ and ‘crafty’ in exactly the same senses we do now either!

I doubt they were aiming for authentic language. Think of it as a foreign language translated into English rather than an exact portrayal.

I don't know.

I believe that when the high French lords came over in a flutter of flags and dames in 1066 the court then spoke French and the Anglo-Saxon four letter words became the rude, outlawed words. They are not all four-lettered words but sh-t, f-rt, ct, fk are. I know those are regarded as swear words nowadays but I distinguish them from the bad words which 'take the Lord's name in vain, or his mother's', like bl--dy, which is a corruption of 'by my Lady', or 'Oddsbodikins', a corruption of 'God's body', and 'Oh Christ', 'Oh God', the ubiquitous 'OMG', etc.

Maybe the religious folk of Tudor times would have been less offended by the Anglo-Saxon words for parts of bodies and bodily activities.

Your question is interesting and when I heard that piece of info years ago about the French being the acceptable language and the A/S becoming the lowly language, that was interesting too.

I’m at the start of watching this and I’m Im finding the swearing jarring, mainly because it’s only the Duke of York (a lot) and in a broad Yorkshire accent. I think it’s been done to accentuate that he was rough - but whether he was or not I don’t know. I’d assumed the aristocracy spoke differently, albeit with regional variations. If the other side had been swearing too i wouldn’t have thought much about it.

I'm late to this, but FWIW, both 'prick' and 'cunt' were much less offensive words. Lots of puns on both in the sort of acceptably polite books you might read in your family circle.

I think - not sure - that taking the name of the Lord in vain would have seemed much ruder, though I'm slightly second-guessing that one because I think some variants of that kind of swear had become sort of normalised. Actual proper blasphemy could be taken really quite seriously.

I don't think 'fuck' is that common, but they use 'swyve' which means the same.

Re. accents - I think you can often tell from people's spelling if they have the local accent, and often people do even if they're quite aristocratic.

Yes, I touched on this in uni.
Sexual words only really became a no-no with Victorian 'morality'. They wouldn't have been considered rude before then, 'cunt' is in Chaucer (wife of Bath I believe), Shakespeare is full of puns on words for sex and genitalia, Pepys diary similar.
However blasphemous words could see you in a lot of trouble.
There was a language switch 18th/19th century where we became a more secular society, and also more private.

Interesting as I was wondering exactly the same!

Earliest "fuck" in the OED is early 16th C, although with a note saying it was clearly in use earlier.. "Cunt" is a very old word but isn't attested as a term of abuse for a person until the 19th C.

There's a really nice post about the early uses of fuck here: solongasitswords.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/on-the-origin-of-fuck/