Ever wonder why hot dogs are called hot dogs? And, what do they have to do with funerals? I know the answers to these questions, and now you will too, thanks to the 18th Century Graveyard School. Or, not quite—because in Graveyard Poetry, as it often goes in life, there are always more questions than answers, and we’ll probably never know the complete truth.
[Heads up: This is the third installment of my series on Graveyard Poetry. For the first entry,
go here.]
If you look up the word hot dog, you’ll find that people used to make jokes about the meat that was on sale at the local butcher shop, saying that the cheapskate butcher filled his sausages with dog meat. Hah hah, very funny. But if you look up the dogwood plant, which is sort of a bush that grows in clusters of thin hard stalks, you’ll find that people used to cut down these dogwood stalks and sharpen them into skewers for cooking, which they called dags, because back in the 1600s the word “dag” meant stab or pierce, as in, “Verily I will dag thee with this dagger.”
So the butcher’s errand boy or whoever would come home with a stack of these dogwood switches and they’d sharpen them into long wooden daggers. Then they’d stick sausages on the end and hold ‘em over the fire—and there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: hot dags. The term is referring to the stick, not the meat.
…Maybe. We can’t be sure, because there’s no record of anybody ever writing down the word “dagwood.” But then again, there probably weren’t a lot of lettered scholars double-majoring in butchery and horticulture back in those days.
At any rate, plants that give us these tough-yet-flexible strips, such as the dogwood and the willow, are sometimes called “osier.” (Pronounce it however you want, I don’t care). And osier is what wicker is made of, as in wicker furniture, wicker baskets… and wicker caskets.
That’s right, caskets or coffins made out of those thin strips of dogwood or willow were apparently cheaper than other more-durable options. That’s the imagery our graveyard poet is conjuring up in the opening line of tonight’s episode of:
18th Century Graveyard Poetry
Episode 3: Parnell’s Night-Piece on Death, Verses 3-6.
Thomas Parnell
1718 (published posthumously in 1722)
Keep in mind that our narrator, unable to focus on his studies, is out for a midnight stroll in a graveyard beside a moonlit church. We’re about to pass through three distinct zones in the cemetery. Something that you’ll notice, besides the wicker caskets, is that the grammar here all backwards is.
Those Graves, with bending Osier bound,
That nameless heave the crumbled Ground, 30
Quick to the glancing Thought disclose
Where Toil and Poverty repose.
As you can see, this is one long sentence with the parts moved around. Rebuilding the structure might be kind of fun, let me give it a go:
"Quick to the glancing thought, those nameless graves, bound with bending osier that heaves the crumbled ground, disclose where toil and poverty repose."
And in plain modern English:
“Judging by these unmarked half-exposed wicker boxes, I’d say we found the working-class stiffs.”
Moving on, it will help to know that the word “Sett” was just a smarmy way of writing “set.” So translating “Sett of Friends” to millennial slang we might get “squad.”
The flat smooth Stones that bear a Name,
The Chissels slender help to Fame,
(Which e'er our Sett of Friends decay 35
Their frequent Steps may wear away.)
A middle Race of Mortals own,
Men, half ambitious, all unknown.
The grammar here is harder to parse, the meaning more ambiguous, but the idea is that middle-class folks can afford to have their names engraved on tombstones. The stone-carvers give the deceased their names, but the surviving friends literally damage the names with their frequent visits, touching and even (perhaps inadvertently) stepping on the graves. (Remember that smaller gravestones are placed directly into the ground, facing upwards.) Unfortunately these people will never be known outside of their own little circles.
The Marble Tombs that rise on high,
Whose Dead in vaulted Arches lye, 40
Whose Pillars swell with sculptur'd Stones,
Arms, Angels, Epitaphs and Bones,
These (all the poor Remains of State)
Adorn the Rich, or praise the Great;
Who while on Earth in Fame they live, 45
Are sensless of the Fame they give.
I think we all know who that was about. Class struggle will be a common thread running throughout graveyard poetry, the idea being that despite their fame and fortune, ultimately members of the ruling class will end up just like everybody else: dead.
Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades,
The bursting Earth unveils the Shades!
All slow, and wan, and wrap'd with Shrouds,
They rise in visionary Crouds, 50
And all with sober Accent cry,
Think, Mortal, what it is to dye.
Cynthia was an ancient Greek name for the Moon, and anyone who’s played Magic: The Gathering knows that Shades are ghosts. So now we’re getting to the good stuff: Rising up from the crumbling ground, a crowd of ghosts begs us to contemplate the meaning of death—and in so doing, to re-evaluate the ways we live our lives.
So think of that, next time you eat a hot dog.
And stick around for the next installment of my series on 18th Century Graveyard Poetry, where we’ll work our way through the ending of Parnell’s Night-Piece on Death, in which the very personage of Death Itself comes forth to berate all humankind over the glorification of war and murder.
By the way, if you’re as interested in old words as I am, you can’t go wrong with the website Etymology Online, found at http://www.etymonline.com. And no, they aren’t paying me to say this.
See you next time,
-Jon
