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An Irishman’s Diary

The Irish Times October 17, 2007 | Frank McNally For a word of medieval origin, “tawdry” is still doing brisk business. It may not be quite as popular as “shoddy”, but it’s well ahead of other synonyms for goods that are showy, cheap, or counterfeit – such as “gimcrack”. A search for “tawdry” in The Irish Times archive shows an impressive 20 appearances this year alone, on subjects ranging from the Fyffe’s banana case to the EU constitutional treaty, via drug use in the Tour de France.

But the adjective really comes into its own today, October 17th. This was traditionally the feast-day of St Audrey, who has achieved a dubious immortality through the contraction of her title. The modern meaning of the word is all the more unfortunate given the circumstances in which the poor woman died. According to the story, she succumbed to a throat tumour in AD 679 having, with Christian fortitude, accepted the condition as punishment of her youthful taste for jewellery.

The venerable Bede quotes her thus: “I know that I deservedly bear the weight of my sickness on my neck, for I remember, when I was very young, I bore there the needless weight of jewels; and therefore I believe the Divine goodness would have me endure the pain in my neck, that I may be absolved from the guilt of my needless levity, having now, instead of gold and precious stones, a red swelling and burning.” Somehow, posterity missed the moral of the story. Instead, traders at the annual fair of St Audrey – on the Isle of Ely – saw a sales opportunity. The event became synonymous with the sale of cheap jewellery and lace, especially as neckwear. The saint’s title became telescoped and the rest was etymological history. go to web site dress long black

Shakespeare records at least one moment in the word’s long fall from grace. Here is Mopsa, a shepherdess in The Winter’s Tale, nagging her lover “Clown”. Mopsa: “Come, you promis’d me a tawdry lace and a pair of sweet gloves.” Clown: “Have I not told thee how I was cozen’d by the way, and lost all my money?” The best-known Audrey of modern times, ironically, had one of the most decorated necks in cinema history. As Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Audrey Hepburn cut an iconic image with her little black dress, long black gloves, and multiple-string pearl necklace. The look might have been showy, but it certainly wasn’t cheap. When a version of her dress (there were three made for the film) was auctioned by Christies in London last year, it raised pound(s)467,000 sterling. Mind you, all the proceeds went to charity, so St Audrey could hardly have complained. this web site dress long black

Incidentally, as a description for low-quality merchandise, tawdry’s main rival – “shoddy” – also has a background in the clothing industry. It seems originally to have been a noun, meaning a type of low-grade woollen material. But the word gained its modern currency as a result of a scandal relating to the use of such material in military uniforms during the American Civil War.

At the time, one magazine described it as “a villainous compound, the refuse stuff and sweepings of the shop, pounded, rolled, glued, and smoothed to the external form and gloss of cloth”. Another reported the results: “Soldiers, on the first day’s march or in the earliest storm, found their clothes, overcoats, and blanket, scattering to the wind in rags or dissolving into their primitive elements of dust under the pelting rain”.

A word with similar origins to “tawdry”, but one that has all but died out, is “tantony”, meaning “the runt of a litter of pigs”, “the smallest bell in a church”, or “an obsequious follower”. This too is a contraction of a saint’s name: Anthony, the patron of swineherds. And the connection between pigs, church bells, and obsequious following is said to derive from the monks who founded St Anthony’s Hospital in London.

One version has it that the public donated their runt pigs to the monks. This may have had less to do with generosity than the possibility that there was a tithe of one pig per litter, and the donors always chose the smallest available. At any rate, in an early example of free-range pork production, the monks then put bells on the animals’ necks and set them to roam around the city and seek food where they could.

Stow’s Survey of London has a slightly different version: “The officers charged with the oversight of the markets in this city did divers times take from the market people pigs unwholesome for men’s sustenance. One of the Proctors of St Antony tied a bell about [ such a pig’s] neck, and let it feed among the dunghills, and no man would hurt it, or take it up; but if any gave [ the pigs] bread, or other feeding, such [ people] they would know, watch for, and daily follow, whining till they had something given them; whereupon was raised a proverb. . .” Shakespeare is silent on the proverb, so far as I know. The only mention I can find in literature (applying that term loosely) is from the little-known romantic novelist Sheri Cobb South, whose Brighton Honeymoon contains the following: “Polly (having lingered on the balcony long enough to recover her poise) re-entered the house. She was claimed almost at once by the stammering young Viscount Sutcliffe, who spent the rest of the evening following her about like a Tantony pig.” Frank McNally