The Dialogue of Silvynne and Peregrynne contains the earliest literary reference to an identified contemporaneous location, at Philipstown, (now Daingean), County Offally, Ireland;
“Then they passed aloofe for feare of the greate ordynaunce of the forte, which dismayed them mightely, but yet they burned the moste parte of the subberbs withowt the north gate called beggars bush to the hinderance, and undoinge of many an honest subiect.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Christopher Marlowe, County Offaly, Henry Chettle, Henry Porter, Ireland, John Day, Martin Marprelate, Philip Henslowe, Philipstown | No Comments »
There is a reference to Beggars Bush in a version of the popular melody “Yellow Stockings” printed in a dubious Irish anthology. It isn’t possible to be certain about the author of the verse, which is almost certainly a literary creation rather than a collected “folk song”, although one reviewer rather cruelly suggested it was “neither Irish nor literature”. All that can be said is that the author and printers assumed that readers would understand the phrase, which is consistent with the standard literary usage. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Donnybrook, Ireland, Walter Jones, Yellow Stockings, songs | No Comments »
“If ever a grig was spent out of the way he always behaved as if we should all of us go home by beggar’s bush!”
False Colours is set in 1817. The remark is made by the spendthrift dowager mother of the central character, explaining why she did not admit all her borrowing to the family lawyer during her husband’s lifetime. The usage is in the correct historical literary sense. A grig is a farthing.
Author
Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) supported her family by writing on average one crime novel and one historical romance every year from about 1931 until the early 1970s. She is best known for a series of romances set in the Regency period. Although not appreciated, or even reviewed, by critics, for many years she sold more than 100,000 hardbacks annually and her paperbacks were issued in print runs of 500,000.
Her historical novels are sometimes criticised for the amount of incidental detail and colour she included, but not accuracy of it. She had her own reference library and collected period material.
Source
Heyer, G., False Colours, The Bodley Head, London, 1963 (p.21)
Posted: April 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Georgette Heyer, Literary | No Comments »
The story is set around Copthorne on the Surrey/Sussex border. The main character is the daughter of a farm labourer born in 1834. Her father works at a farm called Pickdick. She is sent as a child to scare birds in an oat-field on nearby Beggars Bush farm where she sees a vision and becomes a preacher for the Colgate Brethren. It appears the Colgate Brethren meet at another farm called Horn Reed. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Literary, Sheila Kaye-'Smith, Sussex | No Comments »
“if a man be a tree invers’d, he’s beggar’s bush”
The usage is clearly literary, and consistent with standard literary usage. However, the form is unusual. The concept goes back to Aristotle History of Animals, “Man is an inverted tree, and a tree is an inverted man”. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 24th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Cambridge, John Cleveland, Literary | No Comments »
The poem is from a collection Sea Weeds: Poems Written on Various Occasions, Chiefly During a Naval Life published for Thomas Trotter (1760-1830) who at that time was a surgeon practicing in Newcastle. The text says no more about the “maniac” who is supposed to have cut it down. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 24th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: East Lothian, Thomas Trotter | No Comments »
A play in three acts produced by the White Rose Company in Harrogate during the week beginning Monday 22 April 1940. A proposed London run never took place. The play was never published. A copy of the script was located in November 2007 in the Lord Chamberlain’s Archive at the British Library where it had been submitted for censorship. A revival is scheduled for October 2011. As with the play The Beggars Bush by Fletcher and Massinger the eponymous place is just that, and no more. It appears to have been an attractive name, but no more. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 10th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: James Joyce, Literary, The Play, Victor Canning, W H Auden | No Comments »
XVI. The Hero
He parried every question that they hurled:
“What did the Emperor tell you?” “Not to push.”
“What is the greatest wonder of the world?”
“The bare man Nothing in the Beggar’s Bush.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 10th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: James Joyce, Literary, W H Auden | No Comments »
The text is a popular Irish folk song, adapted from a song written by Glyn Hughes called The Ballad of Seth Davey. Hughes was a musician based in Liverpool in the 1960s. It appears to include a chorus which is older, possibly dating back to the eponymous Seth Davy. At some stage the song has crossed the Irish Sea where the original reference to Bevington Bush has been replaced with Beggars Bush, taken from the place in Dublin. Possibly the place name has travelled in the other direction and was inserted to add Irish colour to the song to make it more attractive to the large Irish population in Liverpool. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 10th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: David King, Dublin, Flogging Molly, The 'Ol Beggars Bush, songs | No Comments »
David King is the singer and songwriter with the Irish/Californian folk-punk band Flogging Molly. He was brought up until the age of 17 years in the Beggars Bush area of Dublin. The song on their album Swagger (2000) tells of this depressed area, which he described in an interview as “a gray and ugly space”. The usage is from the place name, although the tone of the song, in particular the second verse, is consistent with the traditional literary usage. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 10th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: David King, Dublin, Flogging Molly, The 'Ol Beggars Bush, songs | No Comments »
