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We picture pirates as speaking with an English West Country accent for a couple of reasons. Edward Teach, who became famous as Blackbeard, was from somewhere in
by sitharus 9y ago
We picture pirates as speaking with an English West Country accent for a couple of reasons. Edward Teach, who became famous as Blackbeard, was from somewhere in the Bristol region so would presumably have spoken with this accent. Also the 1952 film "Blackbeard the Pirate" cast a Dorset-born actor in the lead role, who also spoke with a West Country accent, cementing the accent in popular culture.
The peg-leg is a old popular image of experienced sailors. Sailing has always been a highly risky occupation and it's easy to lose a leg to due gangrene from splinters, scurvy, cannonball impact or getting it caught in the rigging.
I can't explain the parrot though.
- zaroth 9y agoBut if you accept the parrot, it explains the eyepatch! The eyepatch being a direct result of the parrot.
- codingdave 9y agoI thought the eyepatch was already well explained as a tool to keep one eye used to the dark, in order to make it easier to switch between being on the deck and in the hold.
- Theodores 9y agoThat is my new fact for the day!
- yesenadam 9y agoStevenson's Treasure Island has a one-legged West Country pirate with a parrot on his shoulder - Long John Silver. The parrot was taken from Robinson Crusoe. The Arrr apparently dates from the 1930s movie versions. Stevenson wrote: "Treasure Island came out of Kingsley's At Last, where I got the Dead Man's Chest—and that was the seed—and out of the great Captain Johnson's History of the Notorious Pirates." And Long John Silver was apparently based on his friend W.E. Henley, who had a leg amputated at the knee due to TB. Incidentally, after Lister (the pioneer of modern antiseptic surgery) saved his other foot, Henley wrote the famous poem Invictus, which ends with the lines - I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.