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Ah, ****ing. Where would we be without it? As an verb, noun or adjective it can always be relied on to add a spicy little chilli to any social occasion, and to this day it remains the only adjective permissable for use by the Regular Army and the Irish. It's been an old friend for the best part of a millennium.
However it's not an English word at all. It arrived, fully formed and glorious, from the area that is now the Flanders regions of Belgium, and the fact that I've bothered to write about it should give readers a clue that the tale of its arrival is not a dull one. Nope, this one takes in xenophobic rioting, Church-organised prostitution and some of the most entertaining street names in Britain. This tale starts back in the long and slightly boring reign of Henry III (1216- 1272AD).
England at that time was, to be brutally frank, a rather backwards little ****-hole. The Norman kings had successfully wrecked the high culture of the Anglo-Saxon kings and hadn't done a particularly good job at getting the place organised. It was peasant agrarianism all the way, only relieved by outbreaks of famine, war and devastating outbreaks of "The Sweats". However Henry III, the Plantagenet king fancied himself as a rather brighter spark, and he had plans to kick off a trade economy- so in England's first stab at organised immigration he invited thousands of Flemish weavers to migrate to England and spread their skills.
They came over and settled for one whole month. I repeat, one whole month. And then King Henry banished the lot of them. I probably should have mentioned that he was what you might call "impulsive".
Fast-forward 60 years now, and Edward III is on the throne. When he wasn't COMPLETELY RAPING THE HOLY **** OUT OF THE FRENCH at Crecy he felt like inviting the Flemish over again. And, proving they really had learned nothing, over they came again in their thousands. Cue xenophobic riots headed by London's apprentices.
(Digression time- London's apprentices were a deeply feared mob, liable to start rioting at the drop of any given hat. This was largely due to the fact that the terms of their employment banned them from marrying or using prostitutes, and when you couple that with the stance that masturbation was considered both a mortal sin and a criminal offence at the time, the apprentices were a huge mob of UNBELIEVABLY ANGRY young men with dangerously blue balls. Go look up "Evil May Day" on Wiki for a taster.)
So the Flemish are over again, and ye gods the apprentices are pissed off about these foreigners. With riots breaking out, King Edward caved in to the demands of the English guilds and temporarily banned the Flemish from working as weavers. This meant Edward now was left wondering what to do with all these unemployed foreign saps, but fortunately the church had a solution.
Back-track to 1161AD. It's Henry II on the throne at this time, and the Church (as the Church was wont to do) felt itself in need of rather more good, hard cash. In a statute passed by King Henry, the Bishop of Winchester was gifted several rows of housing in Southwark, just outside the city of London, to be used by "light-tayled huswifes", and with that stroke of a quill England's very first state-sanctioned brothels were established- the infamous Southwark Stews. Officially these were bath-houses and steam-baths, but absolutely nobody was fooled, and "Stew" swiftly became synonymous with "brothel". I realise it might seem a little ...odd...to see the Church acting as the nation's biggest pimp, but the medieval Catholic church was nothing if not pragmatic.
You can probably see where this one's heading. Yes, there were suddenly a lot of Flemish ladies needing to make ends meet, so within weeks most of London's prostitutes were Flemish, and they proved to be damned good at it, eventually exporting their trade around the country. To the Flemish, in England, was to probably be filled chock-full with commercialised spooge. Until 1546 anyway, when fear of syphilis (which to medieval rakes was a cross between leprosy and SuperAIDS, not the trifling affliction of the post-penicillin era) resulted in Henry VIII shutting them all down for good.
However by that point the mark had been made. Streets called "Grope****e Lane" and "**** Street" (don't believe those who swear it was about ****-fighting) were springing up all over England, alongside "Slut's Hole" and many other wonderfully ribald variations. And the most durable addition of all was that word. Lovely, lovely "****ing" which dropped intact from Flemish into Middle English and cheered it up considerably.
Thanks Belgium. Let no man say you're boring again.
However it's not an English word at all. It arrived, fully formed and glorious, from the area that is now the Flanders regions of Belgium, and the fact that I've bothered to write about it should give readers a clue that the tale of its arrival is not a dull one. Nope, this one takes in xenophobic rioting, Church-organised prostitution and some of the most entertaining street names in Britain. This tale starts back in the long and slightly boring reign of Henry III (1216- 1272AD).
England at that time was, to be brutally frank, a rather backwards little ****-hole. The Norman kings had successfully wrecked the high culture of the Anglo-Saxon kings and hadn't done a particularly good job at getting the place organised. It was peasant agrarianism all the way, only relieved by outbreaks of famine, war and devastating outbreaks of "The Sweats". However Henry III, the Plantagenet king fancied himself as a rather brighter spark, and he had plans to kick off a trade economy- so in England's first stab at organised immigration he invited thousands of Flemish weavers to migrate to England and spread their skills.
They came over and settled for one whole month. I repeat, one whole month. And then King Henry banished the lot of them. I probably should have mentioned that he was what you might call "impulsive".
Fast-forward 60 years now, and Edward III is on the throne. When he wasn't COMPLETELY RAPING THE HOLY **** OUT OF THE FRENCH at Crecy he felt like inviting the Flemish over again. And, proving they really had learned nothing, over they came again in their thousands. Cue xenophobic riots headed by London's apprentices.
(Digression time- London's apprentices were a deeply feared mob, liable to start rioting at the drop of any given hat. This was largely due to the fact that the terms of their employment banned them from marrying or using prostitutes, and when you couple that with the stance that masturbation was considered both a mortal sin and a criminal offence at the time, the apprentices were a huge mob of UNBELIEVABLY ANGRY young men with dangerously blue balls. Go look up "Evil May Day" on Wiki for a taster.)
So the Flemish are over again, and ye gods the apprentices are pissed off about these foreigners. With riots breaking out, King Edward caved in to the demands of the English guilds and temporarily banned the Flemish from working as weavers. This meant Edward now was left wondering what to do with all these unemployed foreign saps, but fortunately the church had a solution.
Back-track to 1161AD. It's Henry II on the throne at this time, and the Church (as the Church was wont to do) felt itself in need of rather more good, hard cash. In a statute passed by King Henry, the Bishop of Winchester was gifted several rows of housing in Southwark, just outside the city of London, to be used by "light-tayled huswifes", and with that stroke of a quill England's very first state-sanctioned brothels were established- the infamous Southwark Stews. Officially these were bath-houses and steam-baths, but absolutely nobody was fooled, and "Stew" swiftly became synonymous with "brothel". I realise it might seem a little ...odd...to see the Church acting as the nation's biggest pimp, but the medieval Catholic church was nothing if not pragmatic.
You can probably see where this one's heading. Yes, there were suddenly a lot of Flemish ladies needing to make ends meet, so within weeks most of London's prostitutes were Flemish, and they proved to be damned good at it, eventually exporting their trade around the country. To the Flemish, in England, was to probably be filled chock-full with commercialised spooge. Until 1546 anyway, when fear of syphilis (which to medieval rakes was a cross between leprosy and SuperAIDS, not the trifling affliction of the post-penicillin era) resulted in Henry VIII shutting them all down for good.
However by that point the mark had been made. Streets called "Grope****e Lane" and "**** Street" (don't believe those who swear it was about ****-fighting) were springing up all over England, alongside "Slut's Hole" and many other wonderfully ribald variations. And the most durable addition of all was that word. Lovely, lovely "****ing" which dropped intact from Flemish into Middle English and cheered it up considerably.
Thanks Belgium. Let no man say you're boring again.
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