Author Archives: Graham Seal

HUNTING FOR TREASURE

April 18, 2016 By in lost treasures Tags: , , , , Leave a comment
Map to Captain Kidd’s treasure

Late in 2015, a lost Nazi gold train was discovered in Poland. At least, that’s what a couple of treasure hunters told the world. Like all lost treasures, the search for this one had been going on for many years, usually without success. But many still believe in these far-fetched yarns and some even search for them. Every now and then a lost treasure is really found, providing just enough stimulus to keep all the other legends living on.

Armed with the latest techno gadgets and a map, the raiders of the lost Nazi treasure claimed to have found their prize. They were prepared to reveal its location in return for a modest percentage of the booty. Local officials apparently fell in with this nonsense and the Deputy Polish Culture Minister was widely quoted saying that they were 99 per cent sure the train was there.
Enter the spoilsport scientists from the Kracow Mining Academy. Their  techno gadgets confirmed that not only was there no hidden Nazi train of gold but there were not even any real railway tracks in this region of the Lower Silesia. Just empty tunnels.
Still, even if that one was dispelled by science, people love a lost treasure story.
Colonel PercyFawcett went to Brazil’s Matto Grosso searching for the lost city of “Z” in 1925. He has not been seen since. A Hollywood film about the Lost City of Z – co-produced by Brad Pitt and starring Robert Pattinson and Sienna Miller – is currently in production and will appear in our cinemas 91 years after Fawcett disappeared.
Lost treasure tales have a number of common elements that provide them with apparent credibility.
Firstly, they are in remote or otherwise difficult to access locations. Lasseter’s Reef is said to lie somewhere in some of Australia’s most desolate emptiness. South American jungles have harboured any number of fabulous Aztec, Incan or Mayan troves. Islands are excellent, especially for pirate treasure chests
Then there will be a map. Or sometimes another document, like a letter, giving the hazy location of the loot. Harold (originally Hubert) Lasseter left a diary and a map of his fabled reef as he lay dying in 1931. Many have since used these documents in futile attempts to find the gold.
The map or document will have a murky provenance. It may come from a previous seeker of a particular rumoured treasure. It might be serendipitously “found”, preferably in an atmospheric location. Tombs are good.
Usually the person who provides the document to the treasure seeker will be conveniently dead, as in the Beale ciphers. The Beale ciphers are three papers written in code, one of which will reveal the location of treasure buried in Bedford County, Virginia. No one has yet cracked the code, although claims of success have been made.
Then there will be guardians of the lost treasure. Often these are benighted savages who will stop at nothing to prevent intrepid (white) treasure hunters getting to their fabled horde. One explanation for the disappearance of Colonel Percy Fawcett in the Amazon is that he was killed by indigenous people. Indiana Jones is often said to be based on the British explorer’s exploits though a version of the trope appears in other lost treasure tales.
Often the guardians are long departed, as in the lost Nazi gold train legend of Poland’s Lower Silesia region. This is a relatively recent variation on the ancient theme of missing millions. It springs from the same deluded human hopes for untold riches that produced the El Dorado myth and its many variations around the world.
It was believed locally that possibly three such trains stuffed with stolen gold, jewels and art were buried in a complex of tunnels under construction by the Third Reich for still-unknown purposes. The train, or trains, were then sealed in, awaiting only intrepid treasure seekers to unearth their riches. People have been looking for years but no one has succeeded in the quest.
But wait! A map was found!! Even better, the map was obtained from a man on his deathbed!!! Must be real. Let’s go. And so they did.
Even after their claims were disproved by scientists, the Polish believers
clung to their story  “because the methodological approach of the scientists was [not the same as our.”
The final feature of lost treasure yarns is the unsuccessful but tantalisingly promising attempts of earlier searchers to reach the horde.
The notion that something must be there because so many have tried before is a mainspring of the mythology that supports these persistent folk beliefs. Fawcett’s quest for the city of “Z’ feeds an ongoing interest in the mystery derived from the 2009 book on which the movie is based.
Believers still risk their lives in search of Lasseter’s Reef. The lost gold of Sacambaya still attracts optimists more than 150 years after a charlatan injected it into Bolivian fantasy. Others are still burrowing for Templar, or maybe pirate, treasures on Oak Island off Nova Scotia and any number of sunken galleons and other wrecks are still the object of fervent searches in all of the seven seas.
Every now and then one of these expeditions actually strikes gold, as in the recent rediscovery of the Spanish treasure ship off Columbia. The rarity of these finds and the sensations they produce are sufficient to stoke the fires of hope that glitter in the hearts of all treasure hunters.

It might just be that the legend is true…

BONA PARLARE – MR PUNCH SPEAKS

March 16, 2016 By in slang Tags: , Leave a comment
 
 
 
Punch is a hopera–a huproar, we calls it
Punchman, London 1840s
 
The puppets now known around the English-speaking world as ‘Punch and Judy’ arrived in England by way of Italy and France in the seventeenth century. Based on the Italian commedia del arte character of Pulcinella, or Punchinello, the play rapidly developed a distinctive English variation that included the introduction of the female figure eventually to be known as ‘Judy’. The Punchinello character was known to the slangery of the day as ‘Punch in hell’, a description that reportedly irritated the more respectable members of Mr Punch’s audience.
 
Samuel Pepys saw a Punch and Judy performance in London’s Covent Garden in 1662, though according to tradition, the first to publicly display the show in England was an Italian named Porsini who made a great deal of money, but eventually died destitute in a workhouse. According to a Punchman interviewed by the indefatigable Henry Mayhew in the 1840s ‘Every one in London knowed him: lords, dukes, squires, princes, and wagabones, all used to stop and laugh at his pleasing and merry interesting performance…’.
 
Mayhew described the Punchman as  “a short, dark, pleasant-looking man, dressed in a very greasy and very shiny green shooting jacket … Protruding from his bosom, a corner of the pandean pipes was just visible, and as he told me the story of his adventures, he kept playing with the band of his very limp and very rusty old beaver hat.” The ‘pandean pipes’ were accompanied by the swazzle, a device that the Punchman inserts at the back of his mouth to produce the raucous voice of Mr Punch, one of the trade secrets of the business.
 
The Punchman told Mayhew that Porsini passed on his skills and secrets to an apprentice and the show gradually grew and developed, though there were never large numbers of Punch and Judy acts in Britain as the skills involved, including puppetry, mimicry, music, speech and working the audience were not commonplace and also closely guarded once attained. Punch and Judy practitioners considered themselves to be well above the level of street hawkers, patterers and other busking entertainers. Inns were their preferred accommodation, rather than the cheaper lodging houses and padding kensfavoured by vagabonds and beggars.
 
There were sixteen frames, as they called the show and its portable structure, operating in England at this time, each worked by two men, eight in London and the other eight in various country locations. The Punchmen had a well organised and self-regulated network that mostly ensured no two frames were operating in the same region at the same time – ‘We all know one another, and can tell in what part of the country the others are. We have intelligence by letters from all parts.’, said Mayhew’s Punchman. However, ‘If two of us happens to meet at one town, we jine, and shift pardners, and share the money. One goes one way, and one another, and we meet at night, and reckon up over a sociable pint or a glass. We shift pardners so as each may know how much the other has taken…’.
 
The Punch and Judy show has long been associated with the seaside. Mayhew’s Punchman provides the original monetary rationale for this in a statement in which he substitutes ‘v’ for ‘w’ in some words, a common feature among low English speakers at the time, as immortalised by Dickens’ Fagin: ‘We in generally goes into the country in the summer time for two or three months. Watering places is werry good in July and August. Punch mostly goes down to the sea-side with the quality.’
 
The language of the Punchmen was a mixture of Italian, English, French and Cant, a patter known by them as Bona parlare, related to, though distinct from the Parlary of other travelling entertainers in fairs and circuses. Mayhew reproduces a likely conversation between two Punchmen, as given to him by his unnamed informant, who also provides translations of most of the words and phrases:
‘How are you getting on?’ I might say to another Punchman. ‘Ultra cateva,’ he‘d say. If I was doing a little, I‘d say, ‘Bonar.’ Let us have a ‘shant a bivare’–pot o’ beer. If we has a good pitch we never tell one another, for business is business. If they know we‘ve a ‘bonar’ pitch, they‘ll oppose, which makes it bad.

‘Co. and Co.’ is our term for partner, or ‘questa questa,’ as well. ‘Ultray cativa,’–no bona. ‘Slumareys’–figures, frame, scenes, properties. ‘Slum’–call, or unknown tongue. ‘Ultray cativa slum’–not a good call. ‘Tambora’–drum; that‘s Italian. ‘Pipares’— pipes. ‘Questra homa a vardring the slum, scapar it, Orderly’–there‘s someone a looking at the slum. Be off quickly. ‘Fielia’ is a child; ‘Homa’is a man; ‘Dona,’ a female; ‘Charfering-homa’–talking-man, policeman.

 
After describing the various uses of his clasp knife, the Punchman spoke of his other tools of trade, also allowing us to hear something of his distinctive patter, full of malapropisms, and breezy philosophy of life:
 

This here is the needle that completes our tools (takes out a needle from inside his waistcoat collar,) and is used to sew up our cativa stumps, that is, Punch‘s breeches and Judy‘s petticoats, and his master‘s old clothes when they‘re in holes. I likes to have everything tidy and respectable, not knowing where I‘m going to perform to, for every day is a new day that we never see afore and never shall see again; we do not know the produce of this world, being luxurant (that‘s moral), being humane, kind, and generous to all our society of life. We mends our cativa and slums when they gets teearey (if you was to show that to some of our line they‘d be horrified; they can‘t talk so affluent, you know, in all kinds of black slums). Under the hedgeares, and were no care varder us questa–‘questa’ is a shirt–pronunciation for questra homa…

 
And in another passage we hear the probable evolution of the Shelta Johnny Scarpare into the modern English slang term, scarper. The Punchman is describing how the artist George Cruikshank sketched him, presumably as part of a book the artist worked on in the 1820s:
 
Once, too, when I was scarpering with my cullingin the monkey, I went to mendare the cativa slums in a churchyard, and sat down under the tombs to stitch ‘em up a bit, thinking no one would varderus there. But Mr. Crookshank took us off there as we was a sitting. I know I‘m the same party, ‘cos Joe seen the print you know and draw‘d quite nat‘ral, as now in print, with the slumares a laying about on all the tombstones round us.
 
The Punchman also described the nature of the Punch and Judy show performances:
 

Punch has two kind of performances– short shows and long ones, according to denare. Short shows are for cativa denare, and long pitches for the bona denare. At the short shows we gets the ha‘pence and steps it — scafare, as we say; and at the long pitches ve keeps it up for half an hour, or an hour, maybe–not particular, if the browns tumble in well–for we never leave off while there‘s a major solde (that‘s a halfpenny), or even a quartereen (that‘s a farden), to be made. The long pitches we fixes at the principal street-corners of London. We never turn away nothink.
‘Boys, look up your fardens,’ says the outside man; ‘it ain‘t half over yet, and we‘ll show it all through. The loquacious Punchman continued his lofty philosophical discourse for the benefit of Mayhew’s notebook, obviously enjoying the opportunity to word up such a gentleman:Punch is like the income-tax gatherer, takes all we can get, and never turns away nothink–that is our moral. Punch is like the rest of the world, he has got bad morals, but very few of them. The showman inside the frame says, while he‘s a working the figures, ‘Culley, how are you a getting on?’ ‘Very inferior indeed, I‘m sorry to say, master. The company, though very respectable, seems to have no pence among ‘em.’ ‘What quanta denarehave you chafered?’ I say. ‘Soldi major quartereen;’ that means, three halfpence three fardens; ‘that is all I have accumulated amongst this most respectable and numerous company.’ ‘Never mind, master, the showman will go on; try the generosity of the public once again.’ ‘Well, I think it‘s of very little utility to collect round again, for I‘ve met with that poor encouragement.’ ‘Never mind, master, show away. I‘ll go round again and chance my luck; the ladies and gentlemen have not seen sufficient, I think. Well, master, I‘ve got tres major’–that is, three halfpence–‘more, and now it‘s all over this time. Boys, go home and say your prayers,’ we says, and steps it.

 
The Punchman rounded off his verbatim account of a Punch and Judy show with a characteristic observation on the nature of the Punchmen’s lives:
 

Such scenes of life we see! No person would hardly credit what we go through. We travel often yeute munjare (no food), and oftentimes we‘re in fluence, according as luck runs.

 
When they were not in the country or at the seaside, the Punchmen would work in the city and suburbs. If they could find a pitch, that is a place to set up their frame and so attract a crowd of passers-by, they were sure of at least some income. Failing this, they resorted to wandering the streets of the better-off areas, calling out for business – dwelling on orders, as it was known:
 

We now principally dwells on orders at noblemen‘s houses. The sebubs of London pays us far better than the busy town of London. When we are dwelling on orders, we goes along the streets chirripping ‘Rootooerovey ooey-ooey-ooerovey;’ that means, Any more wanted? that‘s the pronounciation of the call in the old Italian style. Tooroveyto- roo-to-roo-toroo-torooey; that we does when we are dwelling for orders mostly at noblemen‘s houses. It brings the juvenials to the window, and causes the greatest of attractions to the children of noblemen‘s families, both rich and poor: lords, dukes, earls, and squires, and gentlefolks.

 
The Punchman was careful to emphasise the difference between walking the street and calling for work, or call-hunting, and the lower takings, but certainty of a crowd at a pitch, or relatively fixed street location for the performance: ‘Call-hunting,’–that‘s another term for dwelling on orders– pays better than pitching; but orders is wery casual, and pitching is a certainty’.
 
By 1742 at least, Punch had migrated to America where he continued to entertain all comers, eventually forming part of the various acts in travelling shows. Here, and in other English-speaking countries he is still a popular form of children’s entertainment, with a small but dedicated number of Punch and Judy professors keeping up the tradition.
 
 

CONSENTING TO DIE IN THE GREAT WAR

February 24, 2016 By in WAR LORE Tags: , , , 1 Comment

Why did men consent to fight the First World War? This is one of the most difficult of all questions about a conflict that remains an enigma despite the millions of words written about it.
 
Patriotism is one answer. Glory another, though soldiers soon discovered there was little, if any, of that in the trenches. Social pressure from the White feather fanatics was a factor for some.
 
But a more surprising answer lies in the mechanism that frontline soldiers created to negotiate their consent to fight and quite possibly die. This mechanism took the form of sometimes rough and ready magazines and newsheets written, illustrated and edited by soldiers themselves.
 
The Dead Horse Corner Gazette, the Bran Mash and The Whizzbang were just some of the many hundreds of titles in the trench press. In the sometimes scribbled sometimes printed pages appeared verse, short stories, songs, pays and a host of parodic and satirical items written by soldiers. These squibs were often illustrated with cartoons and sketches that made the sharp toothed humour even more pointed.
 
 
 
 
Nursery rhymes were recast for gallows humour effect:
 
Little Jack Wrench
Sat down in a trench,
With a ‘pork and beans’ and some bread,
When an Allemande shell
On the parapet fell,
So he got ‘iron rations’ instead.
 
Trench songs expressed the universal desire to be ‘out of it’, as in this version from the Canadian The Sling:
 
I want to go home, I want to go home,
The bullets they whistle, the cannons they roar,
I don’t want to go up the line any more.
Take me over the sea, where the enemy can’t get at me.
Oh! my, I don’t want to die, I want to go home.
 
Officers might be called to account, if to little effect, as recorded in The Swell, ‘The Regimental Rag of the 13th Battalion the King’s Liverpool Regiment’ in January, 1916:
 
On Monday we had bread and bully,
On Tuesday we’d bully and bread,
On Wednesday and Thursday we’d bully and toast,
Well that’s only bully and bread;
So on Friday we called out the major,
And asked him for a change, so he said
Alright, so on Saturday we got for a change
Some bully without any bread.
 
The humble classified advertisement provided endless opportunities to spoof the war a specialty, though not a monopoly of the British Wipers Times:
 
“TRY OUR NEW CIRCULAR TOUR, EMBRACING ALL THE HEALTH RESORTS OF LOVELY BELGIUM. Books of Coupons Obtainable From R. E. Cruting & Co., London. Agents Everywhere.”
 
WANTED – to rent for the winter season, DRY WARM DUG OUT. Must be commodious and in healthy locality untroubled by hawkers and Huns. Good price offered for suitable residence. Apply – Reggie, c/o this paper.
 
Although these publications were primarily for soldiers they had a less obvious but even more important readership. The trench press was a back channel of communication between the trenches and the generals, politicians and home front press. Many trench newspapers went home to wives, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends. Some were even featured in the mainstream press. This gave trench soldiers a way to let those for whom they were fighting the conditions on which they would consent to do so.
 
They would do it on their own terms. Not for the pap of patriotism spouted by the blimps in politics. Not for the bloodlust of the generals. Not for the risible rubbish in the popular press. They would do it for their families, for their homes and for their conception of a way of life that they desperately wanted to return to as quickly as possible. They would therefore take the piss out of the military, the war and the press at every opportunity. They would crack their grim jokes about death, maiming, gas, tanks and anything else they could possibly laugh about in a war of numbing horror. And those who were the targets of their jests would take it. By and large they did, as discussed in my The Soldiers’ Press: Trench Journals in the First World War.
 
This was not revolution or insubordination but a reactionary defence mechanism. Trench soldiers rarely rose up against the war. Instead they sent it up, if within certain well defined and mutually understood limits. Criticism and complaint were tolerated as long as it was masked in rumour and humour. This displacing and distancing technique was used to perfection by the trench journalists in the ‘Things we want to know’ or equivalent column carried by virtually every soldiers’ newspaper. And if the message was not clear there, the spoof advertisements, dark parodies and sharp satire that crammed the remaining pages did the job.
 

The end result was a negotiation of the terms on which trench soldiers would fight the war so strongly prosecuted by their superiors.  They fought not for them but for those intangibles that made life worth living. Only for that were the soldiers of the trench willing to die.

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