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As
you all know, "This day is call'd the feast of Crispian" -
and, as you also undoubtedly remember, the anniversary of
the Battle of Agincourt, where on 25 October 1415, the English
forces under King Henry V wiped out a numerically superior
French army. As a result, Henry gained control of a large
part of France, married the French princess, and would have
become King of France had he outlived the French king. Henry's
pep talk to his troops is one of the best-known speeches of
Shakespeare's historical plays, and can be heard in the classic
film version of Henry V (also in a surprisingly stirring
version in the Danny DeVito movie Renaissance Man):
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This
day is call'd the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He
that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, To-morrow is Saint Crispian:
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, These wounds I had on Crispin's day....
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,--
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers....
(Henry V, IV:iii)
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But
what I am concerned with here is not the historical importance
of the Battle of Agincourt, nor its place in literature, but
its little-known contribution to social intercourse (that's
social, O ye debauched ones): the gesture familiarly
known as "the finger" or "the bird". The following bit of
research is not my own (except for minor editorial changes):
I found it in the monastery archives under the name Sarah
W. Soderlund, dated 23 January 1997. I have been unable to
trace Ms. (Prof.?) Soderlund, but she shows a flair for sociohistorical
research of the first water.
At the onset of the battle the French, anticipating an easy
victory over an English army one-fourth their size, loudly
boasted that they would cut off the middle finger of all captured
English soldiers. Without the middle finger yeomen would be
rendered incapable of fighting in the future, since it would
be impossible for them to draw the renowned English longbow.
This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree,
and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking
the yew" (or "pluck yew").
Much to the dismay of the French, the English won a major
upset and began mocking the defeated French by waving their
middle fingers at them, shouting, "See, we can still pluck
yew! PLUCK YEW!"
Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say, the difficult
consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to
a labiodental fricative 'f', and thus the words often used
in conjunction with the one-finger salute are mistakenly thought
to have something to do with an intimate encounter. It is
also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with
the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving
the bird".
And yew thought yew knew everything.
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