Isinglass curtains

A conversation in the Globe a couple of days ago turned from a discussion of beer production (for reasons that'll became apparent) to a Rodgers and Hammerstein song. The question arising: what are the "isinglass curtains" mentioned in the Oklahama! song embedded above?

With isinglass curtains you can roll right down,
In case there's a change in the weather.
- "Surrey with The Fringe on Top", Oklahama!, Rodgers and Hammerstein

The object in question is evidently the storm top or storm curtain that attached to the roof of carriages (this is a surrey) and early cars as rainproofing. This is a relatively well-trodden topic, but it's worth retracking as an example of the confusion that can arise if you try to brain out historical/etymological stories purely from the words present (at the level of assuming "plum pudding" contains plums). 

The phrase "isinglass curtains" is actually an anachronism anyway. Oklahoma! is set in 1906, but  a look at Google Books Ngram Viewer for isinglass curtains, and at Google Books, finds the earliest print occurrence to be 1927, after which the term was used for the storm curtains of early popular models of motor vehicle. The explanation for this at least is that the 1943 Oklahoma! was based on a play by Lynn Riggs, the 1931, Green Grow the Lilacs, and Hammerstein's adaptation of the play text altered the character Curly's words. In the play he refers to isinglass windows:

And this yere rig has got four fine side-curtains, case of a rain. And isinglass winders to look out of!
- The Cherokee night and other plays, Lynn Riggs, University of Oklahoma Press, 2003

As to "isinglass", it has two main meanings. One is a clear gelatine derived from fish swim-bladders, used in fining of beer and wine. Historically, it was a versatile and expensive commercial product, used as a gum, a food gelling agent, as the sticking medium for surgical plasters, as stiffener for cloth, as a sealant for preserving eggs 1, and for making mock pearls. The classic source was Russian: the swim-bladder of the "Huso", aka the Isinglass Fish aka the beluga or cavier sturgeon. The etymology of the word "isinglass" isn't 100% certain, but the most likely (according to the OED) is derivation from Dutch "huisenblas" = sturgeon bladder.

The other main meaning of "isinglass": the transparent variety - otherwise called muscovite - of the mineral mica. In some parts of world, notably Russia (hence the name muscovite - i.e. pertaining to Moscow), it's found in large enough sheets to make small window panes, so it was historically used for applications where tough, slightly flexible, heat-resistant, transparent material was needed, such as furnace or lantern windows. Why it's also called "isinglass" isn't clear, but the OED says "from its resembling in appearance some kinds of [the gelatine] isinglass".

Neither of these sound promising curtain material, and the twin meanings are already a recipe for confusion. Some sources opt for the first, despite the unlikeliness of making rain curtains or windows from a water-soluble gelatine:

In the stove window trade, mica acquired the name isinglass, after its resemblance to a gelatin made from fish bladders that was made into windows for carriages and early cars ...
- Roadside geology of Maine, Dabney W. Caldwell, 1998

Some sources mistakenly conflate the two ...

Sturgeon — regarded as a trash fish until about 1870, prized thereafter as sources of smoked meat, oil and the isinglass that was once used as windows in stoves and lanterns ...
- Biologists tackle fishery questions, Milwaukee Journal, March 24, 1991

Isinglass is a mica or clear gelatin made from certain fish bladders, principally the bladders of sturgeon. Isinglass was once used in glues and jellies, as well as (get this) the manufacture of drop-windows on buggies.
- Isinglass: this wordsmith correct in use of language, Richmond Times, Sep 16, 1994

... but the predominant assumption is that "isinglass curtains" refer to curtains with inserts of mica, and some sources explicitly confirm this, such as

... there were the Isinglass curtains — sheets of transparent mica sewn into black leatherette frames ...
- Saturday Review, Volume 50, 1967

But is any of this terminology reliable? A 1937 Q&A in Hospitals: the journal of the American Hospital Association, mentions that the "isinglass windows" of an oxygen tent were actually cellulose acetate, and before that Edwin E Slosson summed up the terminological lag in the area of these substances:

Fish glue films were called isinglass as though they were a kind of glass. When mica took its place it too was called isinglass, even in stove windows, and what is now called mica is mostly celluloid, and what is called celluloid, may be something else. Language lingers and lags behind the advance of science.
- The human side of chemistry, Edwin E Slosson, Am. Journ. Pharm, Nov 1922

This process continues. "isinglass curtains" and "isinglass windows" are names still used for the polymer canopies of powerboats and yachts.

Ultimately the best approach to finding what these isinglass curtains/windows seems to be to avoid the anecdotal, and look in contemporary hardware publications, which have technical descriptions of vehicles. The majority of hits (see "side curtains" celluloid) solidly confirm the existence of vehicle side curtains with celluloid windows; a significant minority (see "side curtains" mica) refer to mica windows. Given the stiffness of mica, however, I'm inclined to think that an isinglass (probably sic) curtain that "rolls" must refer to one of celluloid or of canvas with a celluloid light.  But I guess

With curtains of either celluloid por canvas with celluloid (or possibly mica) curtains you can roll right down,
In case there's a change in the weather

lacks a certain something, and is reminiscent of Charles Babbage's comment on Tennyson's The Vision of Sin.

Another appearance of isinglass curtains in literature: the poem Parent by Josephine Miles.

Letting down the isinglass curtains
Between the wet rain and the back seat
Where new plaster flattened me, my father said,
Wait here. I will get you the sherbet
Of your eight-year-old dreams.
There were no drive-ins then.
The rain roared. Don't go away,
I said to him? He said to me.

Her poetry is worth checking out: minimal yet poignant, often stream-of-consciousness. Parent comes from the 1979 autobiographical collection Coming to Terms, which initially tells of her childhood when she had to endure a full-body plaster cast (hence the "new plaster flattened me") due to disabling arthritis (see Josephine Miles: mentor to a revolution). The isinglass curtains in this case, as told in another poem in the collection, Doll, in the family's Mitchell.

1. Although I suspect many of the references are confusing it with the far more widespread use of water glass, a syrupy solution of sodium silicate, for this purpose.

- Ray

Hobknocker: anatomy of a myth

iCarly is an American children's / early teens' TV show about the life and friendships of Carly, an adolescent girl who runs her own web TV show. It has had a number of spinoffs, but an unwanted one must be the notoriety of a word used by one of its characters: the bratty and effete Wade Collins, a British-Canadian aspiring singer played by Alex Schemmer, has a signature phrase of calling Americans "hobknockers" / "hobnockers".

This is repeatedly asked-about on etymological and other forums - sometimes out of genuine curiosity, sometimes as a troll - and usually gets replies asserting that it's some kind of sexual term (if sourced, coming from the unmoderated dustbin that is the Urban Dictionary - which carried no article on the term until it appeared on iCarly in February 2009). The reality is that was a made-up epithet: there's no such English slang. I can only assume the story spread on the gossip circuit out of the same perverse desire to drag down excessively naive/wholesome children's shows that gave rise to jokes about Muffin the Mule and the urban myths about Captain Pugwash.

However, the word "hobknocker" does exist: a look in Google Books - see here - shows it to be an evidently rare US term for a piledriver or jackhammer - i.e. a pneumatic drill, probably the same thing described as a "hobnocker" in this legal transcript. Etymological speculation about these things can easily be on the wrong track (again as with speculations about "Pugwash"); at Askville there's a discussion headed What does the slang word "hobknocker" actually mean? This goes into learned discussion about "hob" and "knocker" being terms for minor imps - true enough - while ignoring the variety of meanings of "hob" for hardware with some kind of metal business end:

hob. n 2
[Origin obscure: perhaps more words than one. Cf. HUB.]
1. a. (Formerly also hub.) In a fire-place, the part of the casing having a surface level with the top of the grate.
1. b. One of the level supports on the top of a stove over which pots and pans, etc., are placed to be heated, etc.
2. A (rounded) peg or pin used as a mark or target in games; esp. one of the iron pins used in quoits.
3. (Also hub.) ‘A hardened, threaded spindle, by which a comb or chasing-tool may be cut’
4. The shoe of a sledge.
- Oxford English Dictionary, OED Online, 2nd edition, 1989

On this basis, "a hobknocker" is simply descriptive: a device with a metal tip that knocks things.

Returning to iCarly: admittedly I feel a slight twinge of sympathy with anyone's desire to subvert it. I may be reading too much into it, but I'm not at all keen on its overt pro-Americanism in having an approximately English character as a buffoon and hate figure. I also find the theme song, Leave It All to Me, outright creepy for its 'manifest destiny' flavour:

So wake up the members of my nation
It's your time to be.

I forget who commented that there's quite a narrow line between inspirational and totalitarian lyrics in songs, but I think this is right on that line. I'd love to see a cover of Leave It All To Me by Laibach (the Slovenian group whose Geburt Einer Nation, to provocatively satirical effect, fits fascist imagery to the German translation of Queen's One Vision).

-Ray

Orange roots

My history in some areas is very shaky. Recently Wayland Wordsmith featured a 1690 poem concerning a war I'd never heard of: the Nine Years' War when the French fought the Grand Alliance (just about everyone else in Europe, including England) in 1688-1697. One of its sea engagements was the 1690 Battle of Beachy Head, in which the French fleet under Admiral Touville was victorious, but failed to follow up the advantage and instead sacked the completely unstrategic port of Teignmouth (Touville himself was sacked for this).

However, unstrategic or not, it was no fun for the inhabitants, who petitioned the Lord Lieutenant with this account:

... on the 26th day of this instant July 1690 by Foure of the clocke in the morning, your poor petitioners were invaded (by the French) to the number of 1,000 or thereabouts, who in the space of three hours tyme, burnt down to the ground the dwelling houses of 240 persons of our parish and upwards, plundered and carried away all our goods, defaced our churches, burnt ten of our ships in the harbour, besides fishing boats, netts and other fishing craft ...

Apart from a national relief fund fetching £11,000, Teignmouth received a poem of commiseration, Upon Tingmouth, by Philip Avant, vicar of Salcombe Regis. Not a great deal is known about Avant, a minor poet and a strong supporter of William III, beyond the brief entry in William Henry Kearley Wright's 1896 West-country Poets: their Lives and Works.

A Vicar of Salcombe of this name was a writer of poetry, among which are some local poems in praise of Torbay, and on the burning of Teignmouth by the French in 1680. The title of one of his publications is given in the Bibliotheca Devoniensis: Torbaia digna Camaenis ad Gulielmum tertium regem gratissimum. Ecclesiae Anglicanae conservatorem. Authore Philippo Avant, minimo indignissimo Ecclesiae Anglianae Presbytero: London, 1692. This contained, besides the above, some poems in honour of William and Mary ' On the Fall of Belgrade,' and others to Bishop Burnet.

The London-printed 1693 English edition had the even more grandiose title, "Torbaia digna Camaenis or The Wonderful Deliverance vouchsafed these Nations in the late Revolution and seasonable Landing of His most Sacred Majesty King WILLIAM III at Torbay, worthy to be written in indelible Characters, with a Pen of Iron and the Point of a Diamond ; yea so to be engraven on all Protestant Hearts as never to be worn out even to the World's End, a POEM originally written in Latin and now translated into English by the Author, PHILIP AVANT."

Rosalind Northcote, in her Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts, quotes a little of the book, saying of it:

Fishermen and others gave a very cordial welcome to the Prince of Orange when he arrived on November 5, 1688. But by no one can he have been more vehemently applauded than by the author of the lines I have quoted at the head of the present chapter—the Rev Philip Avant, Vicar of Salcombe. The poem, originally written in Latin, and translated by the author, takes up almost the whole of his small and rather rare volume, Torbaia digna Camœnsis. It is in parts unintentionally amusing, and is interesting as showing how far the frenzied fervour of bigotry may carry a naturally amiable person, for in the narrow intervals between his torrents of denunciation it is clear that Mr Avant was, in ordinary matters, a kindly-disposed man.

She's referrring to the following section:

'Torbay, unknown to the Aonian Quire,
Nothing oblig'd to any Poet's lyre ...
The Muses had no Matter from thy Bay,
To make thee famous till great William's Day....
To Orange only and Batavia's Seed
Remain'd this glory, as of old decreed,
To make thy Name immortal, and thy Shore
More famous and renown'd than heretofore....
O happy, happy Bay! All future times
Shall speak of thee renown'd in foreign Climes!...
Muses have matter now, enough to make
Poets of Peasants for Torbaia's sake....
King David's Deeds were sung, and Triumphs too,
And why should not Great Orange have his due?
Supream in Earth, Dread Sovereign thou art;
Long may'st thou reign, we pray with all our heart.'

The classical/historical references lead down some interesting etymological paths. The "Aonian Quire" who'll sing in all future times in praise of Torbay are the Muses, who were supposed to come from Aonia. "Batavia's Seed" refers to the Dutch, whose precursors were the Batavi (aka Batavians), a Germanic tribe who occupied an area of the Rhine delta and whose name derived from batawjō, "good island": the area is still called Betuwe. This explains all subsequent uses of the name Batavia: whether as the East India Company ship Batavia; the historical name for the Netherlands (see the 1728 Batavia Illustrata); the colonial Dutch name for what is now Jakarta; the Batavian Republic; and many others.

Another snippet of the poem appeared in Devon Notes and Queries, volume 2, 1903, when a correspondent asked - without result, as far as I know - if anyone could unravel the allusions in the following section.

Dartmouth is overjoyed, etc.
Nor canst thou, Kingswear, etc., nor Hew
Forbear to give the great Nassau his due.
The ghost that heretofore did haunt thy Downs
And with loud clamours fright the neighbouring clowns,
Is silent.

I can't shed much light on it, except to speculate that "clowns" might be a misprint for "towns". The "great Nassau" also refers to William of Orange, who came from the Dutch House of Orange-Nassau. Nassau being the name of the capital of the Bahamas is no etymological coincidence; the original Nassau was in what's now Germany, but Nassau, Bahamas (originally Charles Town) was named in honour of William III of Orange. The word "Orange" is itself is etymologically interesting; the Principality of Orange is nothing to do with oranges, but derives its name from the original Roman settlement Arausio (apparently named after a Celtic water god); the name of the fruit comes from an entirely different Dravidian root similar to the Sanskrit naranga. By around the 13th century, the two words had both mutated to "orange" and an etymological fusion was pretty inevitable. This was cemented by the Protestant House of Orange adopting orange heraldic motifis and orange-coloured regalia, hence Orangemen.

Avant died in 1696: Mary Jones' 1875 The History of Chudleigh, Devon: with a description of the surrounding scenery, seats, families, etc mentions

From an inscription on a stone in the chancel of the church to the memory of Philip Avant, died Nov. 28, 1696, and described as the only son of Stephen "Gymnasiarchae Chudliensis," it has been conjectured that the said Stephen was master of Chudleigh Grammar School.

Fraser Halle's 1851 Letters, historical and botanical, relating chiefly to places in the Vale of Teign: and particularly to Chudleigh, Lustleigh, Canonteign, and Bovey-Tracey also mentions the inscription, confirming that this was the same Philip Avant, "Vic. de Salcombe".

It's a pity more of his 48-page Torbaia digna Camaenis isn't online; however, a copy resides in the Devon and Exeter Institution. I'm quite tempted to go and transcribe it one day.