Ripping yarn about the British army’s own dirty dozen
IHAve a vivid memory of standing in the pantry of the house I grew up in, aged about seven, with my mum as she tried to persuade me there was something I wanted for dinner. “Do you want lasagne?” she said, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out a word I’d heard at school. “No”, I said “lasagne’s crap”. In the course of the mild telling-off – more of a “chance to explain” than a reprimand – we established that I had no idea what the word meant.
What I did know was that it was vaguely naughty to say it, and that it meant something disagreeable. Melissa Mohr’s effervescent and entertaining book on the history of swearing has countless examples of how words metamorphose, from a literal meaning, to a metaphorical meaning, to a meaningless meaning: if I hit my thumb with a hammer and shout “oh, crap”, I’m using it merely as an outburst (and, I learned here, doing myself some good: one experiment shows that when groups of people have to hold their hands in freezing water, the ones allowed to swear can keep them there longer).
Also, thanks to Mohr, I now realise that in any future hammer-thumb related incidents, I could also say sard, bobrelle, gamahuche, rantallion, pintel, kekir or just shout “oh, box the Jesuit”. or even “bagpipe”, which Francis Grose describes in the 1785 Classical Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue as “a lascivious practice too indecent for explanation”.
Mohr’s book is broadly historical and the title refers to two of the major areas of socalled “bad language”: religion, and bodily functions. It is slightly inelegant to conflate sexual vocabulary alongside all the other bodily functions, but makes for a better title. Mohr begins with the romans, in part to demonstrate how a different series of sexual mores make for a different set of registers of swear words. Despite their reputation for Stoicism, probity and moral rectitude, the graffiti at Pompeii and the epigrams of Martial show a rich and diverse language of rude animadversion, usually with a sexual dimension. Since latrines were often public, language associated with urination and defecation was far less inflammatory.
The second chapter switches to the Bible, and the other meaning of swearing: “To make a solemn declaration, invoking a deity or a sacred person or thing, in confirmation of and witness to the honesty or truth of such a declaration”. Mohr takes a slight detour into some of the fruitier Biblical passag- es. There’s the King James version of 1 King 10: “Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall”; also, the delightful fact that the rib from which God makes eve might actually have meant penile bone, explaining why male humans – like only spidermonkeys, whales and horses – lack a baculum. She doesn’t mention one more recent “find” in terms of Biblical language: the King James has Jesus saying, at Mark 7:19 “Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats”. The word in Mark, aphedron, caused scholars much consternation until an inscription discovered at Pergamon in 1954 revealed that Jesus was saying “into the public privies”. by infiltrating enemy lines. And who better to lead it than Keane – who otherwise was facing a murder charge following his court martial?
Promoted to captain, Keane was allowed to select his team, most of whom (in true Dirty Dozen style) came from prisons where they KEANE’S CoMPANy By iain Gale heron Books, 342pp, £14.99
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The real concern though was the role of sworn oaths as civil society developed. The kind of swearing was a contact with the divine, and for the average medieval individual, hearing someone says “God’s wounds”, or “God’s bones”, or “God’s nails” were far more offensive that the c-word (used in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer) or the f-work (used in the poetry of William Dunbar) or even such lovely phrases from elizabethan and Jacobean drama like “turd i’ your teeth and turd i’ your little wife’s teeth too”.
elizabeth I shocked ambassadors by saying “God’s death” frequently, and, as Mohr observes, this was doubly shocking since elizabeth was a woman. Her use of “macho” language showed her “princely”, masculine status – a bit like Alan Sugar being allowed to cuss more than his contestants or apprentices. Shakespeare, curiously, is far less bawdy than his contemporaries.
Nowadays, people barely bat an eyelid at others saying “Jesus”, “Christ”, “For the love of God” and so on (though I’m yet to hear “Holy Ghost” or “Hypostatic Union” used thus). Why did religious profanity decline? Partially secularisation, according to Mohr, but also partially mercantile capitalism (you couldn’t be expected to swear on the Bible about the quality of your goods at each and every sale) but also, importantly, the Catholic doctrine of equivocation.
During the persecutions, Catholics were allowed “mental reservations”: their spoken words (“I did not harbour a priest”) were accompanied by a silent extension that God would hear (“not that it’s any of your business”).
or they could use amphibology, a special kind of double-entendre (for example: “what did you think of my book?” “It left me speechless”). Bill Clinton, by one account, used amphibology when he said “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”. or, again with Clinton, saying “I did not inhale” can mean “since you eat the brownies”.
Mohr traces the vacillating attitude too were facing death for theft and various other misdemeanours such as being too handy with their fists. All had skills relevant to the task ahead. Supplied with money, a captaincy and the ear of his commanding officer, Keane’s career seemed back on course.
His fellow officers looked down on him as an “intelligencer” but he relished the challenge and had the total loyalty of his team. They prepared for the next stage of the invasion and negotiated with the guerrilla leaders, most of whom were ready to support the highest bidder. Keane made sure that was the British. He knew that the Spanish guerrillas would fight “with us” not “for us”.
to- wards religious, lavatorial and sexual swearing through the rise of 18th-century politeness, 19th-century prudery and into our present day coprolalia. There are extremely witty asides on moral panics – Shaw’s desperation for scandal in having eliza Doolittle say “Walk? Not bloody likely” led to “bloody” being the in-word of the season, sometimes substituted by the play’s title (“not pygmalion likely”). As we swear more, For Lieutenant Keane of the 27th regiment of Foot serving in Portugal under General Arthur Wellesley in 1808, the irony was hard to bear – that almost the only time he didn’t cheat at cards (“Doesn’t everyone?” he asked) he was accused of doing just that. Keane called his accuser to a duel and killed him.
The Peninsular War against Napoleon was still in the balance. Wellesley needed to know who the Portuguese and Spanish guerrillas would support, he needed spies to win them over, and he needed to know what the French were doing.
He needed, in other words, a small group of clever but fearless soldiers who had nothing to lose
To the British soldiers, operating around the ancient Portuguese capital of Coimbra in the centre of the country, Spain and Portugal seemed backward, lacking the industries beginning to appear at home. They did at least have the support of the British owners of port-producing vineyards, and after taking oporto, using Keane’s information, Wellesley was able to plan his invasion of Spain.
Keane’s main problems did not come from guerrillas or French armies. It was unwise to fall in love with the sister of the best friend of his duelling victim but that problem was resolved too. Keane seems to have immunity from all danger and the best logistical ideas in Wellesley’s army. “I can’t help thinking that our luck is bound to run out” he says – but of course, it never does.
Iain Gale lives in edinburgh and is a journalist and lecturer on art and military history as well as a writer of historical fiction. on the strength of this well-written account of the army’s nascent intelligence service in the Peninsular War, his Captain James Keane is a worthy rival to Bernard Cornwell’s richard Sharpe.