The Wreck of the Hesperus
All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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When looking less than my best – that is, most of the time – I declare that I look like the Wreck of the Hesperus or that I have been dragged through a hedge backwards.
'The Wreck of the Hesperus' is a narrative poem composed by the American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It tells of a ship’s captain who takes his little daughter on board ship in winter. A crew member warns him of an approaching storm and advises him to put into port but the captain ignores him. As the storm worsens, he lashes his daughter to the mast to save her from being swept overboard, but the ship crashes onto a reef called Norman’s Woe and breaks up. At daybreak the child is seen drifting in the sea, still tied to the mast and dead. Longfellow based his poem on a newspaper account of a shipwreck in 1839.
Being ‘dragged through a hedge backwards’ is an expression that originated in C19th England. It was first recorded in a report of a poultry show in 1857.
‘The Hereford Journal’ stated, ‘In the class for any
distinct breed came a pen of those curious birds the silk fowls, shown by Mr.
Churchill, and a pen of those not less curious the frizzled fowls, sent by the
same gentleman, looking as if they had been drawn through a hedge backwards.’
Frizzled chickens sport feathers that do not lie flat as they
do on most birds, but curl outwards. This gives the chickens a fluffy
appearance. It is thought to have occurred originally by a mutation in the
keratin gene. Keratin is the main structural component of hair, feathers, nails
and so on.
I'll try using the expression, "dragged through a hedge backward," which is new to me, around family and see if anyone notices. It actually could be applied quite aptly to describe the curls in my hair on most days. Longfellow's poem is too sad.
ReplyDeleteLet me know how you get on!
DeleteI use the phrase 'a right dog's dinner' although that's a misuse as it means someone dressed up ostentatiously or over-dressed. I use it to mean 'a right mess'!
ReplyDeletexx
I use that in the same sense, too, Joy, x x
DeleteMy mum often said dragged through a hedge backwards of one of my stepsisters who had untidy hair most of the time.
ReplyDeleteIt's an apt expression, isn't it?
DeleteI knew the poem so long ago. What a sad ending for the captain's daughter.
ReplyDeleteSo dragged through the hedge backwards is perhaps more a sign of good and pure breeding rather than a dishevelled appearance. I'll remember that for my 'off' days.
You could interpret it that way - lateral thinking, Andrew!
DeleteI've heard of being dragged to a hedge backwards ... one of the expressions we have here in Belgium, and particularly in the Antwerp area where I'm from, is that one is feeling/looking like an eleven hour corpse ... I'm not sure of its origin, though. xxx
ReplyDeleteI love the 'eleven hour corpse' - I must remember that! x x
DeleteAlthough I never read the poem, I'm familiar with the saying. My mother used it to describe herself in my growing-up years. It's interesting to know the background of the poem. And dragged through a hedge backwards is a version, I suppose, of what we say here - dragged through a knothole backwards. Something got lost in translation when that one came across the pond. lol I do love that fluffy chicken!
ReplyDeleteBeing dragged through a knothole would be quite difficult :-)
ReplyDelete