In heraldry, a ‘martlet’ is a mythical bird without feet that never roosts from the moment of its drop-birth until its death fall; martlets are proposed to be continuously on the wing.
More Martlet Musings
When I started university, way way back in 1960, one of the university’s freshman events was to shut the whole group of us into a large lecture hall and require us to write out and memorize the school’s competitive sports chant. Given that the university was the Queen’s University of Kingston, with strong Scottish roots, we had to learn and sing "Oil thigh na Banrighinn a'Banrighinn gu brath", which translates to "The university of the wife of the King forever". The chant also includes the Gaelic war cry "Cha Gheill", which means "no surrender". The Bannrighinn (F, genitive) being the Queen, of course, wife of the king since Gaelic has no word for Queen. At football games, this was sung, ideally in a long line while kicking in unison. It was thought to fuel school spirit, or was fueled by spirits or both. (Please note that when JG and I returned for his 50th Anniversary reunion, some singing and kicking was done, but not by us.)
Our major competition in the football that was the heart of ‘school
spirit’ was McGill University, an English language university plunked into the
heart of Montreal. In those old and politically incorrect days, the men’s teams
were the Red Men (McGill’s colour being red) and the chant, loudly rendered to
drown Cha Gheill, was something like “We are the red men, feathers in our head men, pow WOW, pow WOW.”
The second verse was, again from my memory, “We come home from fighting afar,
greeted by our long-nosed squaws, Pow Wow etc” . Pretty terrible, although nothing compared to
what was heard after rugby games. I will not go into that.
At any rate, their men's teams became colloquially known as the
"Indians" and from 1961 to 1967 women's teams were formally known as
the "Super Squaws". At some point after that, McGill
decided to clean up its act. The cleanup got written up here. The men’s teams
are now “Redbirds” and the women’s teams are “Martlets”.
And here, proud grandmother that I am, I picture a Martlet for your enjoyment. She is a track athlete, and runs the 400, solo and relay, and some shorter distances. The relay did very well indeed. These are both public domain photos from the McGill Track and Field site.
I have never heard of this bird! Waiting to see what comes next...
ReplyDeleteAnd done. I hope you are amused, if not bemused.
DeleteThe Martlet is U of Victoria's newspaper and McGill's women's hockey team. I thought I had heard of some hockey team with that name, so I had to search it. Now a wait in eager anticipation.
ReplyDeleteNot just the hockey. But isn't it amazing that the women put up with the old name. I think we were a lot less sensitive to racist labels back then, but ' Longnosed Squaws' was really outside of acceptable.
DeleteYou're absolutely right. :-) I definitely didn't know that.
ReplyDeleteI vaguely did, a remnant of doing crossword puzzles, but I think it is quite charming in a medieval sort of way.
DeleteWow. They managed to be chauvistic and racist all at once! Different times, for sure.
ReplyDeleteAnd you have a right to be proud, for sure.
Gorgeous, isn't she. And if they tried to label her with the old team name, she would probably have nailed a protest to the dean's door, if not the dean.
DeleteLots of racist names were quite acceptable back in "the old days", in fact encouraged by everyone. Times have changed, and are still changing, sometimes rather too fast! She's a lovely Martlet, love the big M on her shirt, GO MARTLETS!
ReplyDelete