Last post, I mused upon the origin of the The Blue Bombers name. That leads me to the origin of Spurs’ moniker.
Tottenham Hotspur’s name is a convoluted one. During the 15th century, the Duke of Northumberland owned considerable land in the Tottenham area of north London. The Duke’s son was named Sir Henry Percy, nicknamed Harry Hotspur after his courageous cavalry charges. He is famous for leading one of the rebellions that make up the Wars of the Roses. He appears as a major character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, where he and young Prince Hal do man-to-man combat. Prince Hal kills Hotspur, saves the kingdom and in doing so becomes a man and is ready to become the future Henry V. In reality, Prince Hal would have been about four when Percy was leading his rebellion against Henry IV. He didn’t die at the hands of a Stewie-like Prince Hal, but was killed at the battle of Shrewsbury, where after leading a typical charge he lifted his visor to catch his breath and got an arrow down the throat. Owch.
The Tottenham Cricket Club met and played at Northumberland Park (named after the Duke) and began calling themselves the Hotspur Club. Cricket Club became Football Club and Tottenham Hostspur was born (and not Hotspurs you North American loogins).
Harry Hotspur’s favourite pastime was cockfighting (stop sniggering back row…(didn’t we just use that joke?)) and the team adopted the logo of a spur-wearing cockerel. “Awriight, it’s a chicken but one that could do you up a treat mate, so watchit!”
I also happened to listen to a podcast from the UK last week that was talking about clichés and idioms and the English phrase “as sick as a parrot” came up. Apparently, its birth as a phrase lay with events surrounding Tottenham Hostspur’s past.
In 1908, Tottenham went on a playing tour of Argentina. On the boat ride home, a fancy dress party was organized by the passengers and crew and a couple of Spurs players showed up as Robinson Crusoe and Friday. The captain, to make the outfits more complete, gave Crusoe the ship’s parrot as a prop for his shoulder. As you do.
The outfits were a great success and the parrot became the player’s companion for the rest of the trip. Upon reaching England, the Captain gave the parrot to the team and it lived at White Hart Lane for the next eleven years.
Enter the nomads Arsenal into the story. The Gooners began life in south London as the Royal Arsenal, made up of guys who worked at the army’s Royal Arsenal. Useless as they are, they failed to attract much attention in south London. They changed their name to Woolwich Arsenal to no avail and then the team relocated into Tottenham’s backyard in 1913after being bought by some shifty bastard who changed the name to plain ole Arsenal. World War I decimated many teams and organizations, and so the Football League was reformatted in 1919. Arsenal, who finished sixth in the second division in 1918, basically conned the League into letting them into the new First Division and having Tottenham demoted because it would be impossible to have two teams so close to each other drawing on the same fans. Or so the argument went. The League accepted the Arsenal argument and probably some brown paper envelopes and Tottenham were relegated and the gooners prompted. Thus was born the bitter hatred that continues to this day.
But more interestingly, while all this was going on, Tottenham’s parrot was getting noticeably sicker and died on the very day the Football League announced that Tottenham were going down. The parrot didn’t give a squark about The Great War, but relegation? Thump…he’s dead, he has ceased to be, shuffled off this mortal coil and rung down the choir invisibule…(OK stop). From this episode was born the phrase “As Sick as a Parrot,” meaning worrying about impending doom.
Strange but true.
