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November 06, 2007
Pencils and pork sausages.
Q: What have pencils and pork sausages got in common?
A: Cumberland.
Pencils have been with us since the early 16th century when, one quiet autumn morning in 1565, following a violent storm the night before, a farmer, following his sheep across the dew-damp Cumberland grass, stumbled upon a bit of shiny rock next to an uprooted tree on Seathwaite Fell.
Seathwaite Fell, photo: Mick Knapton
He picked up the slippery rock and found he could write on things with it, well at least he found he could make marks with it, because, it has to be said, writing was probably not one of his skills.
Sausages have been with us for a considerable while longer. Their origins lie at the very heart of early civilisation, 5000 years ago in Sumer, lower Mesopotamia. Later they get a mention in Homer’s Odyssey: “as when a man besides a great fire has a filled sausage and turns it this way and that and is very eager to get it quickly roasted…” book 20 verse 25.
Ulysses and the Sirens, Herbert James Draper, 1909
So the farmers of Cumberland, for many years, walked around with lumps of what they erroneously called plumbago in their pockets. It was, in fact, more akin to coal than lead, but, as is self-evident, the connections with lead have stuck.
Graphite, for that is what the shiny stuff that made marks on things was, is a high grade anthracite, and it wasn’t long before people were wrapping string round it and using it to make shopping lists, which included sausages I shouldn’t wonder.
Posted by john at November 6, 2007 02:39 PM