When
I was very young one of my favourite Sunday excursions involved a bus to
Liverpool Pier Head, the ferry across the Mersey and then another bus to Mold
or even beyond to Gwernymynydd in North Wales. The bus
terminus was at a place called Loggerheads.
We
used to walk alongside the river through the Ash woods.
I
was always confused as a child when I heard the phrase ‘they are at loggerheads’
when it was obvious the people concerned were at home in Liverpool! I discovered it didn’t mean that the people were
here in North Wales – it meant they were squabbling or in contention over some
point of principle. So where did the expression
come from and why does the inn sign for The Three Loggerheads appear to only
show two heads?
The
word loggerhead had a number of different meanings and in the seventeenth century
is said to have been a common inn sign (usually in the form of The Three
Loggerheads). Shakespeare used
loggerhead to mean a foolish person; a thickhead or blockhead (a logger being a
block of wood used to hobble a horse).
The
idea behind the sign having only two heads is that the visitor was tricked into
asking where the third loggerhead was.
He would then be told he was it!
A
loggerhead was also a seafaring weapon like a large ladle which was heated and
dipped into boiling tar which was then flicked at another ship, its sails and
its occupants. It may be that the idea
of being at loggerheads came from this weapon.
One
pub called the Loggerheads (at Narrow Marsh, Nottingham) was named for another meaning
of the word – a stout wooden post built into the stern of a whaling boat, to which
the line was attached. Whaling relics
were brought from Hull to Nottingham by bargees using the River Trent.
Nothing to do with the inn sign, but when I searched my computer for pictures at Loggerheads I came across this one I took last time we walked there, in 2005, of the rare Toothwort (Lathraea squamaria).
A parasite growing on the roots of a range of
woody plants, its common name comes from
its fruiting stems, which resemble a row of
teeth.
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Thank you for the explanation, now i won't be silly enough to ask at such a place where the third person on the sign went!
ReplyDeleteHow fascinating, and how apropos. I always enjoy your blog entries very much, but recently the computer in its infinite wisdom wouldn't let me comment on them. So let's hope this one goes through!
ReplyDeleteI' glad to say this comment has worked - I hope your future ones do as well, Carol.
DeleteI have never heard of toothwort though I will now recognise it if I see it It's rather amazing! I have however been to Loggerheads, many years ago, and remember that inn sign. The funny thing is that I would not have ever thought of it if I hadn't seen your post. It's in my memory but it's not one that I have revisited much. I'll think of it a bit more now - it was such a pretty place. I have an idea there might have been a youth hostel nearby - do you know of one?
ReplyDeleteYes, Jenny - it was the first Youth Hostel I ever stayed at - Maeshafyn.
DeleteInteresting, John. I always enjoy learning the origin of some of our unfathomable sayings. Is that GB strolling by the stream?
ReplyDeleteYes - it's GB!
DeleteI knew the expression "to be at loggerheads" but never knew where it came from, so, thank you for explaining!
ReplyDeleteLike you, as a child I would have been confused when people I knew to be at one place would have been said to be "at Loggerheads" :-)
That is a beautiful landscape!
ReplyDeleteAnd interesting information on loggerheads, I hadn't heard of this before.
Oh, that's humorous - the sign being deliberately misleading like that. As for your childhood wonderings, I'm reminded of similar misunderstandings from my own childhood (like not being aware that place-names could be the same altough the locations different - like some relatives living in a town far away but which had the same name as a part of the hometown of my grandparents... So I did not understand why they were always talked of as living far away and why we never saw them!)
ReplyDeleteMany many happy days spent there and walking along the leet.
ReplyDelete