Clownhunt wrote:

chairman_hall wrote:

Clownhunt wrote:hadaway and shite, the lot o'yez! = begone and excrete, all of you

Moreover = I don't agree

bugger! have i been using this innacurately all along?

D

Tom wrote:It's not really a phrase, but I like the one about the war vessel shipwrecked in one of the napoleonic wars. It washed ashore by a small british town. The inhabitants had never seen a frenchman before. The sole survivor was a monkey they had brought aboard for luck.

It is rumored that the town thought the monkey was a frenchman and the "ooo eee ooo" that monkeys make was the French language. The town held a trial and convicted the monkey of being a french spy. He was sentenced to death but kept hoisting himself up on the noose.


I guess you could call that a "row"

Tom wrote:It's not really a phrase, but I like the one about the war vessel shipwrecked in one of the napoleonic wars. It washed ashore by a small british town. The inhabitants had never seen a frenchman before. The sole survivor was a monkey they had brought aboard for luck.

It is rumored that the town thought the monkey was a frenchman and the "ooo eee ooo" that monkeys make was the French language. The town held a trial and convicted the monkey of being a french spy. He was sentenced to death but kept hoisting himself up on the noose.


I guess you could call that a "row"

Hartlepool is famous for allegedly executing a monkey during the Napoleonic Wars. A French ship was wrecked off the town, when the townspeople went to investigate the crew had gone but they found a pet monkey. They assumed that the monkey was a Frenchman, and hanged it as a suspected spy. This story is unconfirmed, and has been told about a number of coastal town in Britain, e.g. Greenock and Mevagissey.

Historians have also pointed to the prior existence of a Scottish folk song called "And the Boddamers hung the Monkey-O". It describes how a monkey survived a shipwreck off the village of Boddam near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire. Because the villagers could only claim salvage rights if there were no survivors from the wreck, they allegedly hanged the monkey. A famous 19th century Geordie comic singer and songwriter named Ned Corvan is said to have been the first to mention the Hartlepool monkey story in his "Monkey Song"; it has been suggested that he adapted the Scottish folk song to give it a north-eastern English flavour. [1]

"Monkey hanger" is a common term of (semi-friendly) abuse aimed at "Poolies", often from bitter footballing rivals Darlington. The mascot of Hartlepool United F.C. is H'Angus the monkey. The man in the monkey costume, Stuart Drummond, stood for the post of Mayor in 2002 as H'angus the monkey, and campaigned on a platform which included free bananas for schoolchildren. To widespread surprise, he won, becoming the first directly-elected Mayor of Hartlepool, winning 7,400 votes with a 52% share of the vote and a turnout of 30%. He was re-elected by a landslide in 2005, winning 16,912 on a turnout of 51% – 10,000 votes more than his nearest rival, the Labour Party candidate.

The monkey legend is also linked with another of the town's sports clubs, Hartlepool Rovers RFC, which uses the hanging monkey as the club logo. On tours it would hang a monkey on the posts of the rugby pitch to spread the story.

In June 2005 a large bone was found washed ashore on Hartlepool beach, which initially was taken as giving credence to the monkey legend. Analysis revealed the bone to be that of a red deer which had died 6,000 years ago.

daniel robert chapman wrote:"Monkey hanger" is a common term of (semi-friendly) abuse aimed at "Poolies", often from bitter footballing rivals Darlington. The mascot of Hartlepool United F.C. is H'Angus the monkey. The man in the monkey costume, Stuart Drummond, stood for the post of Mayor in 2002 as H'angus the monkey, and campaigned on a platform which included free bananas for schoolchildren. To widespread surprise, he won, becoming the first directly-elected Mayor of Hartlepool, winning 7,400 votes with a 52% share of the vote and a turnout of 30%. He was re-elected by a landslide in 2005, winning 16,912 on a turnout of 51% – 10,000 votes more than his nearest rival, the Labour Party candidate.