From the Archives – Word with a Past: Two Bits

Somehow this piece from 2013 seems appropriate post-Super Bowl. (New stories are piling up waiting to be written. Soon, I promise.)

One of the favorite cheers for my junior high school's football team went "Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar, all for our team stand up and holler." It made no sense to me, but neither did football. When the rest of the Trojan fans stood up and hollered, I stood up and hollered. When they said glumly in the stands, I sat. By high school, my best friends were all in marching band, I was therefore freed of my weekend football obligation, and I knew that "two bits" meant a quarter--I just didn't know why.

Turns out the phrase has its roots in the Spanish conquest of the Americas and the river of silver that flowed from the mines of Potosí to the royal coffers in Madrid. *

In 1497, their Most Catholic Majesties** Ferdinand and Isabella introduced a new coin into the global economy as part of a general currency reform. The peso (literally "weight") was a heavy silver coin that was worth eight reales***. In Spanish it became known as a peso de ocho ****; in English it was a "piece of eight".

The peso quickly became a global currency. It was relatively pure silver, it was uniform in size and weight, and it had one special characteristic: it could be divided like a pie into eight reales. In English, those reales became known as "bits". Two bits were a quarter of a peso. After the new American Congress based the weight of the American dollar on the peso in 1792*****, "two bits" also referred to a quarter of a dollar.

Now I need to figure out what "Two in ten, let's do it again" means.

*And right back out again to pay for spices, textiles and other luxury goods in the India trade.

** Their phrase, not mine.

***The important word here is EIGHT, not reales. The story would be the same if it were eight goats, eight marbles, or eight football fans.

**** For those of you who never had to count to ten in Spanish, ocho means EIGHT.

***** Choosing to base American currency on the peso rather than the pound was a not-so-subtle way to spit in Great Britain's eye. The peso remained legal tender in the US until the 1850s.

Jumping to Conclusions About Swords

I have just typed the umpteenth variation of this statement: "when this rich undisturbed tomb was first excavated in 1976, the opulent goods and great cache of weapons led the archaeologists to assume the occupant was a male ruler." * The next sentence always begins "but…."

Rather than make rude Freudian jokes about the equation sword =male,** I'm just going to share a few pictures of some of my women warriors armed with various pointy objects.

Need I say more?

*The dictionary tells me that "umpteenth" includes the idea that something has happened so often you are annoyed about it, so I won't bother to tell you that I'm annoyed about the underlying attitude.

**I'm saving the good one for the footnotes.

With the Bayeux Tapestry in the news….

The Bayeux Tapestry is in the news right now. The French President has committed to loaning Britain the tapestry at some time in the future: the equivalent of an InterLibrary Loan between nations. I must admit, when I first heard something about this I was only halfway paying attention. My first reaction was "Oh, no! We're going to Normandy this spring. Will it be gone?" (Moral of the story: listen to the news or turn it off.)

Since then, I've enjoyed some interesting commentary on the tapestry and the possible loan, including this issue of the HistoryExtra podcast and this New Yorker article.

I don't have enough brain width right now to add anything meaningful to the conversation. But you might find this post on the Battle of Hastings, generated after a trip in 2012, useful.

Image courtesy of Antonio Borillo

On October 13, thousands of history enthusiasts from around the world arrived at the British town of Battle to re-enact the Battle of Hastings. (You know, William the Conqueror, 1066, and all that.)

My Own True Love and I weren't there.* Just as well. The weather was cold and wet. The battlefield conditions were so muddy that the organizers called off the second day of the battle because the ground was too muddy for vehicles to get in and out. (I suspect any number of Anglo-Saxon and Norman soldiers at the original battle would have been pleased if someone had called off the second day of the real battle.)

When we arrived, a week later, the battlefield was still a muddy mess. We happily went through the excellent introductory exhibit, learning about Anglo-Saxon England, the Duchy of Normandy, and why William the Bastard of Normandy** thought he had a claim to the English crown.***

Then we headed to the battlefield, audio tours in hand. Before we got to the first point on the tour, we were slipping in the mud on the path. My Own True Love's shoes sprang a leak. Defeated by the mud, we retreated to the café, where we drank coffee, listened to our audio tours, and envied the rubber boots worn by the squadrons of British school children trooping past.

You can get a detailed account of the battle here. These are the elements that struck me:

  • Both sides were descendents of Viking conquerors. The rulers of England were the descendents of King Canute of Denmark. The Normans were Norwegian Vikings with a French accent.
  • The battle was a classic stand off between infantry and armed horseman: immovable object vs. irresistible force.. The English army, on foot, depended on the strength of its shield wall. The Normans enjoyed the mobility of cavalry. William stumbled on a tactic that the Mongols (armed horsemen par excellence) would later use to confound Western armies. When his men panicked and retreated, exultant English troops broke out of formation to pursue them. William saw what was happening and ordered his flank to cut the English off. The pursuers were surrounded and slaughtered.. The first time was an accident. William learned; apparently the English didn't. When William ordered a feigned retreat to replicate his success, the English pursued again and were slaughtered again.
  • The Battle of Hastings changed history, but it wasn't the only time France invaded England. Who knew?

Next stop, Brighton.

* We missed several special history nerd events as we drove along Britain's southeast coast--always a week too late or a week too early. We did, however, manage to arrive in Bath on the day of a major rugby match.

** The name was a legal description, not a character assessment.

*** William was a shirttail relative to Edward the Confessor, whose death in 1066 was the catalyst for the invasion. William's great grandfather was Edward's maternal grandfather.