A tribute to frogs
THE question came up, Why is
frogmarching so called? What connects frogs with being hauled up before authority for probable punishment? This inquiry swells (like a frog) to honour frogs for their impact on language and culture, all the way back to Aristophanes’ great comedy Frogs.
Frogmarching
The frog’s march or frogmarching derives from the London police. By 1871 they had so named their practice of ‘‘moving a drunken or refractory prisoner’’ by ‘‘carrying him facedown between four people, each holding a limb’’. The link with frogs may have been the idea of ‘‘going along bellydown’’. But then, used in metaphor, frogmarch was adapted to school stories and P.G. Wodehouse, where one ‘‘frogmarched to the beak’’ for chastisement, with or without admonition (pijaw!)
The French connection
Why have the English dubbed the French ‘‘Frogs’’? Not to flatter them, certainly, any more than their name for the English
(rosbif) is flattering, or similar labels like kraut, dago, wop,
spud. But curiously it was Parisians who started the habit, as a name for themselves. They dwelt in Lutetia, the ‘‘place of marshes’’, and took pride in it. Their heraldic emblem was three frogs. Of course the English took pains to demean the frogconnection, by reducing it to the eating of frogs’ legs. My guess would be, that because
frog and French both begin with /f/, it’s one of those memorable but meaningless alliterations, like right as rain or fit as a fiddle.
Frog in the throat
When you have a frog in the
throat, you sound husky and obstructed, like a frog croaking.
But this is unfair to frogs. Other creatures croak (ravens), and frogsound varies enormously. They may whistle, chirp, ping, peep, cluck, bark, and grunt. They sing when awooing, which is when we notice them most. (A frog he would awooing go . . .) Hear them nightlong among the reedbeds in Hanmer Springs. Or is that toads? No matter: Frog and Toad are friends.
Croak and ribbit
Just as English croak mimics any rasping deep sound from an animal (like ravens), so croaking is not the only way to mimic the sound. Hollywood frogs prefer ribbet ribbet. As a child I read
and heard grimmet grimmet or gribbet gribbet. These versions do agree on giving the sound double syllables, doubled. Frogs have much to say.
Greek frogs
And so have I, about the cultural fluidity of languages when trying to transcribe sounds. Languages misrepresent systematically, according to the collective ears of their language’s speakers. Recalling that ancient Greek frogs chanted brekekekex koax in Aristophanes’ Frogs (405BC), I consulted Kenneth Dover’s fine edition.
K.J. Dover
The frogs themselves, he says, are ‘‘Rana ridibunda (not seen or heard in Britain)’’ (— ridibunda, they laugh a lot). ‘‘Why br, and why x at the end?’’ Why not ribbit or something on that pattern? ‘‘The x seems to be a Greek spelling convention for representing sounds’’ [to give them a decisive endsound], ‘‘so torotox and lililix in birdsong or pappax for farting . . . [!] Initial br appears in many Greek words for production of sound, like
bremein [for thunderroaring] . . .
Thus brekekekex koax seems to embody two nonrepresentational conventions.’’
Zeus
Now you might retort, ‘‘I don’t wish to know’’ how those Athenians heard their frogs. I do. Dover (nicknamed by his students ‘‘Zeus’’) asks and answers good questions. The particularity brings the past alive.