Truce terms

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Truce terms are words or short phrases accepted within a community of children as an effective way of calling for a temporary respite or truce during a game or activity, if, for example, a child has a stitch or wants to raise a point on the rules of the game. Traditionally these terms are specific to certain geographical areas although some are group words. The most extensive study of the use and incidence of these terms was undertaken by Iona and Peter Opie in the UK in their 1959 book, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren ^[1] The Opies considered it the most important word in a schoolchilds vocabulary and one for which there was no adult equivalent. Common examples in the UK were barley, fainites and kings, often accompanied by the crossing of fingers on one or both hands. There has been little recent research but such research as there has been indicates that truce terms are still in general use. Studies show that truce terms are also prevalent in Australia, New Zealand and parts of the USA.

Contents 1 Use 2 The Opie study 3 Post-Opie studies 4 Gestures 5 New Zealand 6 USA 7 See also 8 References

[edit] Use

Recorded incidents of use of truce terms are; being out of breath, a stitch, undone shoelace, fear of clothes being damaged, needing to go to the lavatory, checking the time, wanting to discuss or clarify rules during a fight or game, or when one combatant wants to remove their spectacles or jacket before continuing. It does not mean to surrender or to give in although it may sometimes be used preparatory to surrendering.^[1] Truce terms are only used within a specific age group, have little currency outside that group and are by and large abandoned by the age of 10 or 11 years.^[2]

Truce terms are described by Peter Trudgill in Dialects of England as particularly rich in regional variation as they are not based on official or television culture.^[3]

[edit] The Opie study

In 1959 the Opies found the word a child used varied according to where in the UK they lived, with the exception of pax. In some places more than one term was current and often 4 or 5 would be known although usually only one term predominated. Schools on borders between areas using different terms would honour both. The words used in urban areas were often at odds with words used in the surrounding countryside.^[1]

The Opies recorded some 45 truce terms plus variations, though the most widely used were barley, fainites, kings, crosses, keys, skinch, cree and scribs.

Barley was recorded by the Opies as the prevailing term in east Scotland and the Borders, the Lake District, north-west England, west midlands and in Wales, apart from the south east of Wales where cree prevailed. There were many variations such as barley-bay, barley-bees, barlow or barrels. The use of barlay as a truce terms appears in the fourteenth century poem Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight and Tobias Smollett's The Reprisal. It is recorded specifically as a term used to demand truce by children in Jamieson's 1808 Scottish Dictionary. A probable variation also appears in the 1568 manuscript Chrysts-Kirk of the Grene, sometimes attributed to James I of Scotland, as follows;

Thocht he was wicht, he was nocht wyss,

With sic Jangleurs to jummill;

For frae his Thoume they dang a Sklyss,

Quhyle he cry'd Barlafummill.^[1]

Fainites and fains (or vainites and vains) predominated in London and throughout southern England, apart from the scribs and screams of east Hampshire, and extended north as far as Olney in Buckinghamshire. Variations included fennits, fannies, fainsies, faylines, vainlights and vainyards. Fains was recorded in Notes and Queries in 1870 and was said to be in common use by London schoolboys. Faints appeared in an 1889 dictionary of slang and fainits in 1891. According to J. R. R. Tolkien, the term derives from "medieval term "fein I", descended in turn from the Old French se feindre, "to make excuses, hang back or back out of battle". He also proposes that this use of the term throws light on line 529 of the Clerk's Tale by Chaucer that "lordes heestes mowe nat been yfeyned" (the lords orders cannot be treated with a 'fain I', in other words declined).^[1] Another translation of the Anglo-Norman word "feindre" is "pretend, feign, turn a blind eye too", which is what the more powerful child does whilst granting respite.^[2]

The southern boundary of the Danelaw (to the north of London) is marked by the speech of young children of which vainites is a surviving example. South of the Danelaw became, from at least the 11th century onwards, characterised by a pronunciation known as "Southern Voicing", such as "vrog" for frog, or "zummer" for summer. Vainites or vains, a variant of fainites or fains, is an example of this on the borders of the Danelaw. Other truce terms prevail within the Danelaw.^[2]

Kings was recorded by the Opies as common in eastern England. The English Dialect Dictionary recorded much the same in the nineteenth century. The earliest recorded instance the Opies found was in Sternberg's 1851 Dialect of Northamptonshire. Queens is recorded as used in the kings area, sometimes as an alternative and sometimes as indicating readiness to restart the game.^[1]

Crosses, cruces, creases and cree were found in a broad band across England from cree in South Wales and both sides of the Bristol Channel, creases in Berkshire, and cruce or cruces from Gloucester through to Oxford, to crosses in Lincolnshire. There are some areas of scruces, screwsies or screws in Essex and Suffolk. The Opies saw creases as a transitional word. Exes, used around Ipswich and Norwich was thought to be a variant of crosses

Skinch or skinge predominated in Northumberland and Durham, another term first recorded in a nineteenth century dialect dictionary.

Keys was found by the Opies to be the prevailing term in western Scotland and in a strip running through north-west England in an otherwise predominantly barley area.

Scribs or squibs coverered an area from Hampshire, to West Sussex and Surrey. Other Hampshire variants were scrims, screens, scrames, screams and creams.

Pax was a group dialect rather than a regional one as it was predominantly used in private schools and school stories.

Many individual cities, towns and rural districts had their own words, not used elsewhere such as bees, blobs, croggies, denny, keppies, locks, peas, peril, nix and twigs.^[1]

[edit] Post-Opie studies

A study undertaken in Lincolnshire in 1974 confirmed the Opies findings.^[4] However, a later study undertaken in Croydon, Surrey in 1988 found the use of truce terms much less uniform. Croydon is firmly in the fainites area on the Opies map, but in 1988 fainites was only the third most commonly used term. The most common terms were pax (30%), jecs (25%), fainites (20%) and cross keys (2%). Jecs is a term not recorded by the Opies at all and there was some evidence that it derived from the word "injection". Fainites was more known than used and was reported by one teacher to be "totally lacking in street credibility". Pax was no longer a group word as reported by the Opies. Other terms reported included pips, force field and quits. The authors concluded that either the Opies had grossly oversimplified the picture or things had radically changed in 30 years (some seven to eight generations of primary school children). They also noted that although some schools reported a marked preference for a particular term, all schools reported at least some children using different terms.^[5]

[edit] Gestures

The Opies found that in England and Wales children usually also held up crossed fingers. Sometimes crossing the fingers of both hands was required and occasionally the feet as well. The Opies found one area, Headington, where sitting cross legged was required. At Lydney, a child could raise their right hand palm forward, whilst in Bradford-on-Avon the hand was held up with three fingers extended. In some parts of Scotland the custom was to put up ones thumbs, sometimes licking them first. This also occurred in a few places in Lancashire. The "Thoume" that is "sklyss" in the quote above may refer to the thumb having been raised by the man calling barlafummill.^[1]

The 1988 Croydon study found a variety of gestures in common use. These were crossed fingers of one hand (44%), crossed fingers of both hands (26%), thumbs through fingers (6%) (boys only) and arms crossed across the chest (2%). Other gestures, reported in ones and two's, included miming an injection into the arm, licking the thumb, making a T-shape with the hands, three fingers held up and the "Vulcan" sign from Star Trek. Virtually all schools reported the use of crossed fingers.^[5]

The holding up of one hand with middle and index fingers crossed was the usual gesture found in New Zealand in 1999/2001.^[6] The T-shape was also used when saying time-out.

[edit] New Zealand

A study undertaken between 1999 and 2001 in New Zealand by Laurie and Winifred Bauer proposed that truce terms had the longest history of all the playground traditions. The terms they described in their study were regional and the most common were pegs (widespread), twigs (Taranaki), gates (Auckland), tags (Nelson Marlborough), and nibs (Otago-Southland).^[6] In Wellington schools the dominant term was fans, recorded in New Zealand before 1920, which the authors state derives from fains or fain it as described by the Opies, itself dating back to Chaucerian times. The most widespread term was pegs, derived from pax. Apparently unrecorded before World War II this appears to have first changed to pags, probably from being shouted out at length, and then further mutated by virtue of broad New Zealand accents to pegs. Similarly nibs derives from nix, possibly via nigs. Nibs is reported from before the 1930's and is also recorded in South Africa though it was unknown to the Opies.^[6]

Other New Zealand terms recorded in the Bauers 2002 study include quits, flicks, tags and poison and variants of those words.

[edit] USA

The Dictionary of American Regional English records the use of kings ex, kings sax, kings cruse, kings excuse and kings as truce terms, chiefly west of the Mississippi River, the Gulf States and Ohio Valley. The Dictionary cites the Opies as a source of an explanation of the derivation of the terms and states that "exes" probably refers to the use of crossed fingers, an important part of the demand for a truce, rather than deriving from "excuse" as originally thought. The earliest recorded use is of kings cruse in 1778 during an adult fight.^[7]

[edit] See also

• Peter and Iona Opie
• Children's street culture
• Folkloristics

[edit] References