The Wallpaper That Named America

Columbus discovered America.  America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, who did not discover America.  In the lacuna between these two well-known facts there hides a story of adventurers, pickle-sellers, forged letters--and wall-paper.

Before the story begins, a Roman prologue.  In the Second Century AD there was a Greek-speaking Roman citizen from the province of Egypt named Ptolemy.  (Students of ancient history know that this is not anything unusual:  almost every Greek-speaking Egyptian ever was named Ptolemy.)  This Ptolemy, Claudius Ptolemy, put all of his era's geographical knowledge into a single book titled, with characteristic Roman creativity, the Geography.

Ptolemy's Geography mapped the known world, and mapped it well.  Europe is drawn with care.  The Persian Gulf looks suitably gulf-like.  Important rivers are all in the right places, including some in the far east.  The Indian Ocean exists.  The map even shows parts of China, though in blurry, uncertain haziness.

For more than a thousand years the Geography was the Google Maps of princes, merchants and explorers from Bruges to Baghdad.  In the late 15th Century, Christopher Columbus turned to it as he was trying to convince European kings to bankroll his ambitious globe-crossing voyage.  Columbus--who we've written about before--was the last man on earth to find the Geography useful.

That was because of what Columbus discovered once he sailed deep into the Western Ocean:  the New World.  But Columbus never knew the significance of his discovery.  When he first made landfall on that first unnamed idyllic Caribbean island, he assumed he was on East Coast of Japan, and that the Caribs were vassals of the great Khan.

Enter Amerigo Vespucci, a man Emerson derided as a mere "pickle seller" and a "thief."  Vespucci was a Florentine explorer who made two trips West.  A certain air of vibrant disreputableness hangs around him.

Amerigo Vespucci:  Explorer.  Lover.  Seller of pickles.

In the early 1500s, Vespucci wrote letters from the New World, describing a huge continent extending south of the Indies, bordered on both sides by ocean.  In Ptolemy's Geography--a book, remember, that had been state-of-the-art for 1,300 years--there was no huge southern continent that extended past the equator.  The conclusion was mind-blowing.  The world was big.  There was a whole new continent.  Florentine printers gathered these letters together, spiced them up a bit, and in 1502 or 1503 published them as a book called Mundus Novis.  The New World.

Instantly, people demanded an update to Ptolemy's previously immortal map.  A flurry of sextants and compasses scribbled across pages as publishers and map-fanciers rushed to be the first to make a accurate map of the new earth.

Enter two Germans--Martin Waldseemuller and Matthias Ringmann, cartographers.  They produced a map now known as the Waldseemuller map.  It was printed on 12 sheets measuring a massive four and a half by eight feet.  It was probably the largest map then made, and like all cool maps, it was meant for display as much as it was meant for navigation.  It was wallpaper.  If it were around now, it would be advertised in the Skymall catalogue.

The modern-day equivalent of the Waldseemuller map.

The Waldseemuller map was more than just big.  It was more than just cool.  It also included a certain brand new exciting continent hanging out to the far right, stretching below the Equator.  There, in the mostly empty space, was printed a name in serifed all-caps.  America.  The name was probably made up by Ringmann--a feminization of Amerigo.

The first printed instance of the name America.

The map was popular.  German universities clambered to pick up one of the thousand printed copies.  Students made copies of it and showed it to their friends.  In modern parlance, the map went viral.  As the map spread, so did the name America.  In the middle of the century Gerardus Mercador--he of the projection and a cartographical superstar in his own right--decided that the whole landmass of the New World should be called America.  Despite two centuries of Spanish complaints to the contrary, America would be America forever.

But a further twist complicates the story.  Remember those letters that Vespucci sent back to Europe?  The ones that inspired Waldseemuller and Ringmann to believe that South America was a distinct continent?  Those turned out to be faked.  Waldseemuller flip flopped, and when he published a new set of maps after Ringmann's premature death, South America was not shown a separate continent--indeed, no mention word America was made.  Waldseemuller explained the change:

As we have lately come to understand, our previous representation pleased very few people. Therefore, since true seekers of knowledge rarely color their words in confusing rhetoric, and do not embellish facts with charm but instead with a venerable abundance of simplicity, we must say that we cover our heads with a humble hood.

The inspiration for this post comes from Backstory's segment on Vespucci and the Waldseemuller map.  The always fantastic Smithsonian Magazine has an article on the Waldseemuller map, which proved to be a great trove of facts.

Yankee Doodle: The Secret History

Often traditions are like a culture's vestigial organs--atavistic throwbacks that once held purpose and meaning but now just do nothing better than dangle.

Earlier on this blog we explained how carrying a bride over the threshold originated from an ancient Roman rite symbolizing nuptial kidnapping.  Today, we'll be dissecting another beloved institution.  This one is as American as apple pie.

Every young American learns Yankee Doodle, a song combining two of childhood's most revered institutions:  drums and macaroni.  After every young American learns Yankee Doodle, they ask their parents why a man would stick a feather in his hat and call it macaroni.  Here is, verbatim, what my mother and father told me:

Because.

Well today we will tell you.  Get ready to call your parents and let air any long-simmering song-lyric-based resentments.

Yankee Doodle probably started out as a national insult.  In the 1750s, British troops fought the French and Indian war alongside their ruder American cousins.   The British troops would tease their backwards American brothers-in-arms by singing Yankee Doodle.  The Americans were dogged by the song--feisty British troops even going so far as to sing the song during church services.

But what did the arrogant British sing?  The early years of the song is wrapped in veils of mystery, put into a box of obscurity, sealed up with tape of confusion, and then filed in the library subbasement of silence.  No one knows where the tune came from (though it is likely from a nursery rhyme called Lucy Locket) and the lyrics were only written down in 1775, a full quarter of a century after the song is supposed to have been written.

But even then it wasn't very flattering to the colonists.

Brother Ephraim sold his Cow
And bought him a Commission;
And then he went to Canada
To fight for the Nation;

But when Ephraim he came home
He proved an arrant Coward,
He wou'dn't fight the Frenchmen there
For fear of being devour'd.

Ouch.

The nature of the song changed during the Revolutionary War.  The American soldiers started to sing the song before battles, turning what had once been a national insult into a swaggering defiant stand against colonial arrogance.  Here's a newspaper account that came out a month after Lexington and Concord:

Upon their return to Boston [pursued by the Minutemen], one [Briton] asked his brother officer how he liked the tune now,-- 'D--n them,' returned he, 'they made us dance it till we were tired.' -- Since which Yankee Doodle sounds less sweet to their ears.

So what does the song actually mean?

The song--at least the famous verse that we all know--seems to be about a foppish young colonist putting on airs too fashionable for his backwoods upbringing.  He--foolish young thing--thinks that to impress the ladies all he has to do is to stick a feather in his cap.  That is what is takes to be macaroni.

Macaroni Style

By the middle of the 17th Century, the word macaroni had become a synonym for over-the-top style.  But why should a penchant for crazy duds be associated with elbow-shaped pasta?  Because of rich young men going abroad.  After returning from their expensive grand tours of Italy, young British dandies were said to have developed a taste for that most exotic of pasta shapes, the elbow.  Some even dubbed themselves unofficial members of the Macaroni Club.  You know--for people cultured enough to have tasted macaroni.

Now only a single mystery remains.  What's a doodle?  Some say it means fool.  But here--we strike the bedrock of thought and history.  Our spade is turned aside.  We can dig no more.

But wait!  There is more!  We have a single fact left!  According to some, doodle might have been the origin of our much-used term for everyone and everything dude.

Well fellow dudes, I hereby propose that we bring macaroni back as a term of overly exuberant style.  Now we must only wait for that lovely day someday surely in the future, when a fine young Atlana MC rhymes macaroni with honey.

My main source for today's post is the always informative Straight Dope.

A Hillbilly Holiday

Is there any sweeter moment in the put-upon life of man than summer vacation?  For a few delicious months, young humans are burdened by no homework, no textbooks and no teachers.  Instead they are free to plash in pools, rot their minds with videogames, and stuff themselves with candy.  It's the greatest experience of liberty most people will ever enjoy.  It's enough to make you want to sing and dance around with puppets.

Today we're going to be looking at a time in America when students actually had to fight for their right to go on vacation.  Spoiler alert:  it involves violence.  And a poem.

The people of the backcountry of the United States are known by a number of names.  Hick.  Hillbilly.  Redneck.  Trailer trash.  But even though they might be disparaged, their culture has a long history, stretching back to the borderlands of England and Scotland.

In the backcountry of the US and the borderlands of Britain schoolchildren enjoyed a wild ritual called the 'barring out' which lasted until the beginning of the 20th Century.  The practice also went by the name of the shutting out, the penning out, or the exclusion.  (Any of these would be great names for a tough cable police procedural, if any TV writers are reading.)

The barring out happened every year around Christmas--and sometimes around other times of the year if the students were particularly frisky.  The bigger, tougher students in the class would push the teacher out of the school and barricade the door until the teacher allowed them a holiday.  If the schoolteacher granted this freedom, the kids gave him small presents.  Because, you know, thanks for not doing your job Mr. Teacher.

Sometimes this would get bloody.  One source records the school students filling the door "with benches and other heavy things."  The schoolboys and the school master's friends ended up facing each other in a 'fair fight.'  Although I have no idea how the fight could be fair because, you know, it was between grown men and children.

Here's a poem about barring out, from Scotland:

Liberty, liberty under a pin
Six weeks holiday or never come in!

Your humble blog-writer himself is an elementary school teacher, and I can assure you--if my students barricaded my classroom door with desks and threatened to beat me up if we didn't have a six week holiday, I just might give in.  Perhaps.  Just try me kids.  See what happens.

I learned about this ritual from the much-be-blogged Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fisher--also the source for my posts on Puritan Sex, Gander Pulling and Andrew Jackson's dating tips.

There's a History Today article on barring out as well--but it's behind a paywall so I could not consult it for this post.

In Which Andrew Jackson Doles Out Dating Tips

This is Andrew Jackson.  Mr. Twenty Dollar Bill, US President Number Seven, poster-child of the Second Party System.  Look at the proud cut of his jib.  Look at the horse in the background.  Who owns that horse?  Andrew "Old Hickory Jackson," that's who.  He probably owns the leftmost clump of trees as well.  And that charming house in the background.  And the painter who painted his portrait.  And I'd suggest he owns the rightmost tree-clump, too.  He's just that rich and cool and ANDREW JACKSON PLEASE BE MY FRIEND.

Ahem.  Regardless of your politics--Whig or Tory or Democrat--you have to admit Andrew Jackson is a bit of  badass.  Well prepare for some badass relationship advice because today Andrew Jackson is going to help you get the girl-friend or boy-friend of your dreams.

There she is, Mrs. Rachel Jackson herself--nee Rachel Donelson.  But when Andrew and Rachel first met, Rachel went by Rachel Donelson Robards and was unhappily married to one, Lewis Robards.

What happened next is unclear for a number of reasons.  One reason is that in frontier Tennessee, people weren't sitting around chronicling all the amazing things they were doing on their blogs or twitters whatever--they were busy trying not to die--so the paper trail on the Jackson courtship is a little tangled where it even exists.

But the biggest reason for the story's muddy nature is that when Andrew Jackson ran for the office of President, his political enemies siezed on his dubious nuptial status as proof of Jackson's dubious character.  The events surrounding Andrew and Rachel's love story became subject to politics and so, as always, two truths emerged--one for each party.

Anyway--here's one story of how Andrew won Rachel.

Jackson announced to Lewis Robards that in order to solve the whole Rachel-being-married-to-someone-else thing he would "cut his ears out of his head."  Jackson was arrested for this threat.  But before Jackson'a case came to trial, Old Hickory chased Robards out of town, brandishing a butcher's knife.  Jackson's court case was disimssed because the plaintiff didn't show up for the trial because the plaintiff was too busy trying not to get hacked to pieces by the defendant.  Sounds like an episode of Justified.

At this point Jackson thought that his courtship was a done deal, married Rachel, and called it legal seeing as Rachel had been abandoned by Lewis.  You know, because he skipped town.  Because Andrew Jackson would kill him if he got back in town.

Andrew Jackson displayed so much bravery and mettle and balls that when the movie was made of his life he was played by Charleton Heston.

To compare, John Adams got played by Paul Giamatti.

The story doesn't end there though because Andrew Jackson wasn't just any old imperious butcher-knife wielding slave-owning bad-ass.  He was a politician.  Dogged by insults about his wife, in 1806 Jackson did the only rational thing.  He challenged his slanderer to a duel.  TO THE DEATH.

Jackson's opponent Charles Dickinson was a very good shot.  Jackson let Dickinson fire first.  Jackson was hit in the chest but the bullet missed his heart by inches.  Under the rules of the duel Dickinson had to stand still and await his opponent's reply.  He did.  And Jackson shot Dickinson dead.

You couldn't challange the facts to a duel, though, so the slanders kept on coming--especially as Jackson's political career improved.  In 1828 Jackson ran for President and the whole 'stealing his wife from another man at butcher's-knife-point' came up in the campaign.  His enemies--of which you can guess were legion--seized on it like Fox News seizes on terrorist fist bumps.

Here's what one of the anti-Jackson crowd said:

Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?

Ouch.

Actually this stuff evidently really did hurt.  Rachel Jackson died a few months before Jackson was sworn in as President.  Andrew Jackson blamed the stress of the campaign for her death.

To recap, Andrew Jackson's dating tips:

• Use a butcher's knife.
• Survive gunshots to the chest.
• Beware the Whigs.

Try them out at the meat-market of your choice!

The Worst Sport Of All History: Gander Pulling

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but boredom stands as invention's disreputable but really cool friend, who smokes cigarettes and cuts class, and dares invention to do stupid things that sometimes end up being really awesome.  Like jump off of snowy ramps on skis.  Or cover your entire body with tattoos.  Because, you know, what else are we going to do today?

But for every invention boredom makes that reaches silly-putty levels of awesomeness, ten or twenty must suck.  Like a Whoppi Goldberg Dinosaur Buddy Cop Movie.  Or like Gander Pulling.

What's Gander Pulling you ask yourself.  Just the worst sport any human has ever thought to do.  Worse than curling.  Less sensible than cricket.  More violent than lacrosse.

Gander Pulling, also creatively called Goose Pulling and Pulling the Goose, is an ancient blood sport played in England, Belgium, Netherlands, and the Chesapeake Colonies.  The preparation for the game is simple.

Take a wooden pole or a tree branch. Hang a goose on it upside-down.  Grease the goose's neck.  Get your friends together and jump on your horses.  Now you are ready to play!

The unlucky contestants would take turns riding by the unlucky goose, trying to part goose head from goose body.  What made this especially interesting for the terminally bored country population was that the goose was jealous of its life and tried to defend itself from decapitation.  It would writhe its hideously long neck, squirm from the riders' grasps, and probably emit annoying honks.  Riders sometimes had fingers and thumbs bitten off.  Some were even killed as the goose pulled them from their horses.  Which has to rank as one of the most undignified deaths.

But eventually the game would crown its champion, the one rider  finally man enough to pull the dreaded goose's neck from its goosey body, covering himself in a splatter of blood and earning himself--one goose.

Thousands of spectators might turn out to watch this dreadfully dumb game.  It's still played in some parts of the world, though the goose has been pre-killed as an olive branch to our pesky respect for animal well-being.

Next time you hear people say video games are violent, tell them about gander pulling.

I learned about this from David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed, also the source for my post on Puritan pre-marital sex.