ring around the rosie

Illustration accompanying the “Ring-a-ring-a-roses” rhyme in the 1881 edition of Kate Greenaway’s Mother Goose. Colored drawing of six children in late nineteenth-century dress holding hands and dancing in the circle, while on a country hillside. A windmill and farm fields are in the background.

27 September 2021

Ring Around the Rosie (or Ring a Ring o’ Roses, or other variant spellings) is a children’s song and game where the children join hands, dance in a circle, sing, and at the end they all fall to the ground. Or at least that’s how the game is commonly played nowadays. The origin of the rhyme is rather straightforward; the phrase comes from May Day or Whitsunday (Pentecost) traditions of dancing and gathering garlands or wreathes of flowers, traditions that date to the medieval era. Versions of the song, and they are myriad, are found in a number of European languages, and at the end the children usually either fall down, curtsy, or choose a sweetheart.

While the flower-gathering tradition dates to the medieval era, the song itself is not nearly that old. The earliest recorded versions date to the late eighteenth century but are likely older in oral use. (Efforts to record folklore and culture of children did not begin in earnest until the nineteenth century.) In his 1883 Games and Songs of American Children, William Wells Newell claims this version was in use in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1790:

Ring a ring a rosie,
A bottle full of posie,
All the girls in our town,
Ring for little Josie.

Unfortunately, Newell does not give any evidence to support his claim of a 1790 date, but the date is a plausible one, and there is no particular reason to doubt it. For we do have a version from Germany that is recorded in a 1796 collection of folklore:

Ringe, Ringe, Reihe!
Sind der Kinder Dreie,
Sitzen auf dem Holderbusch,
Rufen alle: musch, musch, musch!
Setzt euch nieder!

(Ring-a, ring-a, row!
There are three children
Sitting in the holderbush,
All call out: musch, musch, musch!
Sit down!)

The earliest appearance in English with solid evidence is from 1855 in Ann S. Stephens’s novel The Old Homestead. The rhyme appears as the epigraph for a chapter titled, “The Festival of Roses”:

A ring—a ring of roses,
Laps full of posies;
Awake—awake!
Now come and make
A ring—a ring of roses.

And the text of that chapter explains the reason why Stephens chose the rhyme to introduce the chapter:

Among the first and the busiest were Mary Fuller and Isabel. They sat beneath a great elm tree back of the Hospital, with a heap of flowers between them, out of which they twined a world of bouquets, fairy garlands, and pretty crowns. Half-a-dozen little girls, lame, or among the convalescent sick, volunteered to gather the flowers, and some of the larger boys were up among the branches of the elm tree, garlanding them with ropes of the coarser blossoms.

[...]

Then the little girls began to seek their own amusements. They played “hide and seek,” “ring, ring a rosy," and a thousand wild and pretty games; for the place was so beautiful, and the day so bright, the little rogues quite forgot that they were in the Poor House, or had ever been sick in the whole course of their lives.

Another German version is recorded in 1857, this one from Switzerland, in Ernst Rochholz’s Alemannisches Kinderlied und Kinderspiel aus der Schweiz:

Ringel, Ringeli, Reihe,
d’ Chinde gönt i d’Maie.
sie tanzet um die Rosestöck
Und machet alle Bode-Bodehöck

(Ring-a, ring-a, row,
The babes go into the greenwood.
They dance around the rosebush
And all squat down.)

An Italian version from Venice is recorded in 1874 by Giuseppe Bernoni:

Gira, gira, rosa,
  Co la più bela in mezo;
Gira un bel giardino,
  Un altro pochetino;
Un salterelo,
  Un alto de più belo;
Una riverenza,
  Un’altra per penitenza;
Un baso a chi ti vol.

(Ring a ring a roses,
  With the most beautiful in the middle;
Ring a pretty garden,
  Another circle round,
A little skip,
  Another even better,
A curtsy,
  Another for penitence:
A kiss for the one you like.)

Kate Greenaway’s 1881 Mother Goose has this English version:

Ring-a-ring-a roses,
A pocket full of posies;
Hush! hush! hush! hush!
We’re all tumbled down.

Other English versions recorded by Newell in 1883 are:

Round the ring of roses,
Pots full of posies,
The one who stoops last
Shall tell whom she loves best.

Ring around the rosie,
Squat among the posies.
Ring around the roses,
Pocket full of posies,
One, two, three—squat!

A ring, a ring, a ransy,
Buttermilk and tansy,
Flower here and flower there,
And all—squat!

And there is this Parisian version also recorded in 1883 by E. Rolland:

A la main droite j’ai un rosier
  Qui fleurira
  Au mois de mai,
  Au mois de mai,
  Qui fleurira.
Entrez, entrez, charmante rose;
Embrassez celle que vous voudrez,
  La rose
Ou bien le rosier

(In my right hand I have a rosebush
  Who will bloom
  In May,
  In May,
  Who will bloom.
Come in, come in, lovely rose;
Kiss the one you want,
  The rose
Or the rosebush)

Finally, we get this version from 1886, recorded in Charlotte Burne’s Shropshire Folk-Lore. It is one of the first to incorporate sneezing into the song. Burne’ writes:

Ring o’ roses. A ring, moving around, till the last line, when they stand and imitate sneezing.

Chorus.    ‘A ring, a ring o’ roses,
                  A pocket-full o’ posies;
        One for Jack and one for Jim and one for little Moses!
                  A-tisha! a-tisha! a-tisha!”                  COMMON

At Edgmond, where this game is a favorite with very little children, the last line runs, “A curchey in, and a curchey out, and curchey all together,” curtseying accordingly.

The reason for my including so many versions in different languages is because of the persistent false etymology that has attached to the rhyme. According to this tale, the nursery rhyme is a cultural memory of the plague—either the one of 1660 or even the Black Death of the fourteenth century. The tale is based on the canonical present-day version of the rhyme, which reads:

Ring around the rosie
A pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes
We all fall down

Supposedly, ring around the rosie refers to buboes on the skin, a symptom of the bubonic plague. A pocket full of posies refers to flowers kept in the pocket to ward off the disease. Ashes, ashes is a reference to death, as in “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The common variant of the third line, Atishoo, atishoo, is a reference to sneezing and sickness. Finally, falling down is a representation of death.

But as we can see, this explanation does not work for the earliest known versions of the rhyme, which are clearly about picking flowers. And by focusing on one English version, the explanation ignores all the others, in all the other languages. Furthermore, the plague explanation itself doesn’t appear until the second half of the twentieth century. It is clearly an attempt to rationalize a rhyme that doesn’t make sense in our present-day culture, one where circular May Day dances are a thing of the past.

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Sources:

Bernoni, Giuseppe. Giuochi Poplari Veneziani (Popular Venetian Games). Venice: Tipografia Melchiorre Fontana, 1874, 30. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Burne, Charlotte Sophia, ed. Shropshire Folk-Lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings, part 3. London: Trübner, 1886, 511–512. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Greenaway, Kate, illus. Mother Goose. London: Frederick Warne, 1881, 52. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Newell, William Wells, ed. Games and Songs of American Children. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1883, 127–28. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Opie, Iona and Peter. The Singing Game. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988, 219–27. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2010, modified June 2021, s.v. ring-a-ring o’ roses, n.

Rochholz, Ernst Ludwig. Alemannisches Kinderlied und Kinderspiel aus der Schweiz (German Children’s Songs and Games from Switzerland). Leipzig: J.J. Weber, 1857, 183. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Rolland, E. Rimes et Jeux de l’Enfance (Rhymes and Childhood Games). Les Littératures Populaires 14. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1883, 71–72. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Stephens, Ann S. The Old Homestead. New York: Bunce and Brother, 1855, 213–16. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Kate Greenaway, 1881. Public domain image.

redneck

Three white, cotton sharecroppers in Hale County, Alabama, 1936. Black and white photo of three men in working clothes, sitting in front of a building. The men are Frank Tengle, Bud Fields, and Floyd Burroughs.

24 September 2021

Redneck is a derogatory term for a poor, poorly educated, white person from the southern United States, often employed in agricultural or other menial labor. Bigotry and reactionary political views are often associated with them. In more recent usage, redneck has been applied to any poorly educated person, especially a bigot, but not necessarily from the southern US.

Like other slurs, the term is not necessarily offensive when used as an in-group term among white, American Southerners. The comedy of Jeff Foxworthy and his you might be a redneck if... schtick is a case in point.

The underlying metaphor is uncertain. It most likely refers to having a sunburned neck, from working in the fields. But it could also be a reference to habitual anger, or even to pellagra, a disease caused by niacin (vitamin B3) deficiency that can cause red, blotchy skin, especially on skin that has been exposed to sunlight.

Redneck appears in the nineteenth century, but exactly when is a matter of some debate. The earliest known possible use of the term is from Anne Royall’s 1830 travelogue of the American South, in which she says Red Neck is a term applied to Presbyterians in Fayetteville, North Carolina:

Fayetteville was a lively, flourishing town, possessing many advantages, settled principally by a noble race of Scotch tories. I believe, however this may have been, matters have turned round, and the Scotch descendants are liberal, learned, and gene- rous, and the then Whigs and descendants of Scot's servants, are now a noble race of Hen-pecked Husbands, alias good Loyal subjects of Church and State. Liberty no longer shows its head in Fayetteville. It is in vain, as it would be criminal to conceal the fact, that the Presbyterians are more powerful here, than any point north of it, excepting Virginia. They have gone wisely to work in the outset, and have selected all those places in our country, which promise commerce and wealth, and after subverting the plans of Education, and the relation of even man and wife, they got complete control over the Schools; and through the women the purse, and also the commercial business.

Briefly, Fayetteville is the poorest hole I ever was in. I did not find more than a dozen liberal minded men in the whole, a population of 3 to 4,000 inhabitants [....]

Capt. John Kerney is a tall, slender, engaging figure, with a lively black eye and handsome features. But a minute description of all those who called would fill my volume, and it must astonish every one, after what I have said, (which is certainly no more than justice,) that I received but one dollar in Fayetteville! This may be ascribed to the Red Necks, a name bestowed upon the Presbyterians in Fayetteville. How many names these people have, matters not, they still gather money; you cannot shame them!

I have elided a long section that gives detailed descriptions of individual residents.

Most dictionaries, Merriam-Webster being an exception, caveat this 1830 use as perhaps being a specialized, local sense, distinct from the more general sense. One can certainly conclude that looking only at a snippet containing the word. But if one looks at the larger context, which I give here, it may be that it was Royall who misinterpreted the term as being specific to Fayetteville. Certainly, the political views and lack of education she describes fits the present-day definition, and while the Presbyterians she writes of are relatively wealthy, compared to their neighbors, the entire town is poor in an absolute sense.

Other dictionaries have at least a half-century gap between this 1830 instance and the next recorded instance, which would cause one to think the earlier citation may be an independent coinage, but there are interdatings to be found and that show that redneck was used more generally than Royall supposed. A letter, dated 30 May 1837, published in the Hartford, Connecticut Times has this:

There’s one Hansel somebody, from Sharon, that tries it forty times a day, and gits up and shets his eyes and draws down his face and looks like an ampersand thats cotched the delirion dremus, and sez he aynt no partee man, and cant in conshence go with neither party; but when he starts off he goes like a sturgeon with one eye knocked out, tryin to swim strate in the middle ov the channel; but he gits sich a skew afore he swims two rods that he runs smash amongst the fedrels and they pat his hed and call him a real red neck what aynt afraid to go jist where he plezes.

There is this report from 4 October 1860, published in the Macon Telegraph five days later about a Baltimore, Maryland street gang known as the Red Necks. This is not the classic view of a redneck, but it fits the description of poor, poorly educated, white person from the south (Baltimore is often considered the northernmost “southern” city), prone to anger:

Another notorious outlaw and leader of the Know Nothing clubs, was arrested yesterday for the murder of a German woman, by shooting her. The murder occurred during the last winter, yet no arrest has ever been made of any one for its commission. The man Lynch, who has never been arrested, was the captain of the “Red Necks,” a villianous [sic] Know Nothing club, belonging to Fells Point. It appears that on the night of the murder of the woman, a shot had been fired by an unknown part at a member of the Red Neck club, named Pierce, with fatal effect. So soon as the fact became known to the Red Neck’s [sic], they, (suspecting the deed had been committed by some member of a rival club, called “Double Pumps,”) went in a body to their usual place of meeting, and being armed with pistols and guns, fired into the crowd, wounding several of them by this fire; a woman, who was passing at the time, was fatally wounded and died the same night.

There is this widely syndicated story, first appearing in the Georgia Weekly Telegraph on 24 August 1875, that uses red neck in reference to a person making unwanted advances on the daughter of a woman who runs a boarding house—unwanted from the mother’s perspective; we don’t get the daughter’s view. But here it could just be a physical description, but the fact that a ruddy-colored neck is called out would seem to be significant:

Think of my Jane marrying a man with one eye! and a red neck! and a limp! O-h-h! when I think of that skulking Jaskins sneaking around my innocent Jane to make her his wife, I could t-e-a-r his house down.

And by 1885 we can see redneck is clearly established. From an anti-immigrant screed published in the Daily Honolulu Press on 15 September 1885. Here, the word falls on a line break, so whether or not it would normally have a hyphen is unknown:

There was an element in the Southern United States, which still exists, known to northern people as “poor white trash,” and locally known as “crackers,” “dirt-eaters” and red-necks,” with was a constant reproach, it being thought that slavery caused it and fostered it. The fact is that the ancestors of these peculiar people were imported from the slums of England and Europe in the seventeenth century, by a large land company, free, and were settled on the waters of Pamlico and Albermarle Sounds; and their descendants are unmistakeable to the practiced eye, from the Carolina coast, through Northern Georgia, Central Arkansas and Southern Missouri. They are by far the most worthless class that ever emigrated to the United States, and had it been left entirely to themselves, they would not have emigrated.

Would it not, in the face of all these facts, be well to call a halt in our immigration business, and consider the future?

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Sources:

“Baltimore Correspondence” (4 October 1860). Macon Telegraph (Georgia), 9 October 1860, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Both Sides.” Daily Honolulu Press, 15 September 1885, 2. Library of Congress: Chronicling America, Historic American Newspapers.

Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s.v. red-neck, n.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. redneck, n.

Letter, 30 May 1837. Times (Hartford, Connecticut), 3 June 1837, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Merriam-Webster, 2021, s.v. redneck, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, modified December 2019, s.v. redneck, n. and adj.

Royall, Anne. Mrs. Royall’s Southern Tour, vol. 1 of 3. Washington, DC: 1830, 148. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“That Sneaking, Skulking Mr. Jaskins” (syndicated). Georgia Weekly Telegraph (Macon, Georgia), 24 August 1875, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Walker Evans, 1936, U.S. Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress. As a work of the U.S. federal government, this image is in the public domain.

redhanded

Lady Macbeth examining her hand, believing it to be bloodstained, after the killing of King Duncan. A painting of a woman in a darkened room looking at her hand. An oil lamp burns on a table next to her.

23 September 2021

To be caught redhanded is to be caught in the act of some crime or mischief. The underlying metaphor is rather obvious upon a bit of reflection; it’s the imagery of a murderer’s bloody hand. The term arises in late medieval Scottish law to distinguish the procedures that should be followed when a person is caught in the act versus being caught at a later time. If a murderer was caught redhanded, many of the evidentiary hurdles could be dispensed with and sentence brought summarily.

The term is first recorded in a statute passed c.1430. The law is written in Latin, but uses a few English words, fang (plunder, stolen property) and redhand:

De recenti crimine quod dicitur redhand

Si latro comprehensus fuerit cum fang hoc est hande habande aut homicida redhand si hoc fuerit in burgo surgant hii qui tenent in baronia infra burgam per sectam calumniatoris et statim de ipso malefactore siue de die siue de nocte faciant justicie complementum pro baronibus enim in tali casu reputabuntur.

(Regarding an immediate indictment that is described as redhand

If a thief should be caught with the fang [i.e., plunder] in his hand or a murderer redhand, if this is in the jurisdiction of a city let those arise who live in the district within the city, dispose of false accusations and immediately, whether it be day or night, perform complete justice for the barons, that is to say, in such a case to decide the case.)

And a 1432 Scottish statute reads as follows:

Quhare ony man beis slane within the realme, als wele within regalite as within rialte, in borowis as to lande, that in continent, without delay, als fast as the sheref beis certifiit thareof, outhir be party or be ony uthiris, he sal pass and persew the slaaris, ane or maa, ande raiss the kingis horne on hym and raise the cuntre in his suppowell quhil he be ourtane. Ande gif he may be ouretakyn he salbe put in sikkir festinens quhil the law be done on hym. Ande that salbe within fourty dais at the ferrest. Ande be it red hand it salbe done within that sone.

(Where any man is slain within the realm, both within and outside regality, as in a royal estate, in boroughs as to land, that immediately, without delay, as fast as the sheriff is certified thereof, either by party or by others, he shall pass and pursue the slayers, one or more, and raise the king's horn on him and raise the country in his support while he [the slayer] is overtaken. And if he may be overtaken, he shall be put in a secure fastness until the law is done on him. And that shall be within forty days at the latest. And if it is red-handed, it shall be done within that sun.)

By the second half of the next century, redhanded becomes metaphorical—but still limited to legal usage—and applied to crimes other than murder. This 1578 Scottish statute refers to being caught carrying firearms to be a riedhand crime:

It sall not be lefull to beir, weir, or use in schuting or utherwayis the saidis culveringis, daggis, pistolettis, or ony sic uther ingyne of fyre werk upoun thair personis, or in cumpany with thame oppinlie, with thame outwith houssis in tyme cuming, under the pane of impresonment of thair personis for yeir and day, and forder induring the Kingis Majesteis will,—togidder with the pane of escheting of the culveringis, daggis, or sic uther ingynes of fyre werk to the use and behuif of the juge executor of the jugement heireftir ordanit. And for executioun heirof, that the offendouris sall not eschape unpuneist, gevis and grantis full power and commissioun, be vertew of this present Act, to all Shereffis, Stewartis, Baillies and thair deputtis, Lordis of Regaliteis and thair Baillies, Provestis, Aldermen, and Baillies of Burrowis, makand thame our Soverane Lordis justices in that part, to tak and apprehend the contravenaris heirof, beand found reidhand berand or werand the saidis culveringis, daggis, pistolettis, or utheris ingynis of fyre werk, and keip thame in ward quhill justice be execute upoun thame, providing the same be done within sic space as be the law and custum is appointit for personis takin reidhand in thift.

It isn’t until the eighteenth century that the word moved south into England. It’s found in a 1759 edition of Spenser’s Fairie Queene, where the editor, Ralph Church, uses it to gloss ruddymaine. In the passage, the Knight Guyon finds the woman Amavia dying. Her husband had been seduced by the evil enchantress Acrasia, and Amavia had poisoned him and then killed herself. Guyon takes her infant boy and swears to bring it up avenge his parents’ deaths:

Then taking Congè of that Virgin pure,
   The bloody-handed Babe unto her truth
   Did earnestly committ, and her conjure
   In vertuous lore to traine his tender youth,
   And all that gentle nouriture ensu’th:
   And that, so soone as riper yeares he raught,
   He might, for memory of that daye’s truth,
   Be called Ruddymaine; and thereby taught
T’avenge his Parents death on them that had it wrought.

Church’s note reads:

8 ——Ruddymane;] i.e. Red-handed

From this point on, redhanded becomes widely used, and not just in legal or homicidal contexts.

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Sources:

The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, vol. 1. 1844. Appendix V (c.1430). 375. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Burton, John Hill, ed. The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, first series, vol. 2. (12 April 1578). Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House, 682. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, modified September 2019, s.v. red-handed, adj., red-hand, adj. and n.

 “Perth, Parliamentary Commission, Parliamentary Records, 10 March 1432.” Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707. University of St. Andrews, 2021.

Spenser, Edmund. The Fairie Queene, vol. 2 of 4. Ralph Church, ed. London: William Faden, 1759, 3.2, 46–47. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Image credit: Alfred Stevens, before 1906, oil on canvas. Musées Communaux de Verviers. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of an original work that is in the public domain.

red tape

US pension documents bound with red tape. A sheaf of papers, folded, and tied with red cloth ribbon. The top document is dated 1 October 1904.

22 September 2021

Red tape is the mindless adherence to bureaucratic rules and niceties that, to outsiders at least, seem pointless and time-wasting. The term comes from the red, cloth tape that was once used to bind stacks of papers in offices. A note in the 11 May 1861 issue of Notes and Queries discusses the origin of the practice in Britain:

Red tape appears to be used exclusively in the public offices of this country, and is probably of no great antiquity. It may have been originally imported from Holland, but there is no reason for connecting it to William III. Tape was a convenient and cheap material for tying up loose papers; and as white tape soon became dirty, coloured tape was preferred. Why the colour red was preferred for tape, as for sealing-wax and wafers, depended on some accident which is not easy to trace. On occasions of public mourning, black tape is sometimes served out in the government offices.

That same article in Notes and Queries includes a transcription of the earliest known appearance of the term, used in its literal sense, from 1658:

From the following advertisement in the Public Intelligencer for Dec. 6th, 1658 (No. 153), it would appear that red tape was used by London lawyers two centuries ago:—
“A little bundle of Papers tied with a red Tape, were lost on Friday last was a seven night, between Worcester-house and Lincolns-Inn. Also a Paper-Book bound in Leather and blue coloured Leafs. If any one who hath found them, will bring or send them to Mr. Graves his Chamber in Lincoln’s Inn, they shall receive satisfaction for their pains.”

It would seem that stacks of papers bound with red tape had a penchant for being lost on public transport, for this advertisement appeared in the Protestant (Domestick) Intelligence for 22 March 1681:

A Pocket Book bound in Vellom, tied about with a piece of red Tape, was lost on Wednesday night last, about the hour of Nine, between Fleet-Bridge and East-Cheap, with sev ral [sic] Bills of Parcels of Linnen, and Bone-Lace, and Receipts for fever2l [sic] Sums of Money; the Receipts are made to one Hugh Anderson. Whoever hath taken up this Pocket Book, they are Desired to bring or send it to the Publisher of this Intelligence, or to John Damm’s Coffee-House in the Mint in Southwark, and the Bearer shall have 5 s. reward.

And we get a reference to government documents bound with red tape being lost on public transport in the London Gazette of 13–17 December 1694:

Dropt the 23d past, between Tooteing and Clapham, in the County of Surry, 3 Exchequer Orders in parchment, tied up with red Tape, for payment of the Interest of 300 l. unto John Coldham of Tooteing aforesaid. Whoever brings the said Orders to Mr. Smith, Goldsmith, at the Grasshopper in Lombard-street, or to the said Mr. Coldham at his House in Tooteing, shall have a Guinea reward.

Red tape, the literal kind, appears in the Americas by 1 July 1696 with the passage of this this law governing how records of the boundaries of public land in Annapolis in the colony of Maryland were to be kept:

And for the Ascertaining of the Bounds and Limits of the said Town-Pasture and Common, and the several Lots and Dividends in the same contained; be it Enacted by the Authority aforesaid, by and with the Advice and Consent of the aforesaid, That the Dimensions, Bounds and Courses thereof, shall at all Times hereafter, be adjudged, held, taken and reputed, according to the Map and Platt thereof, being drawn up and presented by Richard Beard, Gent. by Order and Directions of his Excellency, carefully Examined, and Sealed with the Great Seal of the Province at the Fore Side thereof, and upon the Back Side thereof seal’d with his Excellency’s Seal at Arms, on a Red Cross with Red Tape, and remaining in the Secretary’s Office, or to be hung up in the Court-House.

Figurative use of red tape to mean adherence to bureaucratic rules is in place by 1736, when John Hervey includes the following passage in his satirical Poetical Epistle to the Queen on Her Commanding Lord Hervey to Write No More:

What others dictate, let great statesmen write,
And we Gold Keys learn all to read at sight:
Let Wilmington, with grave, contracted brow,
Red tape and wisdom at the Council show,
Sleep in the senate, in the circle bow.

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Sources:

“An Act for Keeping Good Rules and Orders in the Port of Annapolis” (1 July 1696). Compleat Collection of the Laws of Maryland. Annapolis: William Parks, 1727, 14. LLMC Digital.

“Advertisement.” Protestant (Domestick) Intelligence (London), 22 March 1681, 2. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Nichols Newspapers Collection.

Hervey, John. “Poetical Epistle to the Queen on Her Commanding Lord Hervey to Write No More” (1736). Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, vol. 2 of 2. John Wilson Croker, ed. London: John Murray, 1848, 156. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Multiple Advertisements.” London Gazette, 13–17 December 1694, 2. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Nichols Newspapers Collection.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, modified March 2019, s.v. red tape, n.

“Red Tape.” Notes and Queries (London), 11.280, 11 May 1861, 375–76. Gale Primary Sources: American Historical Periodicals

Tréguer, Pascal. “Origin of ‘Red Tape’ (Obstructive Official Rules).” Wordhistories.net, 1 January 2018.

Photo credit: Jarek Tuszyński, 2011. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

red herring

One of the more famous red herrings in literature, from Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1887 A Study in Scarlet, the first print appearance of the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Holmes, not wearing his trademark deerstalker cap, uses a magnifying glass to examine the word “Rache,” which has been scrawled on a wall of a murder scene. Watson and two police detectives look on. The caption reads, “He examined with his glass the word upon the wall, going over every letter of it with the most minute exactness.”

21 September 2021

A red herring is something that distracts or is misleading, especially a false clue in an investigation or an ancillary issue that keeps people from focusing on the primary issue. It is also a fish, a smoked kipper that has turned red during the curing process.

Literal use of red herring referring to the fish dates to the fourteenth century. The figurative sense comes from the world of hunting and the practice of dragging a red herring along a trail in order to train or exercise hounds and horses. The hounds would follow the scent of the fish as if it were prey. Thomas Nash mentions this practice in his 1599 essay The Praise of the Red Herring:

Next, to draw on hounds to a sent, to a redde herring skinne there is nothing comparable.

This practice would later be misunderstood to be one used by poachers or others intent on disrupting a hunt. There are several humorous stories about people using a red herring to distract hounds, but if this ever actually happened it was a rare occurrence. Rather, it seems the stories were invented to connect the idea of distraction with the hunting practice in order to make the metaphor more apparent on its face.

A fuller description of the actual hunting practice is given in Gerald Langbaine’s 1685 The Hunter. A Discourse of Horsemanship:

Now that I may not leave you in ignorance what a Train scent is, I shall acquaint you that it has its Name, as I suppose, from the manner of it, viz. the trailing or dragging of a dead Cat or Fox (and in case of Necessity a Red-herring) three or four Miles, (according to the Will of the Rider, or the directions given him) and then laying the Dogs on the scent.

Langbaine’s book, written anonymously, was published for the bookseller Nicolas Cox, who would go on to reprint the book under his own name.

The figurative use also appears by the 1680s. From John Northleigh’s 1682 A Gentle Reflection on the Modest Account in a discussion of dissenters (i.e., Roman Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants) in England:

Your business in the next Paragraph, is to make the discover'd Association a Popish Hobgoblin too, a Mormo conjur'd up at White-Hall; or to use your own expression, The keeping Hounds in full cry with a Red-Herring, out of their own Kitchin, trail'd through the Kingdom to make a noise.

A pleasant Metaphor, I confess, in comparing a piece of Rebellion with a Red-Herring; somewhat a more apposite Allegory, even upon this account, because both are great Commodities in the Dutch Common-wealths; but I fancy, my Lord, could your Party but have kept this Herring close, and drying in their own Chimney, till the Nations Palate had been a little better disposed to relish such a salt Bit, the Dogs that would have follow'd the scent then, I am afraid would have shown themselves a thirsty sort of Blood-Hounds, and took some of the King's best Subjects for their Prey; but now this dried Fish has took a little Air, and rank Treason stunk and offended the whole Kingdom, ’tis no wonder if your Party won’t allow the Dish to come out of their Kitchin, when it looks as if it had been drest in Hell, and had the Devil for its Cook.

And also in 1682, Thomas Shadwell uses the metaphor in his satire The Medal of John Bayes, albeit without explicitly referring to the hunting practice:

But we doubt not but if you had found or put the Libel your Poet was Cudgell’d for (though few of your Loyal Closets, perhaps, are without that, and other Libels upon the King) into the Earls Closet, ye would have set up an abhorrence of that, rather than not have kept up the Fermentation and Division amongst the people. When this is run out of breath, we suppose ye will set up the Ticket for the Forbidden Dinner, and ye will abhor Factious, Schismatical, Seditious, Fanatical, and Rebellious Dining, or some new Red-Herring out of his Lordships Kitchin will come forth.

These two appearances in the same year strongly hint that the figurative use was already established by this date.

A neat, little story about the death and estate of Jasper Mayne, a seventeenth-century cleric and playwright, that uses the red herring metaphor in a very inventive fashion appears by 1691. It is found in Gerard Langbaine’s, the same man who wrote the above treatise on hunting, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets. Mayne had died in 1672:

He had a Servant who had long liv’d with him, to whom he bequeath’d a Trunk, and in Somewhat (as he said) that would make him Drink after his Death. The Doctor being dead the Trunk, was speedily visited by his Servant with mighty Expectation, where he found this promising Legacy to be nothing but a Red-Herring: So that it may be said of him, that his propensity to innocent Raillery was so great, that it kept him Company even after death.

Apparently, there was an actual dead fish in the trunk, so it’s both a literal and figurative red herring. But also, red herrings, being salty, make one crave a beverage. The metaphors and humor are operating on several, albeit all low, levels here. The story has been reprinted multiple times over the years and was especially popular in the mid nineteenth century.

The metaphorical use gets going in earnest in the mid eighteenth century. There is this dialogue about the good and bad effects of the pursuit of fame that was printed in Lloyd’s Evening Post for 20–22 June 1763:

L[ord]. G. It is right, however, that mankind should persue it. It is productive of many good effects. The trumpet of Fame rouses great minds to great actions.

Lord O. And to many bad ones too. Fame, you know, my Lord, has too trumpets. And though the persuit of it may be good exercise for the general pack of mankind, and keep them in breath, it seems (to speak in my favourite language of a sportsman) to be only hunting a trail, to catch a red herring at last.

And a Nathanael Freebody uses the metaphor of dogs on the scent of a red herring to criticize skepticism in the 24–26 March 1767 issue of the St. James’s Chronicle:

One is not at all surprised that this Word should be disliked by the Sceptic, who hath no Notion of the Thing signified by it; “whose judgment, set afloat, (to use the Language of Mr. Hume) is carried to every Side, as it is pushed by the Current of his Humours and Passions.” He is the very Reverse of the Halcyon, and loves to make his Nest in the Ocean, when it is all over Storm and Tempest. He neither hopes nor desires to find Truth and Certainty, but employs his Powers in Quest of Probabilities and Appearances only, like a Pack of Dogs, in full Cry, after the Trail of a Red Herring.

A 21 March 1782 article in London’s Morning Chronicle uses the metaphor to criticize those who advocated for continuing the fight to keep the American colonies British:

Though he had not the honour of being one of those sagacious country gentlemen, who had so long vociferated for the American war, (a war which he should ever think impolitic, unjust, and inexpedient) who had so long run on the red herring scent of American taxation, before they found out there was no game a foot.

I had mentioned that the idea of poachers or others who used a red herring to disrupt a hunt was in itself a red herring of sorts, but there are some stories about it happening. Here is one that was printed in the Manchester Herald on 28 April 1792. Given that it is citing another paper (a “friend of a friend” as they say in urban legend circles), there is good reason to question whether or not it actually happened. I have been unable to locate the story in archives of the Norfolk Chronicle:

The Norfolk Chronicle informs the world, that a party of the Sons of Nimrod, with the hounds belonging to a subscription hunt in that county, had a most excellent diversion; the dogs were never at fault for many minutes; one continued the case lasted for forty miles:— rewarded for their toil, the object of it took cover in a public house: the shouts of the hunters echoed through the air, whilst the horns sounded the triumph to the woods: when lo! upon searching the house, not Reynard, but a RED HERRING, was found, which a Wag had trailed before the hounds!

Another account of a red herring being used to distract the hounds on a hunt, this one a first-hand one, was given by William Cobbett in his Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register of 14 February 1807. Cobbett is a fascinating fellow, a politically radical pamphleteer and propagandist—at one point he had to flee to the United States to avoid prison in England—a journalist, briefly a member of Parliament, and a best-selling grammarian. What’s not to like about the man? But Cobbett was not one to let truth get in the way of a good story, so he may have been making up the bit about his using a red herring to distract a hunt:

When I was a boy, we used, in order to draw off the harriers from the trail of a hare that we had set down as our own private property, get to her haunt early in the morning, and drag a red-herring, tied to a string, four or five miles over hedges and ditches, across fields and through coppices, till we got to a point, whence we were pretty sure the hunters would not return to the spot where they had thrown off; and, though I would, by no means, be understood, as comparing the editors and proprietors of the London daily press to animals half so sagacious and so faithful as hounds, I cannot help thinking, that, in the case to which we are referring, they must have been misled, at first, by some political deceiver.

[...]

Alas! it was a mere transitory effect of the political red-herring; for, on the Saturday, the scent became as cold as a stone; and, on the Monday, the Morning Chronicle solemnly assured its readers, that the little bulletin, which it had published itself under the name of Lord Howick, never had been promulgated by, or received the sanction of, his Majesty’s Ministers!

The Oxford English Dictionary, and others, credit Cobbett with inventing the idea of distracting hounds as the basis for the metaphor. The OED also lists him as the earliest citation of the figurative use. But, as we have seen, both the figurative use and the idea that it is grounded in distracted dogs predates his use of it by a considerable period.

I’ll conclude with two slightly later uses of red herring. The first is an impoverished, retired, English general in India who uses a red herring at the breakfast table as an excuse to change the subject when the topic of his paying for a niece’s marriage arises in conversation. From the Asiatic Journal of July 1816:

Here the General coughed as if the tail of his red-herring had got down this throat, and I really thought it was so; but his sister was much more keen-sighted, and notwithstanding the General’s groans about those times being past, and stammering about alteration of circumstances, she appeared to conceive no small hopes that he had motives more of policy than necessity for giving out that he was poor; and seemed as little inclined as the General to pursue the subject, and another red-herring coming in, the General took the opportunity of giving an entire change to the conversation.

And the second is another description of using a red herring on a hunt, here to provide something for the hounds to follow when there is no fox to be hunted. It’s interesting primarily for the mythological reference to the story of Actaeon. From London’s Morning Chronicle of 25 March 1818:

Lord ELL—NB—II attended, but the exercise of stag hunting was too severe; and he went out with a dozen dogs in pursuit, as it was pretended, of a fox, but it was only a red-herring dragged for scent. His Lordship did not long appear to relish the sport, was uneasy in his seat, and it not being a private Pack, the dogs were unmanagable, and he was at last completely thrown out. He exclaimed frequently
           “Actæon ego sum, dominum cognoscite vestrum,” [I am Actæon, recognize your master]
but all in vain.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“A Dialogue Between the late Earls of Orford and Granville.” Lloyd’s Evening Post (London), 20–22 June 1763, 587. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.

Cobbett, William. “Summary of Politics.” Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 9.7, 14 February 1807, 232–233. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://www.hathitrust.org/

“Dispatch Extraordinary.” Morning Chronicle (London), 25 March 1818, 3. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Freebody, Nathanael. “The Miscellany, Number XIII” (26 March 1767). The St. James’s Chronicle; or the British Evening-Post, 24–26 March 1767, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.

“The High-Mettled Hunters.” Manchester Herald (England), 28 April 1792, 3. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

Jacob, Giles. “Jasper Maine, D.D.” The Poetical Register: or, the Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets. London: E. Curll, 1719, 167. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Langbaine, Gerard. An Account of the English Dramatick Poets. Oxford: L.L. for George West and Henry Clements, 1691, 338. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

———. The Hunter. A Discourse of Horsemanship. Oxford: L. Lichfield for Nicholas Cox, 1685, 65. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Nash, Thomas. “The Praise of the Red Herring.” Nashes Lenten Stuffe, London: Thomas Judson and Valentine Simmes for Nicholas Ling and Cuthbert Burby, 1599, 70. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Northleigh, John. A Gentle Reflection on the Modest Account. London: Benjamin Tooke, 1682, 4. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“Original Communications.” The Asiatic Journal, 2.7, July 1816, 10–11. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, modified June 2020, s.v. red herring, n.

“Parliamentary Intelligence. House of Commons. Change of Ministry!!!” Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, 21 March 1782, 3. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.

Shadwell, Thomas. “Epistle to the Tories.” The Medal of John Bayes: A Satyr. London: Richard Janeway, 1682, 4. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Tréguer, Pascal. “The Authentic Origin of ‘Red Herring.’” Wordhistories.net, 6 July 2017.

Image credit: David Henry Friston, 1887. From Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, published in the 1887 Beeton’s Christmas Annual. Public domain image.