roger (radio use)

Drawing of three American soldiers digging in on a beach in Sicily, 1943, while a fourth, a radio operator, works his equipment. In the background an LCI (Landing Craft Infantry) disembarks soldiers, and a plume of water rises nearby from an artillery hit. Other ships are in the distant background.

29 September 2021

In radio communications worldwide, the word roger is used to acknowledge receipt of a transmission. Roger stands for “received,” but why this particular word? Especially since the word in the standard spelling alphabet uses romeo for the letter < r >.

It turns out the choice is an arbitrary one that was made back in the 1920s, with the advent of voice transmissions over radio. When pronouncing letters, as when you spell out a word, the radio transmission can be garbled or indistinct. So various groups adopted spelling alphabets (often called phonetic alphabets, although that’s something of a misnomer) for use over radio. And in 1927, the US Navy adopted a spelling alphabet that used roger for the letter < r >:

Affirmative / Baker / Cast / Dog / Easy / Fox / George / Hypo / Interrogatory / Jig / King / Love / Mike / Negative / Option / Preparatory / Quack / Roger / Sail / Tare / Unit / Vice / William / X-ray / Yoke / Zed

This particular spelling alphabet was printed the Navy’s 1927 Bluejackets’ Manual alongside the corresponding flag and Morse code symbols for the letters, a neat moment in history when the three systems—flags, Morse code, and radio—were all in widespread use for communicating at sea.

By 1939, the US Army and Navy had developed a joint spelling alphabet for use by all the branches of service:

Affirm / Baker / Cast / Dog / Easy / Fox / George / Hypo / Inter / Jig / King / Love / Move / Negat / Option / Prep / Queen / Roger / Sail / Tare / Unit / Victor / William / Xray / Yoke / Zed

Use of roger in acknowledging receipt of a transmission is recorded by 1941, when it appeared in a list of such terms prepared by the US Army’s public relations division and reprinted in the journal American Speech:

ROGER! Expression used instead of okay or right. (Air Corps)

And roger as a verb meaning to acknowledge a transmission was recorded in civil aviation by August 1946 in a story about the airline business in Fortune magazine:

A pilot, bringing a ship into a major airport recently, checked with traffic control, reported his position at a range station, flying at 7,000 feet. Control told him: “Cleared to descend to 1,500 feet.” He rogered, descended, checked in again at 1,500 feet. This time ATC ordered: “Descend to 5,000 feet.” The hair rising on his neck, the pilot said he was already at 1,500 and why did they want him to hold at 5,000. ATC told him: “Other aircraft at 4,000 feet.” He had somehow descended safely through the other traffic in the fog.

In 1956, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the military North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) adopted a spelling alphabet that dropped roger in favor of romeo. That alphabet is still in use:

Alfa / Bravo / Charlie / Delta / Echo / Foxtrot / Golf / Hotel / India / Juliet / Kilo / Lima / Mike / November / Oscar / Papa / Quebec / Romeo / Sierra / Tango / Uniform / Victor / Whiskey / X-ray / Yankee / Zulu

But despite the change, roger stayed on as the term for acknowledging messages.

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Sources:

“Glossary of Army Slang.” American Speech, 16.3, October 1941, 168. JSTOR.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, November 2010, modified December 2020, s.v. roger, int. (and n.3); modified December 2019, s.v. roger, v.2.

US Army. FM 24-5, Basic Field Manual Signal Communication, 1 November 1939.  Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office 1939, § 181. Internet Archive.

US Navy. The Bluejackets’ Manual, seventh edition, revised (May 1927). Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office 1928, plates 4–6. ProQuest Congressional.

“What’s Wrong with the Airlines.” Fortune, August 1946, 192. EBSCOhost Fortune Archive.

Image credit: Unknown artist, Office of War Information, July–August 1943. Library of Congress. Public domain Image.

diaspora

An Asian man and two boys, presumably his sons, in traditional Chinese dress, walking along a street in San Francisco’s Chinatown, c.1900. Part of the Chinese diaspora.

28 September 2021

A diaspora is a dispersal of people or the collection of places where such people are dispersed. The Diaspora, with capital letters, is that of Jews throughout the ancient world, which began with the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. The word has been subsequently applied to other ethnic groups scattered outside their homelands, and even to any group that has dispersed.

The word comes from the Hellenistic Greek διασπορά (δια- “across” + σπορά “sowing”). It appears multiple times in the Septuagint, a second-to-third century BCE Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. One such appearance is Deuteronomy 28:25: “ἔση ἐν διασπορᾷ ἐν πάσαις βασιλείαις τῆς γῆς” (you shall be in diaspora in all kingdoms of the earth). It also appears several times in the Christian New Testament, which was originally written in Greek, in reference to the apostles spreading the gospel.

Diaspora makes its English debut in the closing years of the sixteenth century, in a 1594 translation of Lambert Daneau’s A Fruitfull Commentarie Upon the Twelve Small Prophets. In typical fashion for Christian theologians of the era (and for many still today), Daneau positions the Jewish Diaspora as a necessary precursor for Christian evangelism. In other words, that God’s purpose for the Jews was only as a steppingstone toward Christianity. In the commentary on Zechariah 10:9, John Stockwood translates:

Wherfore this thing sheweth the multiplying or increasing of this people: & that which otherwise might seeme most wofull, namely, to liue without the borders of their countrie, that the same shall bee both profitable and glorious for the Iewes, who by this meanes are sent forth to be as it were preachers of the glorie of God among the heathen, that they might sowe the first seedes of the grace of God, which was to be shewed toward them. This scattering abrode of the Iewes, as it were an heauenly sowing, fell out after their returne from the captiuitie of Babylon. Wherevpon both Acts.2. and also 1.Pet.1. and 1.Iam.ver.1. they are called Diaspora, that is, a scattering or sowing abrode.

Daneau’s original Latin reads “διασπορά, id est, dispersio” (diaspora, that is, dispersal).

Application of diaspora in English to groups other than the Jews dates to at least 1749, when it is applied to the Unitas Fratrum, or Union of Brothers, which is now better known as the Moravian Church, in an English translation of a Latin description of the religion. This reference is to the dispersal of Moravians to elsewhere in Europe:

Johannes à Lasco (a Polish Baron and Prelate, who, twenty years before, putting off in the mean while his Office at home, thro’ Love of Truth, had gone to foreign Countries, where he at different Times was Pastor of the Diaspora at London, Emden, Frankfort on the Mayn; but in the Year 1556. being sent for, returned into his own Country).

Again, the original Latin reads dispersis.

And by the end of the eighteenth century, diaspora was being used to describe the dispersal of non-ethnic groups. Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale University, wrote in 1794 about the spread of deist philosophers and philosophy in an anti-Enlightenment screed:

In this period, of taking great liberties with the person and religion of Jesus, of conceited wisdom, of bold an illiberal invectives against revelation, during the present rage and enthusiastic mania of deism, I fear not to risque the offence and vociferous repudiations of the disciples of the open Voltaire and Rosseau, or the covert deistical Gibbon, notwithstanding their public honors in the recent apotheoses of the newly resumed ethnical idolatry, and their repositation among the collection of Gods in the motly pantheon of the Temple of Reason. The blaze of this little political diaspora of extravagant and self-opinionated philosophers (a fraternity bringing the honorable name into contempt, as it did in the fourth century) will, like other momentary lamps of error, burn down, go out and evanish.

Today, diaspora is applied to many groups, including, but not limited to, Indians, Africans, Irish, Chinese, and Armenians. And diaspora and the adjective diasporic are even applied to the English language as it is spoken and written throughout the world.

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Sources:

An Account of the Doctrine, Manners, Liturgy, and Idiom of the Unitas Fratrum. London: 1749, 108. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Daneau, Lambert. Commentariorum Lamberti Danaei in Prophetas Minores, vol. 2 of 2. Geneva: Eustatius Vignon, 1586, 949. Post Reformation Digital Library.

———. A Fruitfull Commentarie Upon the Twelve Small Prophets. John Stockwood, trans. Cambridge: John Legate, 1594, 1042. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2014, modified June 2021, s.v. diaspora, n., modified March 2018, s.v. diasporic, adj.

Stiles, Ezra. A History of Three of the Judges of King Charles I. Hartford, Connecticut: Elisha Babcock, 1794, 308–09. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Photo credit: Arnold Genthe, c.1900. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

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.