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daenerysstrangersagain · 4 years

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The Logistics of Dragons

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Or the Ecological Disaster that is The Dragon and the Strategic Implications

Now, what got me thinking about stuff like this, were the quotes regarding Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar and their size. We are told that at least two of the dragons could fit a horse in their mouths, and that Balerion could fit something even larger, perhaps a Mammoth or Elephant. Let's assume that horse are bite sized for most fullygrown untampered or restrained dragons. From the somewhat poor portrayals of the dragons in the TV series, the dragons seem to have a very large head to belly ratio but even so, thats freaking huge. And while I'm tempted to say that because they are reptilian that there metabolism would be slowish, but they fly and breathe fire, so I doubt that.

For that reason, I'm pretty sure that multiple meals per day is the normal for a fully grown dragon. And since I doubt they were using small breeds of horses for the description, we can use working breeds and war horses. So 3/4 ton to just over a ton. Which would put daily meals, assuming 2 meals a day, at 2 tons. Not 2 tons of meat, like just the muscles of a creature, but 2 tons of flesh and bone. I'd say that being dragons, the belly fire and internal heat help melt and sterilize bones and intestinal waste of a creature. Anyways, that's two horses. Or a few dozen sheep, or lots of boar, you get the picture. Now its not too bad if you only have half a dozen or fewer dragons, like the five that Aenar originally had, that's only 10 tons of meat a day. Or 20 horses.

Yeah at only five dragons, we're talking about 140 horses a week. Or to put that another way, 7,280 horses a year. Or the equivalent in meaty flesh, which comes out to 3,640 tons a year. That's absolutely monstrous......if they primarily eat off the land. Which excluding Drogon's behavior, I don't think dragons do or even prefer. I would think they prefer fish and other water creatures. What comes to mind is the scene from the first American Godzilla, where the beast was consuming entire ship fulls of fish in the movie. But I think the reason Drogon and his siblings eat like they do is that unlike the other Valyrian dragons, they were barely exposed to the open sea at all, only fishing in the ocean maybe once in their early lives, and the rest being land based and fed from land creatures.

Back to the the numbers and the intentionally false presumption for the sake of demonstration.

So literally thousands of horses, or tens of thousands of sheep and smaller animal over the course of a year. For merely five dragons. Now the dragons of the Dance of the Dragons were somewhat smaller, but for the purpose of demonstration let's assume that every named dragon eats horses by the mouthful. I believe there were 19 Dragons in the Dance? Let's go by the startling numbers.

19 dragons would consume 38 tons of flesh, daily. That's 266 tons of flesh a week. Or about 12 Semi Trucks a week. Or 532 adult horses a week. That's 13,832 tons of flesh a year, or 27,664 adult horses. To put that into perspective, 19 dragons could have eaten Genghis Khan's Mongol Army out of their horses in 3 years or less. And this is all being supplied by pre-industrial agriculture and herding. Even with the entirety of Westeros, they would be eating faster than the food could be replenished.

No wonder the Dothraki had to wait until the fall of Valyria to do anything, Valyrian Dragons could have eaten the horses into extinction if they wanted to! And of course, the most horrifying bit of all? I'm assuming that dragons are satisfied with just two mouthfuls a day. How many mouthfuls a day can you, personally, eat? Or any other animal?! DUN DUN DUUUUUN!

Luckily, GRRM seems to have thought of this. If you notice, the former shepherds don't actually expand that deeply into continental Essos and definitely don't expand that fast. They would know, the hard way, how voracious dragons are and how quickly they consume entire flocks of sheep and herds of cattle when they have the mood, thus developing an early caution regarding the power of dragons, and learning important environmental and conservation lessons. Again the hardest way. They have little desire to usurp and conquer the Rhoyne river system from the Rhoynish, a river system that appears to be nearly as powerful as the Mississippi system in terms of navigability and reach. And they didn't want possesion of it for themselves. Because it was too far away from the open sea, and thus too far away from the primary source to keeping dragons fed without everyone starving. What the Valyrian Empire did do, was establish sea ports and cities real close to the sea, all along the coasts. Their dragons are the source of their power, but also a logistical weight around their neck, because in order to meet the dietary requirements, its either consume from the bounty of the ocean or strip the lands bare of anything larger than a dog. So from the peninsula of Valyria, the old empire was more heavily bound to the sea ports and shores than the British Empire. Even more powerful in relative terms to everyone else, to the extreme, but also hobbled and restricted to that same extreme.

Their behavior in their two most notable wars demonstrate this. Against the Ghiscari Empire, after slaughtering their armies time and again, they took only a small portion of land for themselves, and were largely content with leaving Slaver's Bay cities intact and subservient. Qaath and Sarnor were left to be because they only had one port between them and were apparently non-hostile to boot. But the Valyrians did expand west and slightly up the Rhoyne, in addition to their port cities across Western Essos. An interesting note is that during this time, they were trading, and may have in fact founded, Old Town. Either way, Old Town and what would become Dorne are no strangers to dragons and Dragonlords.

However, while they didn't actually want to bountiful Rhoyne and all its lands, bringing and feeding dragons so far from the sea would be intensely devastating to the local ecology. Even just a few of them. The Rhoyne river system looks to be nearly as widespread and navigable as the Mississippi River System, so it would provide the water for massive amounts of food and trade from top to bottom, and with Rhoynish Water Wizards, it may have been engineered here and there for irrigation and fish farming. I would suspect that the Rhoyne valleys at the time were replete with artificial lakes and ponds for fish farming and such, with dams and berths everywhere. But a few millennia without maintenance and time would have drained and reshaped the entire system to something more natural, but still fertile. Without the Valyrians, the Rhoynish would have been a super power, based a vast and fertile continental heartland, supplying an endless source of manpower and riches. Similar to the Reach. But bigger. Way fucking bigger and with a deeper pool of manpower to boot. The 250,000 men raised was less likely an upper limit of how many were available, and more likely a limit based on transportation. And while it is portrayed as genocidally devastating to the point of forcing a mass migration, its not the numbers that really mattered. Its who was lost and how many. I'd guess they brought the majority of the most powerful and skilled water wizards with them to the battle, possibly all but a few in the entire empire, and their loss combined with the loss of all the others, would have been irreplaceable to a civilization dependent on them. Oh and the implied threat of extinction if they don't get stepping. Fast.

Shame that they thought they could use war as a diplomatic tool against a Valyrian colony. But what choice did they have with the dragons fucking shit up for the Southern most outpost of the Rhoynish?

The Valyrians were a brutal Slavocracy, conservationist tendencies aside, and I doubt they were particularly discriminating about where the slaves came from and had an endless thirst for them, for they were few in number and had an atrocious birth rate. I mean holy shit, several thousand years, and not a single colony majority Valyrian. Not a one, so in order for their port cities to even function, they needed slaves. An endless supply of them, from the planters of the field, even down to middle managers, the Valyrians at their height would have had a slave to free man ratio closer to Haiti than Rome, and with their dragons largely feeding from the seas, this vast number of slaves required feeding. The Volantenes moving up the Rhoyne would have rang massive alarm bells among the Rhoynish, who had most likely been supplying food to the ports and outpost of the Empire. Were they next for the yoke?

The Valyrian Freehold is perhaps the most brutally efficient and invincible Slavocracy of fiction. Dragons supplying the vast majority of military might that only those with particular genetics can even use, so they have no need for a large foot contingent. Endless amounts slaves supplying all essential labor that an ethnic Valyrian doesn't care to do, not a drop of pity for the enslaved among those who could do anything about it, which means no society upending war over it. No rival capable of fighting the full might of the Valyrian host, so no outside force can intervene effectively. The only weakness they had was keeping their dragons fed, which is the only thing, aside from their own conservationist tendencies, that prevented them from over-running Westeros and Essos a mere millennia into their reign. They had no choice in establishing a mostly by the sea empire if they wanted to keep using their dragons.

#westeros.org #dragons #meta #food

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rassilon-imprimatur · 6 years

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The Master, Surviving Elemental

As she got nearer, Miranda got a good look at him. He was of average height, and looked very smart in his black suit and pressed shirt. He had neat black hair, greying at the temples and a small, pointed beard. But that wasn’t what Miranda concentrated on – she was struck by his eyes. They were black, but they burned into her, like he could read her mind. Like black lasers.

He smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Hello, Miranda, my dear. I am the Headmaster.”

[...]

The Doctor was disappointed to find himself in a perfectly ordinary Headmaster’s Office, or at least something doing a very good impression of one.

A large oil painting of the current Headmaster in academic robes glowered down at him as he began a quick search of the room. There was a grandfather clock in one corner… but there was something odd about it. Something wrong with the way it had been made – it didn’t look quite finished.

Opening the desk he found a glowing sphere, the size of a cricket ball. Space twisted around it.

‘A dimensional stabiliser,’ the Doctor heard himself saying. It was responsible for moving the office into the fifth dimension. No-one native to Earth could possibly enter the room while it was active.

He picked it up, found it responding to his thoughts. He could hear it talking to him. Yapping, like a loyal dog.

The Doctor asked it to go into standby mode, then slipped it into his pocket.

He quickly found a set of official school notebooks, like registers. But they were full of mathematics symbols, what looked like Greek writing, and a number of very interesting drawings. One looked remarkably like a scale diagram of a black hole. Another was a spiral, like a five dimensional whirlpool.

The Doctor scowled – he knew he should be able to read this, but he couldn’t. If it had been Greek, it wouldn’t be a problem. And he wasn’t sure he could ever decipher it – very few of the symbols were repeated. If it was an alphabet, it was a huge one.

‘It’s called the omegabet,’ a voice told him. ‘It has a million letters…’

‘…but only five vowels,’ the Doctor completed.

‘So you do remember?’

The Doctor frowned. ‘No…’

Then he turned. The Headmaster was there, covering him with what looked for all the world like a laser pistol. ‘

I knew you’d track me down, my dear Doctor. But you’re in the same boat, aren’t you?’

‘Boat?’

‘Where are you from, Doctor?’

‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor admitted.

‘Not this planet, though?’

‘No…’

‘Neither am I. We’re from the same place. Something’s happened to time. Something’s happened to… to…’ The headmaster squeezed his eyes together, tried to concentrate. ‘Wherever we came from, it’s gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘It never existed. That’s my theory.’

‘Of course it existed. Otherwise, how could we exist?’ ‘It’s paradoxical, it’s mindbending and upsetting. But… it’s exciting. Liberating. Full of potential. We can push things further, how far only depends on us.’

The Doctor looked at this strange man. He wasn’t a tall man, but there was something about him – his bearing, those eyes. He was a born leader.

‘And where do you want to “push things”?’ the Doctor asked, already suspecting what the answer would be.

‘If we don’t take control, someone else will,’ the headmaster insisted. ‘This is a perfect opportunity.’

[...]

The Doctor was edging back towards the door.

‘We can’t do this alone. We have to recruit other… other people like us. We’d also need to root ourselves into this reality. I don’t know how yet, but we don’t have long. I don’t think there are many of us left. It’s why you’re special. It’s why your daughter is so special.’

‘Miranda’s adopted, she’s -’

‘I know who Miranda is, Doctor. I know the truth. There’s no need to hide it from me. I know.’

The Doctor tapped his lip. Until the Headmaster had mentioned Miranda this had been a game. But he was threatening her, now.

‘And you’d be our leader?’

‘We would have a universe, Doctor. A whole universe. The whole of space and time. Even I don’t think I could rule all that alone. We’d need an army, and what better place to raise an army than here on Earth?’

‘Then we’d divide up the universe between the three of us?’

‘Four. There’s another.’

‘Another time traveller?’

‘Someone else like us.’

‘But you said yourself that you don’t know what we are.’ ‘Precisely. But I know what I am not. I’m not a slave, not a servant, not a subject. I was born to rule, as were you. It’s our birthright, Doctor.’

- “The School of Doom,” Lance Parkin

Standing before the iron door – a still definitively and solidly locked iron door – is a dapper, sardonic-looking man dressed in a pristine dinner suit. His jet-black hair is slicked neatly back with oil. He is leaning, nonchalantly, on a silver-handled cane.

‘Who. . . ?’ Anji’s voice falters with a curious mixture of relief and trepidation. ‘What. . . ?’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ says the man. ‘You know perfectly well who I am. In a certain sense, anyway. And as to what I did. . . ’ He blows on the nails of his free hand. ‘You know how it is when you have any number of pets. Familiars, chimeras, creatures of hideous, diabolical and slitheringly unutterable evil, that sort of thing. One has to let them out occasionally. One has to keep them fed. It’s a bit of pain, sometimes, to tell you the truth, but it is rather expected of one.’

Abruptly he becomes brisk. ‘Well, I really should be going, for the moment. You’re swimming busily for the surface, I can see, but you still have a way to go yet. Never does to rush these things.’

He essays a formal little bow and shoots out a well-manicured hand. Anji has no time to lurch back in alarm before she realises that he is merely proffering her (as if for her inspection) a small pasteboard card. Still in something of a daze, she takes it.

‘Feel free to drop by,’ the man says. ‘When you feel up to it. Any time at all.’

With that, he lays his cane over his shoulder, slides past her and strolls out of the alley, whistling a complicated little tune that Anji has never heard in her life, and will never hear again – though it strikes a chord somewhere inside her, some part of herself vaguely recalling troop trains and soldiers packing problems into their old kit bags and smiling, smiling, smiling.

- The Slow Empire, Dave Stone

According to Scarlette’s journal – though not Lisa-Beth’s – during the fight one of the male denizens of the tavern edged his way through the violent crowds and quietly seated himself at Scarlette’s table. Though no name is given for the man, Scarlette says that he was ‘a gentleman of distinguished nature’, clean-shaven and dark-haired, and at first she thought he might have been in the market for business. She does note, however, that on the lapel of his black clothing he wore a rosette in blue-and-white. It would have marked him out as a member of the Opposition, but nonetheless he was quite gracious and civil.

[...]

Assembling a picture out of all the accounts, he’s described as a cleanshaved, dark-haired man in distinguished middle age, handsome in some respects even though to some of the British witnesses he came across as ‘swarthy and difficult to place’. He was slim and well turned out, and he made an impression on the island by always dressing in tight, straightforward clothing of prim black. . . apart from the rosette of blue and white which he wore on his lapel. He would often be seen simply standing in the vicinity of the other guests, hands folded behind his back, observing intently without becoming involved in any of the visitors’ many disputes. Whenever people would ask each other about him, in muted whispers, the dark-haired gentleman would simply bow his head to them. His accent was English, although some said they detected a little Latin in his features.

[...]

DOCTOR: Have we met? I’m sorry, my memory isn’t what it was. I shed most of it a long time ago.

THE MAN: Met? Oh, I’d say so. Believe it or not, we used to know each other quite well.

DOCTOR [with recognition?]: Good grief.

THE MAN: Ah. Spoken like the man I used to know.

DOCTOR: You’ve lost that terrible beard, then.

THE MAN: But of course. I have whatever it is you lack. And vice versa. Have you forgotten? Oh, I’m so sorry. You’ve forgotten everything, haven’t you? [Irony?]

DOCTOR: You’re behind all this? No, of course you’re not. Not your style at all.

THE MAN: Here, Doctor, I’m simply a guest. Thank you for the invitation, by the way. Most touching. Admittedly, I would have preferred something more personal. . .

DOCTOR: And would you mind telling me what that rosette’s meant to be?

THE MAN: A sign of my allegiance to the great Whig cause. I’ve become an exponent of democracy.

DOCTOR: Why does that not sound convincing?

THE MAN: My dear Doctor, I’m telling you the truth. I told you. I have to offer the universe whatever you can’t. If you’ve decided to take on the colours of your new sweetheart, then it’s up to me to side with the Opposition. Perhaps one day you’ll consider destroying the universe. Then I’ll be in the awkward position of saving it.

DOCTOR: You don’t expect me to believe that, surely?

THE MAN: Your friend in red came closest to the truth. What does she call you, again? Her ‘elemental champion’? Very perceptive of her. There are only four of us left now, you know. Four of us in all of the universe. We have certain standards to uphold.

DOCTOR: Then I suppose you’re going to say that you don’t want to kill me.

THE MAN: It’s hardly the time for that any more, wouldn’t you agree? While our kind still walked tall, we had the whole of space and time as our battlefield. These days, I’m afraid our little duels would be utterly meaningless. You’ve met Sabbath, of course.

DOCTOR: Yes. He reminds me of you. I think.

THE MAN: How interesting. He reminds me of you. Our replacement, Doctor. The new breed. All our kind in one, and a mere human being, too. We can hardly return to our old routines, with his kind in charge. Can we?

DOCTOR: I’m sick. I’m helpless. You must know that.

THE MAN: I rather think that’s my point. Do your duty Doctor. However tedious it may be. Save the universe. Become King of Time. Go after that irritating black object in the sky. Whatever you think is necessary. Once you’ve done that. . . well, perhaps the universe will be ready for us again, who can say? Then we can set about destroying each other properly. Otherwise, I’m afraid this is hardly our arena any more.

- The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, Lawrence Miles

‘There were four of us left, apparently. You’d be number five.’

Marnal rounded on him. ‘Left after what?’

The Doctor hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Some disaster. I’ve picked up hints, seen the odd vision, but I was never able to follow up on anything.’

Marnal leant over him, sensing a moment of weakness. ‘Weren’t you, now? Not terribly enterprising of you. So you have no idea?’

The Doctor shrugged apologetically. Marnal raised his hand, and the Doctor thought he was going to hit him. Instead, Marnal touched the Doctor’s temple with a fingertip.

‘Contact.’

For the briefest moment, the Doctor saw himself as Marnal saw him. Then back to vice versa. Then rapid alternations between the two viewpoints. It was dizzying.

A man with a sallow face and small, pointed black beard, who wore a blue rosette; a young woman with long blonde hair in an extraordinary piece of haute couture; a tall man with a bent nose wearing a cravat and holding a pair of dice; the Doctor himself with close-cropped hair, sitting on an ornate throne, a newborn baby girl in his arms.

- The Gallifrey Chronicles, Lance Parkin

#Eighth Doctor Adventures #The Slow Empire #The Adventuress of Henrietta Street #The School of Doom #The Gallifrey Chronicles #Lance Parkin #Lawrence Miles #Dave Stone #Anji Kapoor #The Master #The man with the rosette #long post

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bangkokjacknews · 3 years

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BOLLOCKS is a good old-fashioned English word

Bollocks is a good old Anglo-Saxon word of Germanic origin, which is nowadays used mainly as a relatively mild swearword but technically just means ‘testicles’ (see also avocado, knacker). In both senses of the word, it somehow only sounds correct when said with a British accent. Perhaps surprisingly, the word appears in John Wycliffe’s 1382 translation of the Bible, in which we learn that: ‘Al beeste that kitt and taken a wey the ballokes is, ye shulen not offre to the Lord.’ Which translates into modern English as: ‘Any beast that has had its bollocks taken away should not be offered as a sacrifice to the Lord.’ By the eighteenth century, ‘bollocks’ and its close cousin ‘ballocks’ had somehow become slang terms for ‘clergyman’, suggesting that what some of them preached from the pulpit perhaps led to the nickname. One of the most versatile old words in the English language, ‘bollocks’ can also be used as an expression of dismay or frustration – ‘Oh, bollocks’ – or a term of appreciation: ‘That really is the bollocks.’ The word’s most exciting role in its very long history, however, was at the centre of a notorious court case in relatively recent times. In 1977, the Sex Pistols ruffled a few establishment feathers with the release of their debut punk rock album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. The band and the manager of a Nottingham record shop who had dared to display the album in his window were immediately sued. The high-profile defence lawyer John Mortimer QC, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, successfully demonstrated that the word ‘bollocks’ had for centuries been in common use as slang for a ‘priest’, and that it usually simply meant ‘nonsense’. The court was forced to publicly concede that the word was not to be considered obscene. Although admittedly other words for ‘nonsense’ may not have had quite the same ring. Bloomers are a big old pair of lady’s pants that are worn more for comfort than for sex appeal, especially the baggy ones. But, believe it or not, there was a time when a pair of bloomers was considered high fashion. Bloomers were invented in the mid-nineteenth century by Elizabeth Smith Miller (1822–1911) of New York state, with the intention of preserving a lady’s modesty while engaged in activities such as horse riding and cycling. Worn below the skirt, these pantaloons were long baggy pants, based on traditional Turkish trousers, which narrowed to a cuff at the ankle. They took a while to catch on and were widely ridiculed by the press, although when prominent women’s rights campaigner Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818–94) started wearing them in the early 1850s, bloomers – as they became known after she enthused about them in her magazine The Lily – grew in popularity. On a related note, the Suffragettes took their name from the word ‘suffrage’, ‘the right to vote’, which comes from the Latin suffragium, ‘voting tablet’. The history of the word barracking and indeed its definition have become confused over the years, which is hardly surprising since both Australia and Northern Ireland stake a claim to it. We in the civilised English-speaking world understand the word ‘barrack’ to mean ‘jeer’ or ‘make rude comments in an attempt to interrupt’, but in the land down under, where the word actually originated in the 1870s, it means the exact opposite: ‘to cheer and support’. The story goes that, in the mid-nineteenth century, supporters of the Victoria Barracks team at South Melbourne Cricket Ground would be greeted with howls and jeers of ‘Here come the barrackers’ by opposition supporters. It would seem that Australian sports fans regarded heckling the opposition as a show of support for their own team, which is how ‘barrack’ ended up meaning quite the opposite down under to what it does here, where barracking the opposition is just plain old barracking the opposition. A separate Australian-based suggestion for the etymology of ‘barrack’ is that it comes from the aborigine barak, ‘banter’, although the first recorded use of the word in print is in the sense of ‘jeering and interrupting’. In a popular 1878 publication called The Pilgrim: A Sensational Weekly Pamphlet, printed in Sydney, we find: ‘Douglas mumbled over a petition for the edification of the assembled roughs and larrikins, but was greeted with noisy insults and cries of “cheese your barracking and shut up”.’ (Larrikin – or ‘little Larry’ – incidentally, used to mean ‘mischievous youth’ in Australia and New Zealand, but has since taken on the meaning of thug.) Meanwhile, in Northern Irish dialect, ‘to barrack’ is ‘to brag’, which is close enough to the modern meaning to be a credible alternative. Rigmarole, denoting a tediously complex procedure, is an unusual-sounding word from the mid-eighteenth century, while the origin of the term goes back well over 700 years. It dates to 1296, when the Scottish noblemen signed deeds of loyalty to King Edward I of England. They all fixed their seals to the deeds, which collectively became known as the Ragman Roll or Ragman’s Roll, either in reference to the ribbons (or ‘rags’) attached to some of the seals or to an earlier census collector called Rageman or Ragemund. Around the same time, ragman was a slang word for the devil (see ragamuffin), which may well have been the Scots’ nickname for the hated English king. Either way, there is little doubt that the process of getting the Scots to sign deeds of loyalty to England, and subsequently having to assemble the deeds into one forty-foot-long document for the king, was quite some rigmarole. I have often wondered why we call a level of a building a storey when it has nothing to do with the telling of tales, so I was interested to stumble across an explanation that links the two. ‘Story’, of course, means a ‘narrative of fictitious events’, and it is derived from the ancient Greek historia, ‘account of events’. Historia is also the root of our ‘history’, meaning ‘factual account’, from which we can infer that the difference between ‘history’ and ‘story’ is the difference between fact and fiction. Following this so far? Now for the tricky bit. Back in the fourteenth century, before the Caxton printing press changed everything, the word ‘story’ was used in architecture in the sense that stained-glass windows and stone carvings or sculptures on the outsides of buildings carried stories in their theme. The more rows of pictures on a building, the more stories it was able to tell. This kind of architectural story gradually developed into the more mundane ‘storey’ of modern times: an entire level of a building. I’m glad I found that out, as I can now view my local multi-storey car park with a whole new respect. To ride roughshod over someone is to treat them harshly and without consideration for their feelings. Horses that are roughshod have the nails protruding from their shoes, something that used to be done deliberately in order to provide extra grip in wet or icy conditions. But to be trampled on or kicked by a roughshod horse is a little uncomfortable, to say the least. In the eighteenth century, it was common for cavalry soldiers from many countries to ensure their horses were roughshod or had other sharp objects attached to their hoofs, the idea being that the horses would cut and damage enemy mounts with their sharp shoes. The practice ultimately resulted in horses doing more damage to themselves than to others, and it was quickly phased out. A horse that is cantering is moving at a speed somewhere between a trot and a gallop. And the word is only ever used in association with horses; dogs and cats never canter, and neither do lions and elephants. When the Anglo-Saxons invaded the southern part of England in the fifth century, taking over cities and towns previously occupied by the retreating Roman Empire, they gave the major town of Durovernum Cantiacorum a new name, Cantwaraburg, which meant ‘the town of the men of Kent’. It has since become known as Canterbury. Kent switched from paganism to Christianity at the end of the sixth century, largely thanks to a Benedictine monk called Augustine (later St Augustine), who had been sent over by Pope Gregory I for that very purpose, and Canterbury’s place as the seat of the Christian church in England was established. (There is a point to all of this, I promise.) A few centuries later, in 1170, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas à Becket was hacked to death at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral by four renegade knights from Henry II’s court, who had supposedly taken the king’s throwaway comment ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ quite literally. The cathedral became a shrine to the holy martyr almost immediately, with pilgrims travelling from all over England to visit the scene of the crime. One of the most famous pilgrimages to Canterbury, of course, is documented in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written at the end of the fourteenth century. The relaxed pace suitable for long-distance riding that would have been adopted by the Wife of Bath, the Knight and the many other real-life pilgrims later became known as a ‘Canterbury gallop’. The Sport of Kings (horse racing to you and me) became incredibly popular in Britain in the early eighteenth century, by which stage ‘Canterbury gallop’ was an established phrase. It was used outside the sport – carriage drivers, for instance, always travelled at a Canterbury gallop – but within the horse-racing community the expression was gradually abbreviated to ‘Canterbury’ and then ‘canter’, the word we still use today. I doubt this is quite what Pope Gregory I had in mind, however, when he sent Augustine over to Kent. The thoroughbred horses that are nowadays used in racing are cross-breeds of English mares and Arab horses imported to England around the turn of the eighteenth century. At the same time as horse racing was growing popular in England, it was also becoming something of a national pastime in Ireland, and the first steeplechase – literally a race from one church to another – was arranged in County Cork in 1752. The race was the result of a wager between Cornelius O’Callaghan and Edmund Blake as to which man owned the better horse, and it was run cross-country over the four miles between Buttevant and Doneraile. The modern steeplechase course has fences, ditches and other obstacles scattered along it to make it appear ‘cross-country’, but it doesn’t replicate what supposedly happened at the end of the very first race: the winner rode straight into the church at Doneraile and down the aisle, just as the vicar was holding a funeral service. – Albert Jack Albert Jack AUDIOBOOKS available for download here

English Word History, Origins & Meanings Buy Now Audio Books Other Platforms Assorted eBooks Read the full article

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