The Wise Book of Whys (3 page)

Why Rock ‘n’ Roll
Music is Called Rock ‘n’ Roll

The word "roll" has been used since the Middle-Ages to refer to, among other things, having sex. (e.g. "Let's go for a roll in the hay" "Rolling under the sheets"). The word "rock," again among other things, has been used since at least the seventeenth century as a term meaning "shake or disturb." By the nineteenth century, this had also spread to black gospel singers using "rock" to refer to being shaken in a spiritual sense, as in spiritual rapture (rocked).

By the early twentieth
century "rock" had evolved somewhat to being used as a slang term by black Americans referring to dancing to music with a strong beat, principally what we know of today as rhythm and blues -at the time called "Race Music" or "Race Records.”

Around this same time, these two terms, "rock" and "roll
," began being used together, forming a double entendre, typically referring to very suggestive or scandalous dancing as well as simply having sex. One example of this can be found in the 1922 song
My Man Rocks Me, with One Steady Roll
.

Another early reference to the term "rock and roll" was in a 1935 J. Russel Robinson lyric from Henry "Red" Allen's
Get Rhythm in Your Feet and Music in Your Soul,
“If Satan starts to hound you, commence to rock and roll. Get rhythm in your feet and music in your soul...”

This finally brings us to why Rock ‘n’ Roll music is called that. In the early 1950s, a Cleveland, Ohio disk jockey named Alan Freed on his show
The Moondog Rock & Roll House Party
, played early forms of Rock ‘n’ Roll and specifically called the music by that name, a phrase he was previously familiar with from Race Records and songs such as
Rock and Rolling Mama
(1939) and
Rock and Roll
(there were three songs named this in the late 1940s).

Freed was encouraged to call this mix of music "Rock and Roll" by his sponsor, record store owner Leo Mintz, wh
o was trying to boost sales on Race Records by getting white shoppers to buy them. Race Records weren't very popular at the time among white people, but by re-branding the music "Rock and Roll", it quickly became extremely popular among teenagers of all ethnicities.

Why Dalmatians are the Traditional Dog of Choice at Firestations

One of the most effective fir
e-fighting tools in the mid-eighteenth century was the steam pumper -a machine that consisted of a boiler, which was able to use steam to force water out of hoses and onto a fire. The fire brigade’s horse-drawn carriages, loaded with the machine, would be hitched up, and the vehicle would tear off down the road.

When fire fighters were racing off to fight the flames, the
y didn’t have time to slow down for all the pedestrians using the road, which is where the Dalmatians came in.

Besides being known for forming strong bonds with horses, in the early 1700s, it was observed that Dalmatians w
ere perfectly suited for traveling long distances. As stated by the Dalmatian Club of America, the English at this time felt that Dalmatians had the "strength, vitality, fortitude and size to keep running along under the carriage for hundreds of miles."

When the travelers rested for the night, the dogs were also useful for standing guard over the horses and the people’s belongings. It soon became popular among English aristocrats to have Dalmatians run alongside their carriages
, and the dogs even became something of a symbol of social status -the more you had running alongside your carriage, the wealthier you must be.

This brings us back to Dalmatians and
the horse-drawn fire carriages. Because of the dogs’ reputation and the long-standing practice of using them this way, they were the dog of choice for running along with fire carriages.

With their strength and stamina, they typically didn’t have any trouble keeping up w
ith the carriages even when the carriages were flying down the roads at high speeds. The Dalmatian would scare away anything that might spook the horses, as well as serve as the first “siren,” with the Dalmatians’ bark alerting pedestrians on the road that the fire brigade was on its way and to move off the street.

While the firemen unloaded their equipment and rushed off to put the fire out, their trusty Dalmatians would stay with the cart, keeping the horses calm and guarding the firemen’s belongings. Not only that, but once they were back at the fire house, the Dalmatian
s were often trained to sniff out and kill rats and other vermin.

When the much more efficient motorized fire trucks were created, there were no longer horses for Dalmatians to keep company and no need for them to run ahead of the trucks to alert people that the fire brigade was coming—there were sirens for that now. Their usefulness spent, Dalmatians might have vanished from fire stations altogether. Instead, they turned into fire station mascots, particularly popular when firefighters go around teaching kids about fire safety
. Of course, at this point any dog could be used, and sometimes that's the case, but given the long-standing tradition of using Dalmatians, it seems likely they will remain the dog of choice at many fire stations for the foreseeable future.

Why “Hank” is Short for “Henry”

This is thought to be thanks to the one time popular suffix “-kin
,” which is also how “Jack” originally derived from the name “John.” Specifically, the suffix “-kin,” simply indicated “little,” so Robin Hood’s “Little John” would have been aptly named “Jockin,” which later gave rise to “Jenkin,” then “Jakin,” and then “Jack,” with the former forms literally meaning “Little John”.

Similarly, we have “Little Henry” becoming “Henkin
,” which later gave rise to “Hankin,” which was then shortened to just “Hank.”

Why
We Say “o’Clock”

The practice of saying “o’clock” is simply a remnant of simpler times when clocks weren’t very prevalent and people told time by a variety of means, depending on where they were and what references were available.

Generally, of course, the Sun was used as a reference point, with solar time being slightly differ
ent than clock time. Clocks divide the time evenly, whereas, by solar time, hour lengths vary somewhat based on a variety of factors, like what season it is.

Thus, to distinguish the fact that one was referencing a clock’s time, rather than something like
a sundial, as early as the fourteenth century one would say something like, “It is six of the clock,” which later got slurred down to “six o’clock” sometime around the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. In those centuries, it was also somewhat common to just drop the “o’” altogether and just say something like “six clock.”

Using the form of “o’clock” particularly increased in
popularity around the eighteenth century when it became common to do a similar slurring in the names of many things such as “Will-o’-the wisp” from “Will of the wisp” (stemming from a legend of an evil blacksmith named Will Smith, with “wisp” meaning “torch”) and “Jack-o’-lantern” from “Jack of the lantern” (which originally just meant “man of the lantern” with “Jack,” at the time, being the generic “any man” name. Later, either this or the Irish legend of “Stingy Jack” got this name transferred to referring to carved pumpkins with lit candles inside).

While today with clocks being ubiquitous and few
people, if anybody, telling direct time by the Sun, it isn’t necessary in most cases to specify we are referencing time from clocks, but the practice of saying “o’clock” has stuck around anyway.

Why Bathing was Uncommon in Medieval Europe

Before the Middle Ages, public baths were very common, as was the general public regularly taking time to bathe, in one way or another. Even during the fourth and fifth centuries, Christian authorities allowed people to bathe for cleanliness and health, but they condemned attendance to public-bath houses for pleasure and condemned women going to bath-houses that had mixed facilities. Over time, more and more restrictions appeared. Eventually, Christians were prohibited from bathing naked and the church began to disallow an “excessive” indulgence in the habit of bathing. This culminated in the Medieval church authorities proclaiming that public bathing led to immorality, promiscuous sex, and diseases.

This latter “disease” point was very common; it was believed in many parts of Europe that water could carry disease into the body through the pores in the skin. According t
o one medical treaty of the sixteenth century, “Water baths warm the body, but weaken the organism and widen pores. That’s why they can be dangerous and cause different diseases, even death.”

It wasn’t just diseases from the water itself they were worried about
. They also felt that with the pores widened after a bath that this resulted in infections of the air having easier access to the body. Hence, bathing became connected with the spread of diseases, not just immorality.

For most lower-
class citizens, particularly men, the threat of diseases resulted in them completely forgoing bathing. During this time, people tended to restrict their hygienic arrangements to just washing hands, parts of the face, and rinsing their mouths. Washing one’s entire face was thought to be dangerous as it was believed to cause catarrh (inflammation of the mucous membranes in the airways or cavities of the body) and weaken the eyesight, so even this face washing was infrequent.

On the other hand, rather than completely forgo bathing, m
embers of the upper classes tended to cut their full body bathing habits to around a few times per year, striking a balance between the risk of acquiring a disease from the bath vs. body stench.

This wasn’t always the case though
. As one Russian ambassador to France noted, “His Majesty [Louis XIV] stunk like a wild animal.” Russians were not so finicky about bathing and tended to bathe fairly regularly, relatively speaking, generally at least once a month. Because of this, they were considered perverts by many Europeans. King Louis XIV’s stench came from the fact that his physicians advised him to bathe as infrequently as possible to maintain good health. He also stated he found the act of bathing disturbing. Because of this, he is said to have only bathed twice in his lifetime. Another in this “gruesome two-some” class among the aristocracy was Queen Isabel I of Spain who once confessed that she had taken a bath only twice in her lifetime, when she was first born and when she got married.

To get around the water/disease and sinful nature of bathing, many aristocrats during the Middle Ages replaced bathing with scented rags to rub the body
with and heavy use of perfumes to mask their stench. Men wore small bags with fragrant herbs between the shirt and waistcoat, while women used fragrant powders.

Amazingly, this complete lack of personal hygiene in most of Europe li
ngered until around the md-nineteenth century.