Re: FW: Pluck Yew

[edh@ascc01.ascc.lucent.com (Alfredo el Bufon)]

Poster: edh@ascc01.ascc.lucent.com (Alfredo el Bufon)

> [...] the Battle of Agincourt.  The French, who were overwhelmingly favored
> to win the battle, threatened to cut a certain body part off of all captured
> English soldiers so that they could never fight again.  The English won in a
> major upset and waved the body part in question at the French in defiance.

The way I heard it, the Constable of France ordered that captured Welsh bowmen
would lose the first _two_ fingers of the right hand, and the gesture of
defiance they made after the upset was the V-for-Victory sign later used by
Winston Churchill in WWII.

I noticed on videos of the British SF-comedy TV show "Red Dwarf" that
people (or scutter-robots or holograms) make a two-finger gesture that
looks like a combination of the V-for-Victory (in that it uses two
fingers) and "The Finger" (in that the back of the hand faces the
recipient and the hand is thrust up sharply).  Maybe the extra finger
is just thrown in to make it suitable for television (the way TV
characters say "freakin'" or "friggin'").

-- Alfredo
 
Alfredo el Bufon
Elvegast, Windmaster's Hill, Atlantia
edh@ascc01.ascc.lucent.com
______________________________________

And so it was that latere,
As the Millere toold his tale,
That hire face, at first Iuste gostely,
Toornd a whytere shade of pale.

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