Of Gallipots and Bull Finches

In the January 10th, 1807 issue of Cobbett's Political Register, Mr. William Cobbett, noted British reformer and crank, turned the focus of his scathing pen from its usual targets of the war with France, Catholic Emancipation, and Parliamentary Reform to a more perennial topic, the masking of ignorance with pretentious jargon:

Do those who make use of such phrases, he wrote, which the stupidest wretch upon Earth might learn to use as well as they in a few hours; nay, which a parrot would learn, or which a high-dutch bird-catcher would teach to a bull-finch or a tom-tit in the space of a month; and do they think, in good earnest, that this last relick of the mummery of monkery, this playing off upon us of a few gallipot words, will make us believe that they are learned?

Political Cartoon of William Cobbett, 1819

One of the picturesque insults from Cobbett's piece, gallipot words, meant in the cant of the time those scraps of Greek and Latin applied to medical concoctions, gallipots being the jars said concoctions were contained in.  These bits of Antiquity were used so that apothecaries could both sound very wise and cover over the fact that their medicine was like as not to do nothing for the patient's illness, if in fact it did not kill the sufferer before his disease.

I have two reasons for christening this blog with such a disreputable moniker.  Firstly, it acts as a warning. Any and all content here should be taken in same light as such gallipot-ery as calling a stomach rumble a borborygmos, which is to say as nonsense.  Whether discussing philosophy, art, politics, or what the view is outside my window, I want this point kept firmly in mind.

On the other hand, while gallipot words signified pompous ignorance, the gallipot itself was a humble but useful bit of ceramics.  While its exterior may have been covered with Classical doggerel and the inside hold something distasteful, poisonous, or distastefully poisonous, the pot itself did its job as a container faithfully and well.  Inside all the silliness was a core of craftsmanship.  While it is too early to tell whether this blog will avoid either bad Latin or bad taste, I will, as far as I am able, strive to imitate the modest gallipot in providing good craft in all that I write here. And with that, I am quite done laying out principles.  More, if not soon, eventually.

A Gallipot