The Darkness and the Thunder

by Stewart Binns

  Iron hoof – poof – homosexual

  Khazi – toilet – latrine. Although not strictly rhyming slang, the word is thought to have Cockney origins and derive from the Italian casa (‘house’), via the 1870s Cockney word ‘carsey’, or to be a contraction of ‘gazebo’, or from African sources. In Zulu or Swahili the word m’khazi means a latrine.

  Little Red Riding Hoods – goods

  Mazawattee – potty – crazy. Mazawattee was one of the most popular brands of tea from mid-Victorian times onwards. Owned by the Densham family and using tea from the newly established tea plantations of Ceylon, its name is Sinhalese in origin and means ‘pleasure garden’. The popularity of the tea was boosted by the Temperance Movement and the company’s clever slogan ‘The cup that cheers but does not inebriate’. The brand was distributed from the company’s warehouse on Tower Hill in London and became a Cockney favourite. The brand declined after the Great War, and its Tower Hill warehouse was destroyed during the Blitz in the Second World War. By the 1960s Mazawattee tea was no longer being produced.

  Miss Fitch – bitch

  Old nag – fag – cigarette. This term was common in the trenches of the Great War but does not seem to have survived beyond the 1920s.

  Plates o’ meat – feet

  Pony (and trap) – crap (useless/poor quality)

  Ribbons and curls – girls

  Robin Hood – good

  Ruby red – head

  Rum – odd (probably not Cockney; could be from Romany ‘rom’, ‘man’)

  Safe an’ sound – ground

  Silver spoon – moon

  Tiddly (wink) – drink

  Tommy rollocks – bollocks – testicles

  Two an’ eight – state (as in a state of agitation)

  Willies – to feel fear or apprehension; in use since the nineteenth century. Its origins are obscure and do not lie in Cockney rhyming slang. Two possible explanations have been suggested:

  i) That it comes from the slang expression ‘willie-boy’, meaning ‘sissy’, presuming that these would be the sort to be prone to the ‘willies’.

  ii) The romantic ballet Giselle, written in 1841 by French composer Adolphe Adam. The ‘wilis’ (or ‘willis’) in the ballet take their name from the Slavic word vila, a wood-nymph or fairy, usually the spirit of a betrothed girl who has died after being jilted by her lover. Thus ‘willi’, the spirit or ghost, became the ‘willies’.

  Copperplate

  Copperplate is a style of calligraphy that uses a sharp, pointed nib instead of the flat nib used in most calligraphy. The name derives from the copybooks students learned, which were printed from etched copper plates. Today, the term ‘copperplate’ is usually used to refer to traditional and very precise handwriting.

  Creeping barrage

  During the Great War, before an infantry advance it was a common strategy to bombard enemy defences with all available heavy artillery. It was believed that preliminary bombardment would weaken the enemy’s position and enable attackers to capture enemy trenches. This strategy was largely unsuccessful so, in 1916, both sides began to use what became known as a creeping barrage. It was first used in a small section of the line at the Battle of Loos in 1915, but the infantry did not advance behind it, and its first significant use was at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, when artillery fire moved forward in stages just ahead of the advancing infantry. By the autumn the Allied forces had developed a system where the barrage moved forward at 50 yards per minute. To work, the strategy required precise timing by both the heavy artillery and the infantry. Failure in this would result in the artillery killing its own soldiers.

  Cricket-ball grenade

  A cricket-ball grenade was a weapon used by the British Army during the Great War. It was a time-fused grenade, in a cast-iron body. To arm the grenade, the user had to remove a cover on the fuse, then strike it with an igniter. There were two types of fuses, five-seconds for throwing and nine-seconds for use in a catapult.

  Croix de Guerre

  The Croix de Guerre is a French military honour that was first created in 1915. It can be, and often is, awarded to soldiers of France’s allies.

  Crystal Palace

  Between 1895 and 1914 the FA Cup Final was played at Crystal Palace. On 25 April 1914, in front of over 72,000 people, Burnley beat Liverpool 1–0, thanks to a goal by Bert Freeman in the fifty-eighth minute. The trophy was presented by King George V, the first time a reigning monarch had done so.

  D3, or Fullerphone

  The D3, or Fullerphone, was invented by Captain Algernon Fuller of the Signals Service of the Royal Corps of Engineers, the forerunner of the Royal Corps of Signals. It could not pass voice messages, only Morse, but the Germans could not detect the signals, which could be sent by one wire and an earth. The signal could even ‘jump’ breaks in the ground if the broken ends were earthed and not too far apart.

  Defence of the Realm Act

  The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) of 1914 governed all lives in Britain during the Great War. The Act was added to as the war progressed and listed everything that people were not allowed to do in time of war. The first version of the Defence of the Realm Act was introduced on 8 August 1914. It stated that:

  No one was allowed to talk about naval or military matters in public places

  No one was allowed to spread rumours about military matters

  No one was allowed to buy binoculars

  No one was allowed to trespass on railway lines or bridges

  No one was allowed to melt down gold or silver

  No one was allowed to light bonfires or fireworks

  No one was allowed to give bread to horses or chickens

  No one was allowed to use invisible ink when writing abroad

  No one was allowed to buy brandy or whisky in a railway refreshment room

  No one was allowed to ring church bells

  The government could take over any factory or workshop

  The government could try any civilian breaking these laws

  The government could take over any land it wanted to

  The government could censor newspapers

  As the war evolved, so DORA evolved. The new rules introduced by the government included:

  The introduction of British Summer Time to give more daylight for extra work

  The cutting of pub opening hours

  The watering down of beer

  A ban on customers in pubs buying a round of drinks

  Perhaps predictably, several of these ‘temporary’ wartime measures became permanent.

  Depth bombs (depth charges)

  The first attempt at developing an anti-submarine weapon was to attach aircraft bombs to lanyards which would trigger their charges. A similar idea was a 16-lb guncotton charge in a lanyarded can; two of these lashed together became known as the Depth Charge Type A. Problems with the lanyards tangling and failing to function led to the development of a chemical-pellet trigger: the Type B. These were effective at a distance of around 20 feet. The best concept arose in a 1913 Royal Navy Torpedo School (at HMS Vernon, Portsmouth) report describing a device intended for a ‘dropping mine’. At Admiral John Jellicoe’s request, the mine was fitted with a hydrostatic firing mechanism developed in 1914 by Thomas Firth and Sons of Sheffield. Pre-set to fire at 45 feet, it was launched from a ship’s stern platform. The first depth charges were not, however, effective weapons during the Great War. Between 1915 and the end of 1917, the charges destroyed only nine U-boats. They were improved in 1918, and that year were responsible for destroying twenty-two U-boats.

  Desoutter Brothers

  Marcel Desoutter was one of six children of an immigrant French watchmaker. With his four brothers, he trained as a watchmaker. He learned to fly, and at an Aviation Meeting held at Hendon Aerodrome in 1913 his plane crashed. Desoutter’s leg was badly broken, and had to be amputated above the knee. He was fitted with a wooden leg, but his younger brother, Charles, created a jointed Duralumin alloy leg only hal
f the weight, allowing Marcel to return to flying. In 1914 the pair formed Desoutter Brothers Limited to manufacture artificial limbs. The firm expanded greatly during and after the Great War.

  Digger

  ‘Digger’ is a slang term for soldiers from Australia and New Zealand which has become part of the Anzac legend. Before the War, the term was widely used in Australasia to mean a miner, and also referred to a kauri gum-digger (diggers of resin from the kauri tree) in New Zealand, and was closely associated with the principles of ‘mateship’.

  Distinguished Conduct Medal

  The Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) was, until 1993, a very high (second-level, second only to a Victoria Cross) award for bravery. The medal was instituted in 1854, during the Crimean War, to recognize gallantry within the ranks, and was equivalent to the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) awarded for bravery to commissioned officers.

  Doolally tap

  Deolali, India, was the site of a British Army transit camp notorious for the psychological problems of soldiers who passed through it. Its name is the origin of the phrase ‘go doolally’ or ‘go doolally tap’. ‘Tap’ may derive from the Urdu word tap, meaning a malarial fever.

  Draught Bass

  Bass Brewery was founded in 1777 in Burton-upon-Trentby William Bass. A hundred years later it had become the largest brewery in the world, producing 1 million barrels a year. It took control of a number of other large breweries in the early twentieth century, and Draught Bass became its signature beer.

  Droste

  Founded by Gerardus Johannes Droste in 1863, Droste Chocolate was based in Haarlem and started as a confectionary business, selling various types of chocolate products. The famous image of the woman in nurse’s clothes, holding a plate with a cup of milk and a box of Droste cocoa, first appeared on Droste products around 1900. This illustration was probably inspired by a pastel known as La Belle Chocolatière (‘The Pretty Chocolate Girl’).

  Dunnage

  Dunnage is timber or other material (often discarded or surplus) used to store or secure equipment. The term is used in naval and construction terminology.

  East Lancashire, Pennine Dialect

  Agate – say/said; ‘Be agate’ – to say

  Alreet – all right

  Any road – anyway

  Barm cake – barm is the foam, or scum, formed on the top of liquor (fermented alcoholic beverages such as beer or wine, or feedstock for hard liquor) when fermenting. It was used to leaven bread, or set up fermentation in a new batch of liquor. In parts of the north-west of England and throughout Yorkshire, a ‘barm’ or ‘barm cake’ is a common term for a soft, floury bread roll; on menus in chip shops there is often an option of a chip barm. The term ‘barmy’ may derive from a sense of frothy excitement.

  Barmskin – leather apron

  Blather (or blether) – from Old Norse blathra, to talk nonsense.

  Bee-ast – Old English form of ‘beast’

  Best slack – slack are very small pieces of coal, almost coal-dust. Best slack would be less dust, more small pieces. (Nutty slack would be bigger, more expensive pieces.)

  Brass – money

  Cald – cold

  Champion – good, great, excellent

  Childer – children

  Cock o’ t’midden – King of the Castle; a midden is, specifically, a waste dump, but also a ‘patch’, as in territory.

  Dacent – decent

  Daft appeth – silly person. ‘Appeth’ is derived from ‘halfpennyworth’.

  Feight – fight

  Fettle – sort out

  For-ard – forward

  Fra – from

  Frossen – frozen

  Heed – head

  Laik – play

  Lanky – Lancastrian

  Like talking to a wood stoop – talking to someone who doesn’t listen or can’t hear. A stoop is a raised flat area in front of a door, usually with one or more steps leading up to it.

  Lummox – big lump

  Moither – worry

  Neet – night

  Noss – nose

  Nowt – nothing

  Owd – old

  Oyel – hole, as in ‘Put t’wood in th’oyel’: ‘Shut the door.’

  Marsant – must not

  Mebbe – maybe

  Me’sen – myself

  Na’er – never

  O’er – over

  Ollus – always

  Once every Preston Guild – very rarely

  Owt – anything

  Peg/pegging – sexual intercourse

  Pie-eyed – drunk (strictly speaking, a term not confined to the East Lancashire dialect)

  Pop your clogs – die (in this context, ‘pop’ is to pawn. A living person would never pawn his clogs; they would be pawned only when a person died.)

  Rec – recreation ground

  Reet – right

  Road, as in ‘any road’ – anyway

  Sen – self

  Sithee – see you

  Sken – look

  Slark – pour in large amounts. More West Riding than Lancashire, but heard in the Burnley area.

  Summat – something

  Sum’un’s – someone’s

  Toaty soup – potato soup

  Tek – take

  Th’sels – themselves

  Tha’sen – (thou) yourself

  Tha’sens – (thou) yourselves

  Th’eed – the head

  T’morn – tomorrow (or tomorrow morning)

  T’neet – tonight

  Tyke – Yorkshire person

  Wheer – where

  Wick – infested, crawling with. Usually applied to lice or vermin, but sometimes to people and places. Can also mean ‘alive’ or ‘thriving’.

  Winda – window

  Yonder – over there, or beyond

  Eleven-a-side moustache

  Of the dozen or so common styles of moustache, the thin, close-cropped ‘eleven-a-side’ is better known as the ‘pencil’ moustache. It is thought to be distinctly English in origin and probably Victorian, reflecting the period when the eleven-man sports of cricket and football were growing in popularity.

  Emily (Emmeline) Pankhurst

  Emmeline Pankhurst was a leader of the British suffragette movement, which helped women win the right to vote. At the beginning of the Great War, Emmeline and her eldest daughter, Christabel, called a halt to the suffragette’s militancy and supported the British government’s fight against Germany. They urged women to work industrial production and encouraged young men to fight. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act granted votes to all men over the age of twenty-one and women over the age of thirty. Women gained full adult suffrage in 1928.

  Enfilade / defilade

  Enfilade and defilade are terms that describe exposure to or protection from hostile fire. You are in an enfilade position if the enemy can fire along your axis – for example, at 90 degrees to a trench, or down a column of men. You are in a defilade position if you use your surroundings or artificial obstacles to shield or conceal yourself from fire.

  Enteric fever

  Enteric fever is another name for typhoid, a common worldwide bacterial disease transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the faeces of an infected person containing the bacterium Salmonella.

  Enverieh (Enver Pasha helmet)

  An enverieh is a Turkish officer’s kabalak (military headdress), named after Turkish leader Enver Pasha.

  Enver Pasha

  Enver Pasha was a leader of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. He was the main leader of the Ottoman Empire in both Balkan Wars and in the Great War and took the decision to enter the Empire into the Great War, on the side of Germany. He was also one of the principal participants in the Massacre of the Armenians, which began in April 1915 and cost 1.5 million lives.

  Estaminet

  ‘Estaminet’ is a word taken from Walloon to mean a modest café, bar or bistro in French-speaking Belgium and north-eas
tern France.

  Executions

  Three hundred and forty-six British and Commonwealth soldiers were executed during the Great War. Such executions, for crimes such as desertion and cowardice, remain a source of controversy, with some believing that many of those executed were suffering from what is now called shell shock. Between 1914 and 1918 the British Army identified 80,000 men with what would now be defined as the symptoms. However, senior commanders believed that if such behaviour was not harshly punished, others might be encouraged to behave in the same way and the whole discipline of the British Army would collapse. Some men faced a court martial for other offences, but the majority stood trial for desertion from their post: ‘fleeing in the face of the enemy’. A court martial was usually carried out with some speed, and the execution followed shortly after. In his testimony to the post-war Royal Commission examining shell shock, Lord Gort said that it was a weakness and was not found in ‘good’ units. The continued pressure to avoid the medicalization of shell shock meant that it was not, in itself, an admissible defence.

  Executions of soldiers in the British Army were not commonplace. While there were 240,000 courts martial and 3,080 death sentences handed down, of the 346 cases where the sentence was carried out, 266 British were executed for desertion, 18 for cowardice, 7 for quitting a post without authority, 5 for disobedience to a lawful command and 2 for casting away arms. In some cases, for instance that of Private Harry Farr, men were executed who had previously suffered from shell shock and would very likely today have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or another psychiatric syndrome and so would not be executed. Immediately after the Great War there were claims that the execution of soldiers was determined by social class. During the war fifteen officers were sentenced to death, but all received a royal pardon. In August 2006 the British Defence Secretary Des Browne announced that, with Parliament’s support, there would be a general pardon for all 306 men executed in the Great War. A new law passed on 8 November 2006, and included as part of the Armed Forces Act, pardoned men in the British and Commonwealth armies who were executed. The law removes the stain of dishonour with regard to executions on war records, but it does not cancel out sentences. Des Browne said, ‘I believe it is better to acknowledge that injustices were clearly done in some cases – even if we cannot say which – and to acknowledge that all these men were victims of war. I hope that pardoning these men will finally remove the stigma with which their families have lived for years.’