Jolly rogers, Jolly boats, Black and Red flags
What I was told by my father who knew everything was that Jolly was French for “young” and was used in naval-speak to mean “previous” and/or “small”. And Roger comes from French meaning “Red”. The black flag was the “good quarter” flag and the red flag was the “no quarter” flag. First you fly the good quarter flag and then if the poor wretches do not surrender, you fly the no quarter flag and destroy their morale. So the black flag is called the “Jolly Roger” because it comes previous to the red flag. Also the “Jolly boat” is the boat that is smaller than the “Long boat”. That’s what my dad said. Arrrr!
I assume you’re talking about this article where Cecil does mention the posible derivation from “joli rouge”.
However, joli means pretty, not young. Jeune means young. I have no idea about the rest, but I know that much.
I suspect Bobby B was reacting to this column: Why are pirates depicted with a parrot on their shoulder? … and p’raps didn’t notice the link at the bottom to the earlier Jolly Roger column.
In any case, Bobby B, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, we’re glad to have you with us!
Roger is a proper French name (Pronounced Row (as in row your boat) jay).
Rouge is the French word for red.
Not doubting your father knew everything… but either he made the story up or was pulling your leg.
Nope. Rouger is French for red thing, pronounced row zher. Naval-speak remember.
I did notice it but even though Jolie means pretty, in common French slang it means young, small, ignorable and other little bitty words, as well as words for emphasis. Like when Oliver Hardy could say “now this is a right jolly mess you’ve gotten us into Stanleigh!”
I’m afraid I need a cite for that. My LaRousse (admittedly the concise edition) has no entry for “rouger”. The closest it has is “rouget” which means “mullet”. “Red thing” would be “chose rouge”.
And it would be [roo zher], not [row zher].
A cite for this would be nice too. Again, my dictionary gives no indication that “joli(e)” means anything other than pretty or nice.
And quoting English slang to prove a point about French slang is less than convincing.
Sorry that the joke of using English to represent French wasn’t clear.
Citations need something better than a dictionary of words without usage.
Anyhow - Jolie Tartuffe = a small braggart Jolie Grangousier = a bit of a glutton
Jolie jolie = literaly Pretty pretty as in Barbarella in translation but what the Tyrant is saying is “a little pretty” or “pretty enough”, it’s slightly disparaging
Jolie pissoir = a very small pisspot. Put the word Jolie after the noun and it mostly means pretty, but sometimes then it means “slight” as in Tartuffe jolie = one who hardly brags at all.
Rouger meaning a red thing is a regular formation. It can be a verb as to make red or a noun as to be red. Same with Blancher, Noirer etc for many adjectives.
You need a dictionary of common French slang and remember that the English got many of their naval words from the Dutch and French. The English didn’t used to be shakes as sailors back once upon a time.
I don’t hang out in this forum much, so I’m not sure if I’m supposed to open another thread for this column, or post in here.
Why no mention of Wikipedia’s explaination for pirates eye patch?
From here: Eyepatch - Wikipedia
Cecil has a limited amount of space, and I helped do a little fact-checking on this. My guess would be that the eyepatch story is (as quoted by Wikipedia, a dubious source if e’er t’was one) a myth. The “critical moments” during battle are don’t involve going belowdecks – you could see the other ship coming hours in advance, and preparation for battle wasn’t immediate and sudden. The extra minutes gained in going up and down would be offset by the loss of depth perception needed in everyday matters like tying knots, climbing rigging, etc. In short, while Mythbusters says that it’s true that alternating an eyepatch helps adjust to the dark quicker, there’s no documentation or logic behind that as rationale for eyepatchs.
Here is a joke about pirates and eye patches, followed by what I believe to be the real reason:
A seaman meets a pirate in a bar, and talk turns to their adventures on the sea. The seaman notes that the pirate has a peg-leg, a hook, and an eye patch.
The seaman asks “So, how did you end up with the peg-leg?”
The pirate replies “We were in a storm at sea, and I was swept overboard into a school of sharks. Just as my men were pulling me out, a shark bit my leg off.”
“Wow!” said the seaman. “What about your hook”?
“Well…”, replied the pirate, “We were boarding an enemy ship and were battling the other sailors with swords. One of the enemy cut my hand off.”
“Incredible!” remarked the seaman. “How did you get the eyepatch”?
“A seagull dropping fell into my eye.”, replied the pirate.
“You lost your eye to a seagull dropping?” the sailor asked increduously.
“Well…”, said the pirate, “…it was my first day with the hook.”
Okay, now on a more serious note. The sailing officers and those elite few who could navigate, which in “those days” meant sighting the stars, planets or one star in particular, i.e. the Sun, probably wore an eye patch because they became blind from sighting the Sun. The noon sight, which uses the sextant to determine one’s direction and distance from a point directly below the sun at its zenith, or highest point in the sky, or local noon, can easily determine latitude, but also longitude, provided there is an accurate clock or chronometer. Of course, it has to be a sunny day as well, and therein may lie the explanation.
Of course that method to also fix longitude was not perfected until after the hey-day of pirates thanks to famed horologist William Harrison (read “Longitude” by Dava Sobel). However, with more complex calculations, one could at least get a good latitude fix with the sun anytime of the day. Using the North Star, or Polaris, which in the northern hemisphere at least, is always close to the actual latitude of the observere because Polaris is fixed about the North Pole, also helped. Close, but not exactly, so in early trans-Atlantic voyages, sailors might choose to “sail down to a latitude” they desired and then just head west to the new world’s coast and hope they arrived near the desired point, but not erally knowing how far off the land they were, because of poor longitude fixes. Similarly, yet vice verse, upon return.
Since it is impossible to sight the Sun during the night-time on Earth for reasons which need no further explanation (we would hope), this means that while looking through the sextant, one would be peering at the solar orb with one eye open. Unless proper filters were used, eventually the retina of the observer would be, well, compromised, to put it in the proper light. Of course, the Sun could be sighted from another heavenly body at night, or other heavenly bodies could be sighted from Earth at night. Could this be one reason why Pirates wore eye patches? This may explain why at least the skilled navigators might wear an eye patch. I think the rest is probably fantasy and Hollywood lore.
Moshe Dayan wore an eye patch due to an injury in battle and The Hathaway Man, well, obviously he was an old-money, blue-blooded, yachty navigator with improper filters. Remember the old witch in the movie Big Fish? If she lifted her eye patch and let you look in her eye, you could see your own death. Paul Foer, Annapolis, MD :smack: :dubious:
Actually, Baron George Wrangell had 20/20 vision.
Your explanation doesn’t ring true to one who has done celestial navigation “in anger.”
It is true that taking the altitude of the sun at local apparent noon can give your latitude, and that noting the time of this contributes to a calculation of longitude. But there is no need to burn out your eye doing so - you simply use a filter (in the old days, a smoked piece of glass) so your view of the sun is non-hazardous. Independent of the issue of eye damage, without this it would scarcely be possible to accurately “bring the sun down to the horizon” and thus impossible to benefit from the exercise.
Beyond this, where is the evidence that sailing officers routinely became blind? Capt. Cook certainly took many thousands of sights during his long career, yet I know of no evidence his vision was damaged (and contemporary portraits of him strongly suggest it wasn’t).
