Earrings? Help settle an argument

[corsair2k3]

The painting is very interesting (I find all old paintings and pictures interesting for one reason or another), but if you'll forgive my saying so and sounding like a dogmatist, one painting does not a tradition make.

>No it doesn't--and my major point is skewer the jackasses who claimed that earring adornment only began with the California Gold Rush. I'm not going to argue that the custom was (or was not) widespread prior to 1849. But it certainly did not BEGIN that late

...On the other hand if earrings were listed amongst the more personal possessions or garments of a pirate, if they were listed between his tobacco box and watch for example, that would perhaps indicate a less detached ownership (if that makes any sense).

>It does--but the inventories aren't really segregated in that fashion with any level of certainty.

The trouble there is that even to show conclusively (let alone by inference and interpretation) that a dozen pirates actually wore earrings would not prove that the majority did.

>I'm not interested in establishing that the majority of pirates wore earrings. I'm just concerned with revisionists/deconstructionists who claim that they're purely an invention by Pyle.

I'm not aware of any earrings having been found at the Whydah or QAR sites--and, if there were, they'd be subject to the same objection. How can one tell if said adornment was simple loot, or was actually worn?

If they were found then they would be subject to the same interpretation as I suggest above, though perhaps less conclusively. If there were a hundred then it would be very indicative, on the other hand if one or two were found alongside a large pile of coins then it would suggest that they were part of a hoard rather than adornment. However, I think instead the complete absence of them is far more indicative and is, in my humble opinion, much less open to interpretation.

>That might be true if one were dealing with the Mary Rose or Vasa, but in the case of both the W and the QAR you are dealing with wrecks that have been put "through the blender" For example, in the case of the W, less than 40 cannonballs have been recovered. Commonsense tells us that statistical inferences from a wreck subjected to the kind of trauma inflicted on the W are meaningless. As another case in point: absolutely no pottery--and very little glass--has been recovered to date from the W site.

"Absence of evidence" arguments can always cut two ways. Somebody will undoubtedly argue that the failure to recover earrings from the Whydah site must mean that the pirates had them (literally) on their person when the 70-80 carcasses were washed ashore on Marconi Beach--and other beaches north and south distances up to 10 miles.

[snipped]

*wasn't it you who gave me that list years ago in the first place? Credit where it's due and all that.

>If I did, I must've been drunk...

Greetings,

[Fox]

>I'm not interested in establishing that the majority of pirates wore earrings. I'm just concerned with revisionists/deconstructionists who claim that they're purely an invention by Pyle.

Then I think we have reached an accord from opposite starting corners. I'm not interested in arguing that no seaman (be he pirate, RN, merchantman...) wore an earring before Howard Pyle, only that it was not the major pirate fashion statement so commonly believed.

>No it doesn't--and my major point is skewer the jackasses who claimed that earring adornment only began with the California Gold Rush. I'm not going to argue that the custom was (or was not) widespread prior to 1849. But it certainly did not BEGIN that late

No indeed, there are several impressions of seamen with earring prior to that date, from the Tudor period at least and onwards. However, I believe until someone shows other wise that earlier wearing of earrings was a personal choice rather than a "tradition of the sea". My major point is to skewer the jackasses who claim that pirates must have worn earrings because it was traditional for all seamen to. Is this another accord I see looming? :angry:

[corsair2k3]

Foxe, me lad!

No truce, no modus vivendi, no compromise, no middle ground!

I'm all for running this thread up to 10 or 15 pages at least!

The Corsair

www.whydah.com

[Fox]

Load up the primary-source-cannon then! I'll be sharpening the dogmatic-argument-cutlasses and passing round the hypothesis-pistols!

Let battle, erm... continue!

(Actually on another board I contribute to we got an earrings thread going to 192 posts, so this is peanuts. And you know what? those 192 posts could easily have been condensed into 12, what is it about earrings?)

[lorien_stormfeather]

I must say that I admire a man with earring(s)!

[corsair2k3]

I do too...

Easy pickings at night for me and my filet knife...

:)

The Corsair

www.whydah.com

[Captain_MacNamara]

I say my earrings make me look more the part, arr!

[Fox]

Further to my earlier post outlining Noodlewhacker's suggestion regarding pirate earrings, seed rings and parrots he has recently communicated to me a second plausible theory. Possibly pirate captains wore earrings so they'd have something handy with which to propose to the girl they've been fighting with at the end of the movie. He didn't quote any primary source evidence for this so it may just mean he watched The Crimson Pirate again yesterday.

[Patrick Hand]

Possibly pirate captains wore earrings so they'd have something handy with which to propose to the girl they've been fighting with at the end of the movie.

But what would have been a period movie for a pyrate Captain and "the girl" to have been watching ?

And what were they fighting about .... overpriced popcorn ?

Of course.... a ships sails would have made an excelent screen for showing home movies when out at sea.........

Maybe pyrate wore earrings because they got into the theater for half price if they wore an earring on "Pyrate Nite" ..... It coulda happened.......

[corsair2k3]

Actually, this brings up a theory which might keep this thread going another couple of pages.

Maybe sailors thought of earrings as their version of "Charon's Penny"

Until relatively recent times, many of the dead were buried with pennies on their eyelids.

Not only was this to keep the eyes decently shut, but some of the more rustic types saw it as "payment for the Ferryman"

Since sailors were buried at sea, pennies weren't practical. Perhaps the earring was a solution?

And it's been said before that earrings were worn as "paying it forward" to anyone who might find a drowned sailors body and give it proper burial...

The Corsair

(who's now going back to his web-work)

[Fox]

And it's been said before that earrings were worn as "paying it forward" to anyone who might find a drowned sailors body and give it proper burial...

It's been said before, but has it been shown to have any basis in fact before?

[corsair2k3]

Maybe I'll have to take that back--here's two sailors who were buried WITH their earrings...

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2004/01.../pf-316404.html

[poor bastids could only afford silver though]

More to follow...

The Corsair

[Patrick Hand]

That ones interesting..... but are they guessing that they were sailors, because they had earrings.....

But it is still interesting.........

[corsair2k3]

While I am thinking of it, I'm going to repost the following here for the benefit of posterity as well as 17th-century reenactors:

In 1635, the ROEBUCK, under Captain William Cobb, was attacking shipping of

the "infidells" in the Indian Ocean under the authority of a specious

commission issued by King Charles I.

In a deposition, a victim of their robberies took note of "the leftenant

Franglee [=Franklin] who hath a ring in his left ear"

[from PIRATES OF THE EASTERN SEAS by Charles Grey. 1971 Kennikat Press

edition. London p.97]

The Corsair

[jessie k.]

That's an interesting article, but they've really no reason to assume they were sailors just because they had earrings. Weren't they in style in the early 1600's? I wonder if they had any other evidence to show they were sailors.

[Fox]

Yeah, they do seem to be basing their identification of the skeltons as sailors on the fact they had earrings:

Two silver earrings were found in two of the graves, indicating the men were sailors

Now, if they'd found a couple of fids and a boathook in the graves, or even skeletal evidence similar to that found on "Seaman Swan" I'd be convinced, but to decide the skeletons are seamen because they've got earrings seems to be speculation of the wildest and most unfounded sort. Earrings were still in fashion for European men in 1605, anyone might have worn them and their presence proves absolutely nothing.

I believe that one of the master's mates (or possibly the master, my memory fails me) on the Roebuck was one Davy Jones.

[corsair2k3]

You are indeed correct!

.

Davy Jones was indeed one of the leading lights of the Roebuck.

He was, of course, no relation to THE Davy Jones.

As to the article:

Given my perverse urge to spin this thread out as long as possible, I'm going to see if I can get all possible references to earrings and sailors on it.

To that end: If someone has access to "The Dictionary of English Folklore" I'd be most grateful if they would post what the DEF has to say on the topic.

Regards,

The Corsair

"We'll sail as long as the beer lasts..."

--attributed to Martin Frobisher

Sometime Pirate

[Fox]

'Fraid I don't have a Dictionary of English Folklore to hand but I do have a copy of Brewer's Dicionary of Phrase and Fable published in 1870 which is perhaps the definitive work. He gives no definition for "Ear ring" or "Earring", but:

Ring in the Ear . Asign of slavery or life long servitude. "Then Eldad took an awl, and, piercing his [Jetur's] ears against the doorpost, made him his servant forever. The elders pronounced a blessing, and Eldad put a ring through the ears of Jetur, as a sign that he was become his property." - Eldad the Pilgrim, chap. i.

You'll notice the quite startling lack of mentions of seamen, yet if seamen had traditionally worn earrings for <delete as applicable> paying for their funeral/seasickness/mark their rounding the horn/etc, that's exactly the kind of thing Brewer was writing about

Out of interest (and not because I'm argumentative) how do you know that Davy Jones of the Roebuck isn't THE Davy Jones? When do mentions of Davy Jones' locker begin?

[corsair2k3]

Well, for one thing, there's no mention of Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith or Micky Dolenz among the rest of the crew...

Seriously:

There's a couple theories about the origin of "Davy Jones' Locker"--none of which are substantiated.

My reason for ruling out the Roebuck DJ as the origin of the legend is because references to the legend put it in an underwater context. There's nothing in the story of the Roebuck's DJ with regard to drowning or catastrophic shipwreck or anything similar that would inspire the submarine aspects of this folk belief.

Regards,

The Corsair

[Fox]

Fair enough, I wasn't really suggesting that the Roebuck DJ was THE DJ, I was just genuinely intrigued as to whether you had a definite reason for saying he wasn't.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before but in case I haven't, or in case it was somewhere else: I went to school with the daughter of Davy Jones from the Monkees. FWIW, neither of us wore earrings at school.

[corsair2k3]

I didn't know that...about Davy Jones' daughter being a classmate...

As for Davy Jones--I've never heard a satisfactory explanation for this tale.

One theory has it that it comes out of Jamaica, where there is an entity called "Duppy Jonah" which has some of the same traits as Davy Jones...

...sans earrings, of course!

The Corsair

[dasNdanger]

Here's some information I have on Davy Jones, of the 'Locker' fame...

The origin of this expression remains obscure. Some etymologists believe that it is a corruption of "Duffy Jonah", an expression used by West Indian sailors in reference to the devil. Others believe that 'Davy' derives from St. David, the patron saint of Wales who was often invoked by Welsh sailors. Another school of thought believes that "jones" is a corruption of "Jonah", the name of the Old Testament prophet who was swallowed by a whale and spewed back up on land after three days. The phrase came into popular usage more than two centuries ago and, in nautical parlance, referes to a spirit of the deep, often but not always malevolent. British naval surgeon and novelist Tobias Smollett described Davy Jones in his 1751 novel The Adventures of Peregrine Pickel: "I'll be damned if it was not Davy Jones himself. I know him by his saucer eyes, his three rows of teeth, and tail, and the blue smoke that came out his nostrils. The same Davy Jones, according to the mythology of sailors, is the fiend that presides over all other eveil spirits of the deep, and is often seen in various shapes, perching among the rigging on the eve of hurricanes, shipwrecks, and other disasters to which seafaring life is exposed, warning the devoted wretch of death and woe."

According to nautical tradition, 'Davy Jones' Locker' (the locker being an allusion to the sailor's trunk or sea chest) is the final resting place of sunken ships, articles swept overboard, and, of course, those buried or lost at sea. ~ from When A Loose Cannon Flogs A Dead Horse There's The Devil To Pay, by Olivia A. Isil

Note - there is NO mention of an earring in any of this, including the description of Jones himself. And on a side note, a 'Jonah', of course, is someone that brings bad luck to a ship, so that 'theory' fits, though I personally have no idea which of all these ideas is even close to the 'truth'.

das

[Matty Bottles]

I've read that book "When a loose cannon flogs a dead horse" or something like that, and like all popular books about etymology, I simply do not trust it. Not at all. False etymology is exceedingly popular, with many people creating stories about the history of a word to make a point, make themselves look smart, or simply to be argumentative. Look at what happened to "picnic" and "handicap."

Incidently, this urge to explain tradition in modern terms (whether or not a tradition of language or attire) could very well explain the orgins of the earring myth. The foolish romanticism of the 19th century latched onto this idea of the pirate and popularized it, even if it is a mishmash of anachronisms. That is how the myth could have started. Now, of course, none of this helps our discourse upon earrings, but it will hopefully focus the conversation: As Foxe has suggested again and again with sublime patience, sailors DID wear earrings - they wore them a hundred years before the Golden Age, when everyone else was wearing them. There's the origins of your myth.

Now, most of the regular contributors to this thread already know that. This response for the casual browser.

[dasNdanger]

I've read that book "When a loose cannon flogs a dead horse" or something like that, and like all popular books about etymology, I simply do not trust it.

Well, it is all basially guesswork, isn't it. However, on checking other net links AND nautical publications I have, they all basically say the same thing about 'Davy Jones' of Locker fame that this particular book does. And none state any of it as 'fact'...these are just possible origins, but no one really knows for sure.

And as far as that pesky ol' earring debate goes...well since in many piratical pictures the men have their hair down and earlobes covered, I guess we'll never really know for sure if they were pierced or not. (Just stirrin' da kettle to keep it from stickin'...)

:)

das

[corsair2k3]

The topic that will not die...

I was having a look at some of Hogarth's work, hoping to catch a glimpse of earrings, but instead was quite please to find an nefarious sort wearing an eyepatch

If anyone wants a look-see, let me know and I'll put up a jpeg of the darling feller over the weekend...

Regards,

The Corsair

Who reckons we'll hit 10 yet on this thread...