How the Tulip got its Name

In my previous post I talked about the Spalding Tulip Festival and it reminded me of one of my favourite Tulip stories…

… This is not a botanical story but one of linguistic misunderstanding…

The name Tulip was first applied to the plant by a man called Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq who was a Dutch ambassador in Turkey in the sixteenth century and was also a great floral enthusiast.  One day he was talking to a sultan and he noticed that he was wearing an attractive flower in his head wear.

When I say talking what I mean is that they were communicating with each other in the way that people do when they can’t speak each other’s language with lots of funny faces and wild gesticulations and misunderstandings.

I digress here and give an example from my own experience…

Now, I know that like most English people my grasp of foreign languages is not that good but this experience in the Spanish city of Palencia was quite bizarre.

“Catedral?” I enquired and the poor man (victim) that I had selected just stared back at me with an expressionless face as though I was a visitor from another planet.   So I tried again but this time, remembering that upside down question mark thing at the beginning of the sentence I tried to sound a bit more Spanish, “¿Catedral?” but his face went so blank that I though rigor mortis had set in.  I have to say that Catedral sounds a bit like Cathedral to me so I don’t know why this was so difficult but his solution was to call someone else over who was an obviously educated man who spoke excellent English and with optimism I tried again “¿Catedral?”

To my astonishment he immediately adopted exactly the same blank face as the first man so I tried again in various different accents and voice inflections. “¿Catedral?”  “¿Catedral?”  “¿Catedral?”  Nothing, Nothing, Nothing.  I really cannot understand why this should be so difficult.  If a Spanish man came up to me in Lincoln and asked for directions to the Cathedral – however he might pronounce it, I am fairly sure that I could make out what he was asking for.   Eventually I gave up, added the h sound and just asked in English for directions to the Cathedral and amazingly I immediately made myself understood and the man smiled and said “Ah, Catedral!” which, I am fairly certain is exactly what I said in the first place.

To continue…

Busbecq was curious about the flower and pointed to it and enquired its name.  In Turkey the name of the flower was a Lale (prounced lalay) but the Sultan thought he meant what is the name of his hat so he told him it was a Tulipan or turban and Busbeqc, who completely misunderstood, acquired some bulbs and sent them back to Europe with the information that they were called Tulipa.

A good job that he wasn’t wearing a pork pie hat or tulips would be porkies!

Now, this is important information in case we have another vegetable supply crisis.

All parts of tulips are edible and the bulb can be substituted for onions (although they are a little more expensive and less flavourful). The Dutch ate tulip bulbs in the hard times of World War Two even though the petals have little taste but could be used to garnish a dish, chop a few petals and throw them in a salad, sugar them to decorate a cake or use the entire flower for a fruit bowl, pinching out the pistil and stamen in the middle.

Incidentally the tulip is the national flower of Iran and Turkey where it is still called the Lale.

Bridlington – A Royalist Queen and the English Civil War

I never guessed that there was so much history in Bridlington.  I have discovered Lawrence of Arabia,  Saint John, David Hockney and next up a Royal Queen.

In early 1642 there were the early exchanges of the English Civil War.  King Charles was anxious to secure the port of Hull because (a bit of a surprise this) at the time it had the second largest store of armaments in England after London and was an important trading port with Europe, mostly for Yorkshire wool.  The Parliamentarians were also keen on the weapons and the gunpowder that was stored there and having control of the city denied him and his forces entry.  Their followed a rather ineffective siege and a hasty retreat to York.

Charles needed an alternative supply of munitions so implemented plan B.  He collected up all of the Crown Jewels and asked his wife Queen Henrietta Maria of France to make her way to Holland and France to use them to purchase arms.

The business concluded, the Queen, protected by seven Dutch ships returned to England in February 1643 but unable to use the port of Hull entered the nearby harbour in Bridlington instead.

The Parliamentary navy attempted to  intercept the Queen and her precious cargo and for some time it had been cruising in the North Sea and was then at anchor off Newcastle.  It immediately set off upon receiving intelligence of her arrival but did not gain the bay until the night after the Dutch vessels had entered the port. The Queen disembarked and escaped.

The Parliamentary fleet persisted and  determined on harassing the royalists and accordingly drew their vessels directly opposite to the Quay, on which they commenced a heavy cannonade in hope of firing the ammunition-vessels.

Some of the shots penetrated the house in which the Queen was sheltering and compelled her and the other ladies in her retinue to seek for safety beneath the precipitous banks of the stream which empties itself into the harbour.  The Gypsy Race is a rather sad little stream now, full of litter and abandoned shopping trolleys but four hundred years ago was a full flowing river.  Still is west of Bridlington.

Eventually the Queen escaped the town and made her way to nearby York with the valuable cargo.

Since my Dad bought me an Airfix model kit of Oliver Cromwell in about 1960 I have always been fascinated by the English Civil War.  I think this was a defining moment in my life, I immediately became a Roundhead, a Parliamentarian and later a socialist, on the side of the people fighting against wealth, influence, lies, privilege and injustice.  Just to be clear that is the modern day Conservative Party.

There was also an Airfix model of Charles I with a detachable head but I had Cromwell first.  Strange how something has simple as that can have an influence on a young enquiring mind.

I also blame a book my Dad gave me about British heroes in which Cromwell was included but Charles Stuart wasn’t.

An illustration from the book…

In 2002 the BBC conducted a poll to identify the Greatest Briton and Cromwell came tenth, hard to believe that he could come behind Diana, Princess of Wales  and John Lennon but there you are, such is the nature of these polls and the mentality of the people who vote.  Two thousand years of history and Princess Diana and John Lennon make the top ten.  It leaves me speechless.

I have always considered the English Civil War to be the most important conflict of modern Europe because this was a revolution which provided a blueprint for those that followed, the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The revolution begins with the moderates calling for reasonable and restrained reform for the exclusive benefit of the aforementioned wealthy and privileged who wanted even more power and wealth.  The problem with moderates of course is that they are on the whole reasonable people but by beginning a process of reform they provide an opportunity  for radicals and agitators to go much further and the English Revolution like those that followed swiftly gained pace.  After the radicals came the extremists, then war, then terror, then regicide.

The English Civil War swept away the supremacy of the Church of England, ended the Divine Right of Kings and embodied the principal of Parliamentary Sovereignty into the English constitution.  It was the end of medieval feudalism and paved the way for the agrarian and industrial revolutions of the next century.  At its most radical period it introduced the principals of socialism and even communism through the power of the New Model Army and the social ambitions of the Diggers and the Levellers, both proto-socialist political movements.

It is a shame that King Charles had his head cut off but even after sixty years or so of being given that Airfix model I confess that I remain a loyal Roundhead rather than a Cavalier.

Queen Henrietta Maria was exiled to France in 1649 upon the execution of Charles I but returned in 1660 upon the Restoration.  She didn’t stay long, returned to France and died nine years later at the age of fifty-nine from an accidental overdose of opiates that she was taking for pain relief in respect of severe bronchitis.  Another accidental Bridlington death.

A statue commemorating the English Civil War in the town of Newark in Nottinghamshire…

A to Z of Postcards – Z is for Zuiderzee in the Netherlands

Z is always a tricky one in an A to Z.  I thought about it, racked my brains and eventually remembered that in 1979 or thereabouts I went to Amsterdam and the weekend included an excursion to Volendam on the Zuiderzee.

Volendam is a popular tourist attraction in the Netherlands, well-known for its fleet of old fishing boats, pretty gabled wooden houses and the traditional clothing still worn by some of the older residents. The women’s costume of Volendam, with its high pointed bonnet, is one of the most recognizable of the Dutch traditional costumes, and is the one most often featured on tourist postcards and calendars.

It is rather like a theme park actually, with little in common with reality,

Read the full story Here…

 

A to Z of Cathedrals – D is for Delft in the Netherlands

The City of Delft in the Netherlands is another of those places that has two Cathedrals.

 

Just why a city that already had one massive church needed another one seems rather odd to me, perhaps the Protestant City officials thought they should have one more than the Roman Catholics whose own massive church stands close by.

Read The Full Story Here…

A to Z of Balconies – Delft in The Netherlands

In December 2012 I took the Hull to Rotterdam ferry with my son and visited the charming town of Delft.

Read The Full Story Here…

Amsterdam Reflections

On This Day – Amsterdam and The Red Light District

Life is becoming rather like that film ‘Groundhog Day’ as I continue to search through the archives.

On 16th March I was in Amsterdam in the Netherlands…

The Amsterdam Red Light District covers a large area of the oldest part of the city.

The buildings are tall, narrow and crowded together with a distinctive glow of fluorescent red lights above the red-fringed window parlours from behind which the scantily clad ladies of the night invite customers with a rattle on the glass and a come to me pout and provocative pose.

All rather like I imagine Satan’s front room to look like!

Read the Full Story Here…

On This Day – Holland or the Netherlands

I slept well for most of the crossing but woke early with a digestive system groaning under the weight of the unexpected quantity of food that I had forced into it at the eat all you can buffet and then at six o’clock there was a collective early morning alarm call over the ship’s public address system that announced that the ferry would dock in two hours time.

The ship was approaching Europoort which is an area of the Port of Rotterdam, the second largest city in the country, conveniently situated at the mouth of the rivers Rhine and Meuse and a network of delta channels.

Read The Full Story Here…

On This Day – A Mini Cruise to Rotterdam

In December 2012 my son, Jonathan, was due to come and stay with me for a few days and with the weather too bad for golf and with no imminent prospect of improvement I needed alternative plans, other than dynamite, that would get him out of bed by mid-afternoon.

Normally I take a low cost airline flight to a chosen destination but with a bargain price of £23 each for a return ferry crossing from Hull to Rotterdam this was too good an opportunity to miss so 4th December we boarded the Pride of Rotterdam ferry at the Hull docks.

Once on board we wandered around the maze of narrow corridors on deck ten searching among five hundred and forty-six identical looking cabins until we finally found our inner berth shoebox and after we had negotiated sleeping arrangements in a fair and democratic way I bagged the bottom bunk and let Jonathan practice using the flimsy aluminium ladder to get on top.

Read The Full Story Here…

A Cycle Ride Along The Sea Wall

I don’t always feel terribly safe when riding my bike so I don’t do as much cycling as I could but Kim has bought herself a new one so I have had to get mine out from the back of the shed.

Kim has a modern lightweight model with eighteen slick gears and modern features, mine is a twenty-five year old Raleigh with a heavy steel frame and a saddle made out of concrete.  Raleigh bikes were made in Nottingham but you can’t get them anymore, faces with fierce competition from China they ceased production in 2003.

I’d buy a new one to replace it but it still goes nicely and I don’t want a Chinese bike so I’ll wait.  It doesn’t really matter that it is heavy and doesn’t have as many gears because Lincolnshire is mostly flat so cycling doesn’t require a great deal of effort.

Today we avoided the roads that frighten me and used the dedicated cycle paths and pedalled our way to the sea wall about three miles north of where we live.

The sea wall is a stout defensive concrete structure designed to protect the land from potential storm surges and flooding.  It runs for several miles alongside the south side of the Humber Estuary and looks as sturdy and grand as any medieval city fortification.  Rather confusingly it is called the North Bank because it represents the northern boundary of Lincolnshire.  On the north side, in Yorkshire they most likely call it the south bank but I don’t know that for sure.

It was constructed as part of a programme of improved sea defences following the major 1953 North Sea flood that occurred on the night of Saturday 31st January. The deadly floods struck the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom.

A combination of a high spring tide and a severe European windstorm over the North Sea caused a storm tide and the combination of wind, high tide, and low pressure led to a water level of up to twenty feet above normal sea levels and waves overwhelmed sea defences and caused extensive flooding.  In the United Kingdom over three hundred people were killed, farms and properties were destroyed and thousands of animals were drowned.

There were no weather problems today and as we cycled east from Immingham towards Grimsby the water to our left was flat calm and the industrial areas to the north were basking in Spring sunshine.  Tug boats and cargo ships passed by on the estuary.  Absence of rain for almost two months meant the pumping stations that drain the land were idle.

Pumping stations are important in this part of the country where the land is mostly at or barely just above the level of the sea. The roads and lanes have giveaway names like South Marsh Road, North Marsh Road and so on. In the hierarchy of water management, the Environment Agency is responsible for main rivers like the Humber but within their districts organisations called Internal Drainage Boards are responsible for major drainage channels to manage water levels for land management, flood risk, irrigation and environmental protection.

The pumping stations were quiet but the country still needs electricity so the energy plant was humming away and people are still disposing of rubbish so the Council incinerator was clattering flat out. This is probably the place to say that this is not an especially attractive stretch of coastline, mud not sand on one side of the wall and ugly concrete industry on the other.

As we cycled closer to the port of Grimsby we could see in more detail the Dock Tower.  This was a water tower built in 1852 to provide hydraulic lifting power to operate the giant lock gates of the dock. It was designed by a man called James William Wild who had visited Siena in Italy and had so admired the place that he based his design for the Grimsby Dock Tower on the Torre del Mangia tower on the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena city centre.

At three hundred and thirty feet it is the highest building in Lincolnshire, fifty feet higher than either the Boston Stump or Lincoln Cathedral. If it were in Bristol or Newcastle or Manchester then it would be a major tourist attraction but it is in Grimsby and hardly any one visits Grimsby so not many people have seen it.

It isn’t possible to get to the Dock Tower from the west because of the high levels of security at the Docks so we were obliged to turn around and cycle back the way that we had come.  By the time we got back home we had cycled about twelve miles or so.  Kim had a shower. I cracked a can of lager.

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