Mikefule
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 1,285
- Location
- Lincolnshire UK
Forteans tend to be interested in more than just "mysteries and anomalies": more than just UFOs, poltergeists, Thylacines, and Bigfoot. We tend to have a wider interest in "stuff". I know I do.
One particular area that I suspect interests many of us is the category of "well known facts" that are simply untrue. For example, Sherlock Holmes never said, "Elementary, my dear Watson," Kirk never said, "Beam me up Scotty," and the Eskimos do not have 100 words for "snow".
Isolated pieces of information which are widely accepted without any significant understanding of context and which may or may not be true, are "factoids".
Examples of true factoids: Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55BC, Einstein said "E=MC squared", JFK was shot "from a grassy knoll". (Who casually uses "knoll" in almost any other context, except perhaps "Brent Knoll"?)
Examples of untrue factoids: a cup of tea contains more caffeine than a cup of coffee. (No, although given weight of tea leaves contains more caffeine than the same weight of coffee beans.) The Union Flag should only be called "the Union Jack" when it is flown from the jackstaff of a Royal Navy ship. (No, look at the article on the Flag Institute website.) "I before E except after C." (There are so many exceptions and qualifications that the rule is unreliable.) William Webb Ellis was the first person to pick up the ball and run with it. (In fact the story was first associated with him 4 years after his death, and is generally regarded as a myth.)
Identifying untrue factoids can be fun in its own right, although it may not make you popular at parties. However, beyond this trivial level, the modern world of short attention spans, sound bites, and social media can make some untrue factoids dangerous.
Widespread belief that children have to say "Baa baa blue sheep" now, or that the MMR vaccine "has been linked to autism", or that the EU definition of a cabbage is "X pages" or "Y thousand" words long feed into people's attitudes, behaviour, and even how they vote on complex and important issues.
So why do we all "know" so many factoids, and why are they so widely accepted when so many of them are easily disproved?
If we study a subject, read widely on it, and perhaps even do our own research, we learn a lot of information that is likely to be reliable. The study and wide reading gives us sufficient context to identify "facts" that seem not to fit, and we tend to make the effort to check.
However, most of what we learn in life is not the result of study. Most of it is information that we pick up along the way. The two main sources of information are: (1) other people whom we trust; (2) our own observations and the conclusions we reach. In each case, we may be misled.
(1) A child is likely to assume that his older sibling knows more than him (although he may not admit it) and to trust his parents, teachers, and even the consensus opinion of his peers when they tell him things. Later in life, that same person may believe a trusted newspaper, or broadcaster, or a respected public figure.
Any young person may fail to realise that an older sibling is winding them up, that parents may have an agenda of their own (exaggerating the danger presented by a local river, for example), that teachers may be laying the groundwork for more detailed lessons next year, and that peers may all agree with each other simply because no one wants to stand out and be unpopular. Many adults do not realise how much news media outlets and public figures carefully select and present information to further one agenda or another.
(2) Observation and reaching our own conclusions: a child often has no context to help them to interpret what they are seeing. Children who observe domestic violence sometimes grow up believing it is normal, and even acceptable. Busy adults who skim the headlines may make a connection between two ideas that they would not make if they had the time to read the articles beneath.
Throughout our lives, but especially when we are young, we accumulate information rapidly, and later in life we often cannot remember where, when or how we "learned' a particular fact. However, I believe that when we "learn" a fact, we file it away with a mental tag about how reliable the source was.
Years later, a person may discover that their dad was a dishonest drunk, or that a school mate was full of BS, or that science has overturned an earlier theory, but they will not go back and "re-label" all the information that they gained from that source. Each factoid will remain filed away as "reliably true" until something jolts them into questioning it.
Similarly, a person who as a child worked out for themselves that Sheerness must be near Loch Ness will continue to believe it until something happens to challenge the belief. They may innocently pass on the incorrect information as true to their own children. People being people, they may even construct an argument in their own heads that "there is also a Sheerness in Scotland" or that the name "was given to the town by Scottish dock workers." Even when proved wrong, people are often desperate to salvage something from the wreckage of their previous beliefs.
The idea for this article came to me after talking to a friend from Staffordshire about the "Stafford Knot".
I rejected part of what he said as self evidently wrong and to my own conclusion by comparison with something I already knew. Then one day, I looked it up and found that we were both wrong, and that I had made some faulty assumptions when reaching my conclusion.
The Staffordshire knot is an emblem associated with the town and county of Staffordshire in England. Here it is:
My friend, who was from Staffordshire, was in his late 50s at the time, and was an intelligent and educated man, with an interest in folklore, told me two things "as fact":
1) It is not the "Staffordshire knot" but the "Stafford knot" because it is named after the Stafford family.
2) It is a special knot which is the only way to tie a single knot with 3 loops in it so that you can hang three outlaws at the same time.
I know about knots. Knotting is a bit of a hobby of mine anyway, and I use several knots for a variety of practical purposes when sailing. It is obvious to me at first glance that the Staffordshire knot is simply an ordinary "overhand knot" or "thumb knot" which has been teased open. This is the simplest possible knot, and probably the first knot that many children learn.
The idea of hanging three outlaws from a single rope at the same time is inherently absurd. However, if for some strange reason you wished to do so (1) this knot would not do the job, and (2) there are many ways of making three loops or nooses in a single rope. I therefore rejected this part of what my friend told me.
I then noticed that the knot is "left handed" (as I would describe it). When I tie an overhand knot, I make an anticlockwise underhand loop then pass the working end down through the loop. I have always done it this way, and this is how I was taught over 50 years ago. It is possible to start with an anticlockwise overhand loop instead, and pass the end up through the loop. The knot ends up functionally the same, but a mirror image of my version.
Also, when I tie this knot, pull it tight, and then put it down on the table in front of me I naturally put it down with the two ends towards me "at the bottom of the picture".
"Aha!" I thought. The only special aspect of the knot is the way it is presented: it is tied left handed, it is teased open instead of pulled tight, and it is shown with the two ends at the top of the picture.
I immediately suspected a shibboleth: a way of identifying who is "in" and who is "out". Ask a loyal Staffordshire man to tie the knot, and he will do it the Staffordshire way. Ask an imposter to tie it and they will do it "conventionally", and give themselves away.
I made connections with various knots in folklore, and the old stories of how WW2 spies were sometimes identified by how they had laced their boots. I felt pretty smug that I had seen through my friend's misconception, and had found a more likely explanation of my own.
I thought no more of it for a year or two and then, when I was practising a new knot, it suddenly crossed my mind. Testing my theory, I passed my length of line to my wife and asked her to tie a simple knot. She immediately tied it "left handed": opposite to way that I was taught — and she is not from Staffordshire.
If my wife tied it the opposite way to me, then my idea about the "left handed version" being a shibboleth was blown out of the water.
This prompted me to do a bit of simple research. I soon found that even official examples of the knot do not always show it in the left handed version. Look at these two:
So, clearly, my idea that it is a shibboleth fell at the first and second hurdles: my wife found it natural to tie it left handed (although she is right handed) and the Staffordshire authorities do no agree about whether it should be left or right handed.
I then read a bit more. My friend had said that it is the "Stafford knot" named after the Stafford family. However, there is a 4 foot (1.2 metre) high example dating from Anglo Saxon times in a church yard in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, and another example was found on an object in a 7th century object from the "Staffordshire Horde". The knot was first linked with the Stafford family either on a family seal in the 15th century, as an adaptation of the Wake knot or Ormond knot, or on the family coat of arms in 1583.
Here is the Ormond knot, which has superficial similarities to the modern Staffordshire knot, but is topologically very different indeed:
The Wake/Ormond knot is an heraldic knot associated with the Wake family from Bourne, Lincolnshire, and the Butler family, Earls of Ormond.
So, if the knot was associated with Staffordshire in the 7th century, and was "adapted and adopted" by the Stafford family in the 15th century, my friend's confident assumption that it is "correctly called the Stafford knot" is clearly flawed.
A bit more reading showed some interesting ideas, none of which seem any more likely to be true than my own earlier conclusion.
The knot does have a legend associated with it about hanging three rogues with one rope. The legend comes in various versions. In some versions, one of the three rogues devised the knot to help the hangman and was therefore allowed to go free.
Another "explanation" for the knot is that the single knot with 3 open spaces in it symbolically unites 3 regions of Staffordshire. This story is associated with Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great, who tied the knot in her girdle — presumably after removing it.
A third, very tenuous, explanation is that the curves of the knot represent a double S for Stafford Shire.
So, back to my opening thoughts about factoids: my friend passed on two factoids to me, clearly believing them to be true, although both were false. He could have worked out for himself that the "only knot you can use to hang three people" story is nonsense, and he could easily have looked up when it was first linked to the Stafford family, but he had no reason to do so.
Having seen that one of his factoids was obviously untrue, I then observed, made an association in my own mind, and reached an equally erroneous conclusion without making the simple checks that would have shown that I was wrong.
In the case of an heraldic knot used on a town and county badge, this does not matter at all. However, ask yourself, how much do you take for granted, either in everyday life, or in your interests in Fortean subjects? How much do you "know" only because you have always believed it to be true? How many of your own pet theories have you begun to treat as true without every really checking them?
One particular area that I suspect interests many of us is the category of "well known facts" that are simply untrue. For example, Sherlock Holmes never said, "Elementary, my dear Watson," Kirk never said, "Beam me up Scotty," and the Eskimos do not have 100 words for "snow".
Isolated pieces of information which are widely accepted without any significant understanding of context and which may or may not be true, are "factoids".
Examples of true factoids: Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55BC, Einstein said "E=MC squared", JFK was shot "from a grassy knoll". (Who casually uses "knoll" in almost any other context, except perhaps "Brent Knoll"?)
Examples of untrue factoids: a cup of tea contains more caffeine than a cup of coffee. (No, although given weight of tea leaves contains more caffeine than the same weight of coffee beans.) The Union Flag should only be called "the Union Jack" when it is flown from the jackstaff of a Royal Navy ship. (No, look at the article on the Flag Institute website.) "I before E except after C." (There are so many exceptions and qualifications that the rule is unreliable.) William Webb Ellis was the first person to pick up the ball and run with it. (In fact the story was first associated with him 4 years after his death, and is generally regarded as a myth.)
Identifying untrue factoids can be fun in its own right, although it may not make you popular at parties. However, beyond this trivial level, the modern world of short attention spans, sound bites, and social media can make some untrue factoids dangerous.
Widespread belief that children have to say "Baa baa blue sheep" now, or that the MMR vaccine "has been linked to autism", or that the EU definition of a cabbage is "X pages" or "Y thousand" words long feed into people's attitudes, behaviour, and even how they vote on complex and important issues.
So why do we all "know" so many factoids, and why are they so widely accepted when so many of them are easily disproved?
If we study a subject, read widely on it, and perhaps even do our own research, we learn a lot of information that is likely to be reliable. The study and wide reading gives us sufficient context to identify "facts" that seem not to fit, and we tend to make the effort to check.
However, most of what we learn in life is not the result of study. Most of it is information that we pick up along the way. The two main sources of information are: (1) other people whom we trust; (2) our own observations and the conclusions we reach. In each case, we may be misled.
(1) A child is likely to assume that his older sibling knows more than him (although he may not admit it) and to trust his parents, teachers, and even the consensus opinion of his peers when they tell him things. Later in life, that same person may believe a trusted newspaper, or broadcaster, or a respected public figure.
Any young person may fail to realise that an older sibling is winding them up, that parents may have an agenda of their own (exaggerating the danger presented by a local river, for example), that teachers may be laying the groundwork for more detailed lessons next year, and that peers may all agree with each other simply because no one wants to stand out and be unpopular. Many adults do not realise how much news media outlets and public figures carefully select and present information to further one agenda or another.
(2) Observation and reaching our own conclusions: a child often has no context to help them to interpret what they are seeing. Children who observe domestic violence sometimes grow up believing it is normal, and even acceptable. Busy adults who skim the headlines may make a connection between two ideas that they would not make if they had the time to read the articles beneath.
Throughout our lives, but especially when we are young, we accumulate information rapidly, and later in life we often cannot remember where, when or how we "learned' a particular fact. However, I believe that when we "learn" a fact, we file it away with a mental tag about how reliable the source was.
Years later, a person may discover that their dad was a dishonest drunk, or that a school mate was full of BS, or that science has overturned an earlier theory, but they will not go back and "re-label" all the information that they gained from that source. Each factoid will remain filed away as "reliably true" until something jolts them into questioning it.
Similarly, a person who as a child worked out for themselves that Sheerness must be near Loch Ness will continue to believe it until something happens to challenge the belief. They may innocently pass on the incorrect information as true to their own children. People being people, they may even construct an argument in their own heads that "there is also a Sheerness in Scotland" or that the name "was given to the town by Scottish dock workers." Even when proved wrong, people are often desperate to salvage something from the wreckage of their previous beliefs.
The idea for this article came to me after talking to a friend from Staffordshire about the "Stafford Knot".
I rejected part of what he said as self evidently wrong and to my own conclusion by comparison with something I already knew. Then one day, I looked it up and found that we were both wrong, and that I had made some faulty assumptions when reaching my conclusion.
The Staffordshire knot is an emblem associated with the town and county of Staffordshire in England. Here it is:
My friend, who was from Staffordshire, was in his late 50s at the time, and was an intelligent and educated man, with an interest in folklore, told me two things "as fact":
1) It is not the "Staffordshire knot" but the "Stafford knot" because it is named after the Stafford family.
2) It is a special knot which is the only way to tie a single knot with 3 loops in it so that you can hang three outlaws at the same time.
I know about knots. Knotting is a bit of a hobby of mine anyway, and I use several knots for a variety of practical purposes when sailing. It is obvious to me at first glance that the Staffordshire knot is simply an ordinary "overhand knot" or "thumb knot" which has been teased open. This is the simplest possible knot, and probably the first knot that many children learn.
The idea of hanging three outlaws from a single rope at the same time is inherently absurd. However, if for some strange reason you wished to do so (1) this knot would not do the job, and (2) there are many ways of making three loops or nooses in a single rope. I therefore rejected this part of what my friend told me.
I then noticed that the knot is "left handed" (as I would describe it). When I tie an overhand knot, I make an anticlockwise underhand loop then pass the working end down through the loop. I have always done it this way, and this is how I was taught over 50 years ago. It is possible to start with an anticlockwise overhand loop instead, and pass the end up through the loop. The knot ends up functionally the same, but a mirror image of my version.
Also, when I tie this knot, pull it tight, and then put it down on the table in front of me I naturally put it down with the two ends towards me "at the bottom of the picture".
"Aha!" I thought. The only special aspect of the knot is the way it is presented: it is tied left handed, it is teased open instead of pulled tight, and it is shown with the two ends at the top of the picture.
I immediately suspected a shibboleth: a way of identifying who is "in" and who is "out". Ask a loyal Staffordshire man to tie the knot, and he will do it the Staffordshire way. Ask an imposter to tie it and they will do it "conventionally", and give themselves away.
I made connections with various knots in folklore, and the old stories of how WW2 spies were sometimes identified by how they had laced their boots. I felt pretty smug that I had seen through my friend's misconception, and had found a more likely explanation of my own.
I thought no more of it for a year or two and then, when I was practising a new knot, it suddenly crossed my mind. Testing my theory, I passed my length of line to my wife and asked her to tie a simple knot. She immediately tied it "left handed": opposite to way that I was taught — and she is not from Staffordshire.
If my wife tied it the opposite way to me, then my idea about the "left handed version" being a shibboleth was blown out of the water.
This prompted me to do a bit of simple research. I soon found that even official examples of the knot do not always show it in the left handed version. Look at these two:
- In the one on the left, the top left end goes back into the picture.
- In the one on the right, the top left end comes forward out of the picture.
- The two versions are mirror images of each other: one right handed, one left handed.
So, clearly, my idea that it is a shibboleth fell at the first and second hurdles: my wife found it natural to tie it left handed (although she is right handed) and the Staffordshire authorities do no agree about whether it should be left or right handed.
I then read a bit more. My friend had said that it is the "Stafford knot" named after the Stafford family. However, there is a 4 foot (1.2 metre) high example dating from Anglo Saxon times in a church yard in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, and another example was found on an object in a 7th century object from the "Staffordshire Horde". The knot was first linked with the Stafford family either on a family seal in the 15th century, as an adaptation of the Wake knot or Ormond knot, or on the family coat of arms in 1583.
Here is the Ormond knot, which has superficial similarities to the modern Staffordshire knot, but is topologically very different indeed:
The Wake/Ormond knot is an heraldic knot associated with the Wake family from Bourne, Lincolnshire, and the Butler family, Earls of Ormond.
So, if the knot was associated with Staffordshire in the 7th century, and was "adapted and adopted" by the Stafford family in the 15th century, my friend's confident assumption that it is "correctly called the Stafford knot" is clearly flawed.
A bit more reading showed some interesting ideas, none of which seem any more likely to be true than my own earlier conclusion.
The knot does have a legend associated with it about hanging three rogues with one rope. The legend comes in various versions. In some versions, one of the three rogues devised the knot to help the hangman and was therefore allowed to go free.
Another "explanation" for the knot is that the single knot with 3 open spaces in it symbolically unites 3 regions of Staffordshire. This story is associated with Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great, who tied the knot in her girdle — presumably after removing it.
A third, very tenuous, explanation is that the curves of the knot represent a double S for Stafford Shire.
So, back to my opening thoughts about factoids: my friend passed on two factoids to me, clearly believing them to be true, although both were false. He could have worked out for himself that the "only knot you can use to hang three people" story is nonsense, and he could easily have looked up when it was first linked to the Stafford family, but he had no reason to do so.
Having seen that one of his factoids was obviously untrue, I then observed, made an association in my own mind, and reached an equally erroneous conclusion without making the simple checks that would have shown that I was wrong.
In the case of an heraldic knot used on a town and county badge, this does not matter at all. However, ask yourself, how much do you take for granted, either in everyday life, or in your interests in Fortean subjects? How much do you "know" only because you have always believed it to be true? How many of your own pet theories have you begun to treat as true without every really checking them?
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