The Black Boy II

[Pooneil]

Coat-of-arms - the good old heraldic shield and emblems.

[piwacket]

Coat-of-arms - the good old heraldic shield and emblems.

Ah- so what Liz is saying is that the pub shiuld show the ‘imagined’ Earl’s Arms and be displayed in the signage?

[piwacket]

Coat-of-arms - the good old heraldic shield and emblems.

Ah- so what Liz is saying is that the pub shiuld show the ‘imagined’ Earl’s Arms and should be displayed in the signage?

Edit - well yes, sort of http://www.berkshirehistory.com/villages/shinfield.html - from the 4th paragraph onwards...
There’s still a Ducketts Lane just before the big roundabout - so just maybe(!) it could be him.

Earl,of Fingal coat of arms https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingal
Oh look, it’s got blackbirds on it!
The Motto(s): Flúirse Talaimh is Mara (Irish)
"Abundance of Land and Sea"
- yes well that’s very appropriate isn’t it !

[Pooneil]

Coat-of-arms - the good old heraldic shield and emblems.

Ah- so what Liz is saying is that the pub should display the ‘imagined’ Earl’s Arms should be displayed in the signage?

Edit - well yes, sort of http://www.berkshirehistory.com/villages/shinfield.html - from the 4th paragraph onwards...
There’s still a Ducketts Lane just before the big roundabout - so just maybe(!) it could be him.

Earl,of Finagal(l) coat of arms https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingal
Oh look, it’s got blackbirds on it!

That’s no blackbird, it's a raven http://www.heraldry-wiki.com/heraldrywiki/wiki/Fingal

[piwacket]

Ah- so what Liz is saying is that the pub should display the ‘imagined’ Earl’s Arms should be displayed in the signage?

That’s no blackbird, that's a raven http://www.heraldry-wiki.com/heraldrywiki/wiki/Fingal

Edit - well yes, sort of http://www.berkshirehistory.com/villages/shinfield.html - from the 4th paragraph onwards...
There’s still a Ducketts Lane just before the big roundabout - so just maybe(!) it could be him.

Earl,of Finagal(l) coat of arms https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingal
Oh look, it’s got blackbirds on it!
The Motto(s): Flúirse Talaimh is Mara (Irish)
"Abundance of Land and Sea"
- yes well that’s very appropriate isn’t it !

I just said it was black bird not which one! (should have put a space between the words...

[Pooneil]

That’s no blackbird, that's a raven http://www.heraldry-wiki.com/heraldrywiki/wiki/Fingal

Edit - well yes, sort of http://www.berkshirehistory.com/villages/shinfield.html - from the 4th paragraph onwards...
There’s still a Ducketts Lane just before the big roundabout - so just maybe(!) it could be him.

Earl,of Finagal(l) coat of arms https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingal
Oh look, it’s got blackbirds on it!
The Motto(s): Flúirse Talaimh is Mara (Irish)
"Abundance of Land and Sea"
- yes well that’s very appropriate isn’t it !

I just said it was black bird not which one! (should have put a space between the words...

At the risk of being po-faced about it, there is no longstanding history of either "blackbird" or "black bird" being a term of racist abuse, unlike "black boy". (In fact McCartney wrote the Beatles song of the former name to highlight racial tensions in the American South).

[piwacket]

At the risk of being po-faced about it, there is no longstanding history of either "blackbird" or "black bird" being a term of racist abuse, unlike "black boy". (In fact McCartney wrote the Beatles song of the former name to highlight racial tensions in the American South).

Which is more or less what I said at the beginning of this topic - 4th post - so Black Horse, as it is now displayed, would have been the answer.
But probably not seen as being pro-active enough !

[Pooneil]

Agreed on that; it's bloody daft. The sign shows a horse, the historical record suggests it's related to blacksmithery - so either The Black Horse or The Blacksmith's Arms would have been fine.

[lizwing]

I meant that usually if an inn was named The Something Arms it was on the land of a nobleman, or named after him for a reason, that’s what I always thought any way.

[piwacket]

I meant that usually if an inn was named The Something Arms it was on the land of a nobleman, or named after him for a reason, that’s what I always thought any way.

Well it sort of is - just not the Earl,of Shinfield.

[KeithW]

I meant that usually if an inn was named The Something Arms it was on the land of a nobleman, or named after him for a reason, that’s what I always thought any way.

I don't think that's necessarily right. 'Arms' often refers to a trade as in Engineers, Anglers, Plasterers, Carpenters, to name but four vanished Reading pubs. The 'arms' would often be those associated with a guild.

But it still makes the Shinfield Arms sort of wrong. I'm Upin Arms about it.

[OLDMAN]

The use of ‘Arms’ in a pub name comes from three (possible) c backgrounds
Yes Keith is correct as mostly following a local ‘trade’ name but before that it was based on heraldic coats of arms, usually noticeable by following a person or areas name
However according to some researchers it can also be linked with chartable background as a corruption on the word ‘Alms’ so for example a pub near Alms Houses may be given a name which reflects on that

[OLDMAN]

I see the decision has been made.............
https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/readi ... HCSfBm1DWs

[piwacket]

OM - that’s what the last few posts were about.

The Shinfield Arms according to the local rag.

[THC]

"Pub changes name; racism doesn't disappear" is the headline we won't see.

Too much of a food pub these days for me, very few places to sit inside if not eating their expensive food.

[KeithW]

"Pub changes name; racism doesn't disappear" is the headline we won't see.

"Pub changes name - tiny step in the right direction" would be more accurate, but again, not a headline.

Daily Mail, Monday : "Pub name change causes cancer!"

Daily Mail, Tuesday : "Pub name change cures cancer!"

[chris_j_wood]

At the risk of being po-faced about it, there is no longstanding history of either "blackbird" or "black bird" being a term of racist abuse ...

Not sure about that. Blackbirding is certainly a term I have heard used for the process of enslavement, or similar. I think mostly used in the context of Australia using dubiously legal practices to recruit Pacific Islanders to work on plantations, as in the link below, but I'm pretty sure I've seen it used in the context of the people in Africa who did the actual enslavement and shipping of slaves to North America and the Caribbean.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-17/ ... rs/8860754

[Mayfield]

I see Priti Patel disagrees with ‘taking the knee’....

[Pooneil]

I see Priti Patel disagrees with ‘taking the knee’....

I usually find that on any vaguely contentious view, the quickest way to work out my position is to assume the opposite of PP's. (one glaring exception being that she was in favour of much tighter covid-prevention restrictions on incoming air passengers from the start, unlike BoJo the Dithersome.

[Pooneil]

At the risk of being po-faced about it, there is no longstanding history of either "blackbird" or "black bird" being a term of racist abuse ...

Not sure about that. Blackbirding is certainly a term I have heard used for the process of enslavement, or similar. I think mostly used in the context of Australia using dubiously legal practices to recruit Pacific Islanders to work on plantations, as in the link below, but I'm pretty sure I've seen it used in the context of the people in Africa who did the actual enslavement and shipping of slaves to North America and the Caribbean.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-17/ ... rs/8860754

I indeed bow to your superior knowledge; it does primarily seem to be a term used for abuse of Pacific Islanders, which is perhaps why I was unaware of it, not being a geography/history that I've done much reading about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbirding

[piwacket]

https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/readi ... k-19829105

[Mayfield]

Did you read that Pi ?

[piwacket]

Did you read that Pi ?

Yes - why?

[Mayfield]

I got a bit lost when he talked about golliwogs when some one said they remembered a chimney sweep being in the sign......

[piwacket]

I got a bit lost when he talked about golliwogs when some one said they remembered a chimney sweep being in the sign......

I think he was grasping at straws lost in his rhetoric, in condemning people who were trying to find some logic in changing the name. Golliwogs of course have been condemned for years now. I’ve still got mine - well my son’s actually bought when he was a toddler. I certainly never associated it with active racism. As a little child I also had a black doll (called Topsy) - it was a Doll, and that’s it. In fact when visiting a craft fair in the Cotswolds a year or two ago, there was a Golliwog - and I bought it, with intentions of giving it my grand-daughter, but thought better of it as I decided it may cause her, or my son, problems with other parents -so he sits with the original one

[KeithW]

I may have said this before. (It's me age you know.)

At one time, I guess about 1980, the Black Boy had a horrible wooden statuette inside depicting the worst kind of negro charicature you could imagine. A Black Boy of course. Even in those days, it was disgusting, and said a lot about the landlords and their clientele. Many a snigger, finish the rhyme yourself.

Let's get rid of this filth. The Shinfield Arms is a poor and unimaginitive choice, IMO, but better that what was.

[lizwing]

I have a black teddy bear which was bought for our son, does this make me a racist?

[windrush]

I have a black teddy bear which was bought for our son, does this make me a racist?

I'm sure that many black kids had white dolls or Action Men etc Liz so I wouldn't worry too much!

Pete.

[lizwing]

I actually couldn’t care less Pete I’m going to spend the day thinking of things that I can be offended by on behalf of someone else who wasn’t aware they should be offended.

[KeithW]

I have a black teddy bear which was bought for our son, does this make me a racist?

I don't understand why you would write that, it's nonsensical.

The statuette was a couple or three feet tall from memory, I only saw it once. It wasn't a mantlepiece ornament. I'm sure you would find it offensive.

[piwacket]

I have a black teddy bear which was bought for our son, does this make me a racist?

I don't understand why you would write that, it's nonsensical.

The statuette was a couple or three feet tall from memory, I only saw it once. It wasn't a mantlepiece ornament. I'm sure you would find it offensive.

I remember seeing them outside tobacconists - maybe in Reading, maybe elsewhere - from recollection I seem to remember it being of a native American with head-dress?? In my innocent naivety I think I probably just thought it was something that tobacconists used, but do remember wondering what the connection was? - a bit like the striped pole above a barbers (I then learned what that meant) or the 3 balls outside a pawn shop.... I may well have seen the one at The Black Boy too and again that it was ‘odd’ - but nothing more.... especially as by that time I’d have associated it with a tobacconist.

Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigar_store_Indian

[lizwing]

I merely meant that these days anything with black in the name seems to be offensive to somebody. Which is difficult for us as we live on the corner of Blacksmith’s Lane.

[KeithW]

I merely meant that these days anything with black in the name seems to be offensive to somebody. Which is difficult for us as we live on the corner of Blacksmith’s Lane.

Have you ever really come across anyone who finds "Blacksmith's Lane" offensive?

[Voiceoftreason?]

Will they be likewise changing the name of the roundabout, then?

[piwacket]

Will they be likewise changing the name of the roundabout, then?

Well the bus in Woodley still shows The Thatchers, despite the pub changing its name some years ago to The Waterside ... old local names stick fast