Mind your language
`DARLING, have you seen the car keys?' shouted my husband from downstairs. When he says darling in that tone of voice I know he's annoyed with himself but is clutching at the straw that there is an out- side chance of blaming me, bless him.
I suppose darling is the most com- monly used conjugal equivalent of oy, you these days. I have always been amused by Othello calling Desdemona honey like some American advertising executive in a 1950s television comedy.
Now I've come across some advice from William Gouge (1578-1653), whose wife had 13 children. He was the author of Domesticall Duties, and you would think he knew something about the subject. He was also a Puritan cler- gyman (in the Church of England) and on principle opposed the head of the marriage (the husband) getting too chummy with the wife (consistent with begetting 13 children, that is). He there- fore warned wives not to call their hus- bands 'Sweet, Sweeting, Sweetheart, Heart, Love, Joy or Dear', let alone `Duck, Chick or Pigsnie'.
Pigsnie must have been a tempting endearment, though. It is strange that its literal meaning, `pig's eye', has never been found in mediaeval literature, though its figurative use is fairly common. Alternatives included pinkeny and bird's- nye. You will note that these all include the prosthetic n, but I don't think we need worry too much about that.
I don't know how much spouses thought of birds or pigs when they addressed their beloveds as their eyes. Peeping eyes are a commonplace of the childish or erotic vocabulary of endear- ment, and are moreover often applied to flowers (pinkeny John to the pansy, bird's-eye to the primula or germander speedwell [Veronica, as my daughter has just pointed out as she leaves a coffee- mug ring on my neat manuscript], and pink itself to the flower that the French call oeillet).
Those fish-fingers with the bird's-eye rebus, though, were actually called after their inventor, Clarence Birdseye (1886-1956), a Labrador fur-trader and patentee of the recoilless harpoon gun. I wonder what Mrs Birdseye called him.
Dot Wordsworth
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