Black arm bands

 

Black arm bands

Queen Victoria 1819-1901

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

When Queen Victoria’s beloved husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861, she dictated that her servants should wear black arm bands for eight years.  She went into deep mourning for forty years, wearing no other colour than black, though in the latter years with touches of white.

However, black was a traditional mourning colour in Ancient Rome (753BC – 476 AD), though the dark-coloured toga, or toga pulla, may have been any dark colour. In any case, it would have been a strong contrast to normal clothing, and an outward sign of mourning, worn to honour the dead. The mourning period of nine days ended with a feast.

The wearing of dark clothing to show sorrow and respect became an accepted tradition in Europe. For those who could not afford a complete set of dark clothes for a period of mourning, a black arm band was acceptable. It was usually worn on the left upper arm, closest to the heart.

Although Queen Victoria wore widow’s weeds for the rest of her life, she requested that her funeral should be white. Her body was dressed in her white wedding gown and veil, and her coffin was covered with a gold-embroidered white satin pall and was drawn by white horses. She also asked that the usual black drapes should be replaced with purple, a symbol both of mourning and imperial rank.

The majority of the crowd watching the procession wore black.

Though it is still customary for people to wear dark clothing at funerals, increasingly there are occasions when the family asks that bright colours or certain items should be worn, in celebration of the dead person’s life.

It passed me by

 

It passed me by

I came across an expression I’ve never heard before; this is not in itself unusual, but, since it’s been in use since the 1970s, I’m surprised not to have encountered it. Perhaps it’s because I’m neither Scottish nor Irish. Maybe some of you are familiar with it and possibly even have used it.

‘Has the cat died?’ or ‘Is your cat deid?’ are Scottish or Irish expressions used to mock someone wearing trousers that are too short, that is, well above the ankle.

‘Half-mast parallels’ is a phrase which amused me, and is another with which I’m unfamiliar. It refers to short, narrow trousers. Maybe they are considered to be at ‘half-mast,’ like flags that are lowered in mourning.

Another suggestion is that a person might raise their trouser legs to stop mice running up them, because the cats, being ‘deid,’ were not available to dispatch them.

A further explanation is that poor people could not afford to buy black arm bands, which were worn as a sign of mourning, so cut off the ends of old trousers.

Incidentally, when I was growing up, in the Dark Ages, it was not uncommon to see people, usually men, wearing black arm bands. The last time I saw anyone wearing them was at the late Queen’s funeral, when many of the attendant participants wore black bands on their left arms.