Discworld Annotations - Jingo - part 1 Title - Jingo "By jingo!" is an archaic, jocular oath, of obscure origin, used in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. The word -- with derived forms such as 'jingoism' and 'jingoistic' -- became associated with aggressive, militaristic nationalism as a result of a popular song dating from the Turko-Russian war of 1877-78, which began: "We don't want to have to fight, but by Jingo if we do We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too." Interestingly (in the light of the circumstances of this particular war), it is also the name of a warlike Japanese empress of the 2nd/3rd centuries, credited by legend with the power of controlling the tides. [p. 8] "'Whose squid are they, dad?'" Fishing rights have been a frequent cause of dispute between the UK and neighbours, most dramatically in the 'Cod Wars' between the UK and Iceland (1958, 1973, 1975), in which ships from the two countries sabotaged each other's nets. [p. 11] "There was a tradition of soap-box speaking in Sator Square." London's Hyde Park Corner has a very similar tradition. [p. 11] "'Who's going to know, dad?'" In the 1963 comedy Mouse on the Moon, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick competes with the USA and USSR to put the first human on the moon. The Fenwick rocket gets there first, but someone points out that this doesn't matter -- the glory will go to whoever gets home first. The Americans and Russians quickly make their excuses and leave, pausing only to enter the wrong capsules before sorting themselves out. [p. 13] "'His ship is the Milka, I believe.'" One of Christopher Columbus' ships was named the Pinta. A UK milk-marketing slogan from the 1980s exhorted people to 'Drinka pinta milka day'. [p. 16] "'I believe the word "assassin" actually comes from Klatch?'" In our world, it does. See the annotation for p. 126/114 of Sourcery . [p. 17] "'Have you ever heard of the D'regs, my lord?'" See the annotation for p. 109/82 of Soul Music . [p. 18] "'It's about time Johnny Klatchian was taught a lesson,'" "Johnny Foreigner" is a generic, disparaging term used by Britons of -- well, foreigners. During the First World War, the more specific term "Johnny Turk" appeared. [p. 20] "'It is no longer considered... nice... to send a warship over there to, as you put it, show Johnny Foreigner the error of his ways. For one thing, we haven't had any warships since the Mary-Jane sank four hundred years ago.'" In the latter part of the 19th century, the phrase "gunboat diplomacy" was coined to describe this British method of negotiating with uppity colonials. The gunboat in question would not normally be expected to do anything, merely to "show the flag" as a reminder that, however vulnerable it might appear on land, Britannia still Ruled the Waves, and could make life very difficult for anyone who got too obstreperous. The Mary-Jane is a reference to Henry VIII's flagship, the Mary Rose, which (most embarrassingly) sank, in calm seas, immediately after being launched from Portsmouth in 1545. The ship was recovered in the 1980s, and is now a tourist attraction. [p. 21] "'Very well then, by jingo!'" See this book's title annotation. [p. 22] "'We have no ships. We have no men. We have no money, too.'" See this book's title annotation. [p. 22] "'Unfortunately, the right words are more readily listened to if you also have a sharp stick.'" Theodore Roosevelt famously summarised his foreign policy as "Speak softly, and carry a big stick." [p. 23] "'Let's have no fighting, please. This is, after all, a council of war.'" Echoes the movie Dr Strangelove. See also the annotation for p.156 of The Colour of Magic. [p. 25] "The Artful Nudger scowled." A character in Dickens' Oliver Twist is called the Artful Dodger. [p. 26] "'Wib wib wib.' 'Wob wob wob.'" Carrot has formed Ankh-Morpork's first scout troop. This salute parodies the traditional (but now discontinued) Cub Scout exchange "Dyb dyb dyb." "Dob dob dob.". The 'dyb' in the challenge supposedly stands for "do your best", the 'dob' in the scouts' response for "do our best". [p. 27] "'I had this book about this little kid, he turned into a mermaid,'" This sounds very much like the story of young Tom the chimney sweep's transformation, told in moralistic Victorian children's tale The Water Babies, written in 1863 by Charles Kingsley. [p. 28] "'But after the big plague, he got press-ganged.'" Press-ganging was the 18th-century equivalent of conscription. A ship's captain, finding himself short-handed while in a home port, would send a gang of his men round the port, enlisting anyone they could find who looked like a sailor. Often this involved simply picking up drunks, but it was not unheard-of for men to be taken by force. [p. 28] "'They invented all the words starting with "al".'" In Arabic, "al" is the definite article, and it is joined to the word that it defines. [p. 29] "'[...] the Klatchians invented nothing. [...] they came up with zero.'" The idea of treating zero as a number was one of several major contributions that Western mathematics adopted from the Arabs. [p. 30] "'[...] it is even better than Ironcrufts ('T'Bread Wi' T'Edge') [...]'" See the annotation for p. 26 of Feet of Clay . [p. 31] "'This is all right, Reg? It's not coercion, is it?'" Carrot's apparently uncharacteristic (dishonest) behaviour in this scene has caused a lot of comment on alt.fan.pratchett. Terry explains it thus: "I assume when I wrote this that everyone concerned would know what was going on. The thieves have taken a Watchman hostage, a big no-no. Coppers the world over find their normally sunny dispositions cloud over when faced with this sort of thing, and with people aiming things at them, and perpetrators later tend to fall down cell stairs a lot. So Carrot is going to make them suffer. They're going to admit to all kinds of things, including things that everyone knows they could not possibly have done. What'll happen next? Vetinari won't mind. Vimes will throw out half of the charges at least, and the rest will become TICs and probably will not hugely affect the sentencing. The thieves will be glad to get out of it alive. Other thieves will be warned. By the rough and ready local standards, justice will have been served." [p. 34] "'Hey, that's Reg Shoe! He's a zombie! He falls to bits all the time!' 'Very big man in the undead community, sir.'" Reg Shoe first appeared in Reaper Man as the founder of the Campaign for Dead Rights (slogans included "Undead, yes! Unperson, no!"). Possibly Vimes has forgotten that he personally ordered zombies to be recruited into the Watch, towards the end of Feet of Clay. [p. 35] "'That's Probationary Constable Buggy Swires, sir.'" Swires was the name of the gnome Rincewind and Twoflower encountered in The Light Fantastic. Given that gnome lives are described in that book as 'nasty, brutish and short', it seems unlikely that this is the same gnome. Possibly a relative, though. [p. 35] "[...] the long and the short and the tall." A popular song from the Second World War had the lyric: "Bless 'em all, bless 'em all! Bless the long and the short and the tall! Bless all the sergeants and double-you o-ones, Bless all the corporals and their blinkin' sons." The phrase was also used as the title of a stage play (filmed in 1960) by Willis Hall, describing the plight and fate of a squad of British soldiers in Burma. [p. 40] "Right now he couldn't remember what the occasional dead dog had been. Some kind of siege weapon, possibly." In the Good Old Days(tm), besieging armies would sometimes hurl the rotting corpses of dead animals over the city walls by catapult, with the aim of spreading disease and making the city uninhabitable. So in a sense, a dead dog could be a siege weapon... [p. 44] "It looked as if people had once tried to add human touches to structures that were already ancient..." Leshp bears a resemblance to H. P. Lovecraft's similarly strange- sounding creation, R'lyeh -- an ancient, now submerged island in the Pacific, inhabited by alien Things with strange architecture, which rises at very long intervals and sends people mad all over the world. For full details, see Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu. [p. 47] "'Oh, Lord Venturi says it'll all be over by Hogswatch, sir.'" "It'll all be over by Christmas" was said of the First World War by armchair strategists, in August 1914. Ironically, the phrase has become a popular reassurance: more recently, President Clinton promised the American public in 1996 that US troops in Bosnia would be "home for Christmas". [p. 55] "'I go, I hcome back.'" Ahmed's catchphrase is borrowed from Signior So-So, a comic Italian character in the famous wartime radio series It's That Man Again (ITMA). [p. 55] "'Doctor of Sweet Fanny Adams'" The original Fanny Adams was an eight-year-old girl in Alton, Hampshire, whose dismembered body was discovered in 1867. About the same time, tinned mutton was first introduced in the Royal Navy, and the sailors -- not noted for their sensitivity -- took to calling the (rather disgusting) meat "Sweet Fanny Adams". Hence the term came to mean something worthless, and finally to mean "nothing at all". Many correspondents point out that these days "Sweet Fanny Adams" is also used as a euphemism for "Sweet F**k All" (still meaning: absolutely nothing), but that is definitely not the original meaning of the phrase. [p. 55] "The Convivium was Unseen University's Big Day." Oxford University has a ceremony called the Encaenia, which also involves lots of old men in silly costumes and a procession ending in the Sheldonian Theatre. [p. 56] "It was an almost Pavlovian response." The Pavlovian experiment in our world involved ringing a bell before and during the feeding of a group of dogs. After a while the dogs learned to associate the ringing of the bell with food. A part of them was essentially programmed to think that the bell was the same thing as food. [p. 61] "'And many of them could give him a decent shave and a haircut, too.'" Refers to the fact that, for many years, surgeons used to double as barbers, or vice versa. [p. 61] "'The keystones of the Watch.'" The Keystone Cops were a squad of frantically bumbling comedy policemen from the silent movie era. [p. 62] "'A lone bowman.'" The "lone gunman" theory is still the official explanation of John F. Kennedy's assassination, despite four decades of frenzied speculation. Conspiracy theorists like to claim that Someone, Somewhere is covering up the truth, in much the same way as Vimes and Vetinari are conspiring to cover it up here. [p. 62] "'[...] it is still law that every citizen should do one hour's archery practice every day. Apparently the law was made in 1356 and it's never been --'" In 1363, in England, Edward III -- then in the early stages of the Hundred Years' War with France -- ordered that all men should practise archery on Sundays and holidays; this law remained technically in force for some time after the longbow was effectively obsolete as a weapon of war. [p. 65] "'An experimental device for turning chemical energy into rotary motion,' said Leonard. 'The problem, you see, is getting the little pellets of black powder into the combustion chamber at exactly the right speed and one at a time.'" In our world, an early attempt at an internal combustion engine used pellets of gunpowder, stuck to a strip of paper (rather like the roll of caps for a cap pistol). I understand that the attempt was just as successful as Leonard's. [p. 70] "'I have run out of Burnt Umber.'" Burnt umber is a dark, cool-toned brown colour. Umber is an earth pigment containing manganese and iron oxides, used in paints, pastels and pencils. The name comes from Umbria, the region where it was originally mined and adopted as a pigment for art. [p. 71] "'So he was shot in the back by a man in front of him who could not possibly have used the bow that he didn't shoot him with from the wrong direction...'" The live film of JFK's assassination, allegedly, shows similar inconsistencies with the official account. [p. 72] "'[...] he thinks it'll magically improve his shot.'" The official account of JFK's assassination describes how a bullet moved in some very strange ways through his body. Conspiracy theorists disparage this as the "magic bullet theory". [p. 76] "'It looks like a complete run of Bows and Ammo!'" See the annotation for p. 126 of Hogfather . [p. 77] "'Bugger all else but sand in Klatch. Still got some in his sandals.'" When the First World War broke out, Britons were much comforted by the fact that the supposedly unstoppable "steamroller" of the Russian army was on their side. Rumours spread that Russian troops were landing in Scotland to reinforce the British army, and these troops could be recognised by the snow on their boots. Ever since, the story has been a standard joke about the gullibility of people in wartime. [p. 79] "'[...] that business with the barber in Gleam Street.' 'Sweeney Jones,'" Legend tells of Sweeney Todd, a barber in Fleet Street, London, who would rob and kill (not necessarily in that order) solitary customers, disposing of their bodies via a meat-pie shop next door. The story is celebrated in a popular Victorian melodrama, in a 1936 film, in a musical by Stephen Sondheim (1979), and in rhyming slang ("Sweeney Todd" = "Flying Squad", an elite unit of the Metropolitan Police). The story was the most successful of a spate of such shockers dating from the early 19th century. Sawney Bean, the Man-Eater of Midlothian was supposedly based on a real 13th-century Scottish legal case; also published about this time were two French versions, both set in Paris. All of these were claimed to be based on true stories -- but then, this pretence was standard practice for novelists at the time. The "original" version of Sweeney Todd was written by Edward Lloyd under the title of The String of Pearls, published around 1840. To be concluded next issue - o -