Received Ideas in Quotes 21

And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. (2 Timothy 4:4)

Derelict steam engines at Tyler Hill depot in Canterbury were probably the remains of a secret armoured train. It was kept in the tunnel during World War Two and never used, and that’s why Canterbury people were forbidden to shelter there (though some did.) (JM)

The widespread notion that romantic love is a recent [Western] invention strikes me as a tellingly male reading of limited cultural texts produced by mostly other men. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I suspect people have been falling in love (regardless of norms) for millennia... Love's a powerful thing, I guess I'm trying to say. Don't believe "experts" who want to tell you "interiority is a new-fangled cultural fad". People are people. Have been for at least a 100,000 years. Culture doesn't change the essentials of innate human psychology. (@DavidOBowles)

We millennials are, remember, entitled, narcissistic and fame-obsessed, owing to the deadly combination of doting parents, reality TV and social media... we’re constantly whining, because our early adult years – dented by the 2008 financial crisis – have not lived up to the expectations we formed as we grew up bingeing Sex and the City. (Hannah Marriott, Guardian, July)

The best midge-repellent is Avon’s Skin So Soft’s Woodland Essence. (@mikerflinn Plus lavender-scented lotion keeps off ticks.)

Late medieval scholarly traditions argued that hot climates produced inhabitants of more feeble mental capacities than temperate ones; this theory implicitly justified the enslavement and dominion of such peoples. (Surekha Davis, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human)

"Ringing the changes" comes from London cabbies giving short change, or false money. (It’s from bell-ringing).

It still amuses me in Australia there are people that actually think that Aboriginal people get some sort of compensation for being Aboriginal, and that everyone's getting some sort of payment or getting to go to uni for free. I've even heard free wedding dresses, free dogs, free Toyotas — it's ludicrous. (Abc.net.au. I’ve been told homeless people in London acquire dogs because they get extra benefits for the animals’ food.)

What do you think Christians mean when they say that the USA needs to get back to "God"? (@HeathenSassy)

As a former Christian, I can say honestly that most of the time when Christians say these catch phrases they don't mean anything specific and have no clue what it would look like. Christianese is encouraged but never fully defined. Everyone just mimics each other. (@Conruthhoward)

A friend in Lisburn was told a story recently by a fella, who went to the shops for a neighbour, & was sent straight back cos he’d bought a loaf of Brennan’s & “that’s Catholic bread”. (@artimusfoul)

This house was built 130 years ago, and people were smaller then. HutH

Baa Baa green sheep - it was a tiresome right-wing urban myth a lot of people fell for. I remember kids I taught saying, "My mum knows this woman, and she knows a teacher who said they weren't allowed to teach the children Baa Baa Black Sheep any more." (It was presumably the same school where they weren't allowed to have black bin liners.) (JL)

Blackboards were replaced with whiteboards in most schools for various reasons (technical and health), which was another wonderful opportunity for racist conspiracy theories.

Everyone knows the difference between male and female brains. One is chatty and a little nervous, but never forgets and takes good care of others. The other is calmer, albeit more impulsive, but can tune out gossip to get the job done. (Theconversation.com)

Agatha Christie hated Hercule Poirot. She said (in the Daily Mail in 1938): “There has been at times a coolness between us. There are moments when I have felt: “Why – why – why did I ever invent this detestable, bombastic, tiresome little creature?” eternally straightening things, eternally boasting, eternally twirling his moustache... Yes, there have been moments when I’ve disliked M. Hercule Poirot very much indeed, when I have rebelled bitterly against being yoked to him for life... But now, I must confess it, Hercule Poirot has won. A reluctant affection has sprung up for him. He has become more human, less irritating. I admire certain things about him - his passion for the truth, his understanding of human frailty, and his kindliness... In spite of his vanity he often chooses deliberately to stand aside and let the main drama develop. (In the same article she talks about his “intense interest in the psychology of every case”. And don’t forget a) she had a sense of humour and b) the article is a teaser for Appointment with Death, which was about to be serialised in the Daily Mail. She also takes the opportunity to refer to some of her other titles.)

More here, and links to the rest. And many more in my book What You Know that Ain't So.

Received Ideas in Quotes 20

Westerns used to be written by people who had never left England, leading to solecisms like “Overhead, the coyotes were circling.”

People have stopped washing during lockdown.

Mikhail Gorbachev was a big fan of Twin Peaks and asked George H.W. Bush to find out for him who killed Laura Palmer. David Lynch was contacted by the producers on behalf of the president but didn’t tell them the answer. (@qikipedia. Urban myth, says @thornewip – probably based on a contemporary political cartoon.)

Hotpot is from hodge-podge, which is from the Spanish olla podrida or stew. (Sounds convincing.)

Below the salt: The lack of access that the English poor had to spices (or anything to make their food taste better) is pretty well expressed in the phrase 'below the salt', which was a term for the lowly folks at the bottom of the table who did not even have access to that. (@Cavalorn. Take this story cum grano salis. It’s a long refectory table and the salt is in the middle. The posh folks sat at the head, but the salt was for everybody.)

British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, who lived at Brocket Hall, died while shagging a maid on the snooker table. This is also where Lady Caroline Lamb lived and was wont to have herself served to dinner party guests, stark naked, from a giant soup tureen. (AJB He also says that priests on both sides were burned at the stake in “Romeland”, a street in St Albans, hence the name.)

A ‘grass’ or informant began with the rhyming slang ‘grasshopper/shopper’, because they shop a former accomplice. (@susie_dent)

Stationer: A bookseller who had a regular "station" or shop at a university, unlike most booksellers, who were itinerant vendors. (Free Dictionary)

Pockets in women’s clothes were phased out as men feared the women were carrying evil spells. (Women had “pockets” – purses that hung from their belt, or from the waistband inside their skirt, accessible through a placket.)

I knew a nurse who said "boys can get venereal diseases from toilets just like girls can". Also a lot of nurses are superstitious as hell. I've been trying to squash the belief that a full moon causes busier shifts among my coworkers for years. (@BoraxMr)

In 1988, a school friend and I did the Interrail thing. Was fun. He had no liking for yer Cultural Aspects, though. Was silent around Paris one day. On the way back to the hostel, he suddenly goes, "Will ye look at that! What will they think of next!?" It was a wheelie bin. (@galahadlake)

The tarte Tatin is a pastry in which the fruit is caramelised in butter and sugar before the tart is baked. It was created accidentally at the Hôtel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron, Loir-et-Cher, France, in the 1880s. (@Wikivictorian. Along with Bakelite, Lamingtons and many more.)

Think, for example, of so-called voodoo death. The witch-doctor has merely to cast his spell of death upon a man and within hours the victim will collapse and die. (Robin Humphrey, 2021 Featured in a detective story by Arthur Upward in 1938; became something that “everybody knows”.)

They are locks, not dreadlocks. The dread part came from the British army who in the 1850s dreaded meeting the Ethiopian tribesmen who wore their hair in locks. (@SertimaB)

Try not to allow Western interpretations of words to influence how you see things. "Dread" root origin is "Before it got the name ‘Rastafari’ its followers called themselves ‘dreads’, signifying their ‘dread’ and respect for God." (@AntoineSpeaker. He’s a TV reporter who’s been told off for appearing with “locks” – neatly plaited and short.)

A half-truth about St Francis (1181-1226) is that he preached to birds - like a 12th century Dr Dolittle. The truth is he was banned from preaching to people by the Vatican. By preaching to birds & letting humans overhear he bent the rules. (@MrEwanMorrison. He adds: "English-language catalogue from the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi." He further adds that the brochure (or current scholarship) wanted to make St Francis’ story less mythical and more political. There seem to have been various bans on itinerant preachers – they had to get permission from the local church before addressing the public. More research needed.)

What little evidence we have suggests that actual medieval pagans (in medieval Lithuania, for example) had stricter sexual mores than medieval Christians. When people associate pagans with sexual freedom, all they're doing is projecting C19th fantasies onto the past. (@DrFrancisYoung)

The reason why people don’t want to believe in God is because if they do, they know they will have to obey Him. That’s the real reason. That’s why they suppress the truth. (@grcastleberry)

What was an urban legend everyone “knew” when you were young? For some reason everyone firmly believed Polo Mints counteracted the morning after pill. (@Alrightpunk)

Was it Samuel Johnson who inserted the B in "subtle", just as he listed "furrin" as "foreign" on a mistaken understanding of its etymology? ("Foreign" goes back further and was once spelled “forayne”. Chaucer? This sounds American as they’re more likely to say “furrin”.)

“The answer is a lemon” comes from the one-armed bandit machine. Three fruit in a row was a winner unless the fruits were lemons. (HC)

More here, and links to the rest. And there are many, many more in my book What You Know that Ain't So.