On My Word

First off, this is my initial foray into

, hello everyone. How have I not wandered in before? It's and ideal spot for the idle wonderings on random subjects that occasionally strike me.

And so, onto the thing that struck me a couple of days ago.

We're hoping to go to France on holiday this year, my daughters have a friend who lives in Riberac and they'd like to go visit. As part of that I am trying to learn a little French so as to not be THAT tourist.

We did French at school and, to be honest, I hated it. Partly the first teacher I had, partly the language itself, partly the AuDHD I didn't know about. One year the teacher (a different one) did his best to cover the course material, but no one really gave a damn. Then, sbout six-weeks before the end of school year he announced that we had finished the assigned material but we couldn't just do nothing for two-hours a week. How did we fancy trying Spanish?

Now, Spanish wasn't even going to be an option when we got to choose classes - no language, French, or German were the options - and, I think to the teacher's surprise, we all said yes. As a class more language was learnt over those six weeks than the the rest of the school year combined.

But I digress.

To be honest, I've always felt a bit bad about disliking French quite so much becuase there are whole swathes of English that derives from old French, it being the language of the invading Normans all the way back in 1066 (though the word swathe derives from the language of invaders who came from further north).

As part of my current attempt to learn some French I learnt that 'word' can be translated as 'parole'. This pulled me up short and taught me something I never thought of trying to learn.

Let me explain.

Today we normally associate parole with a prisoner being allowed out of prison early due to having behaved exemplarily while incarcerated, and demonstrating a suitable level of remorse and contrition for the crime which led to their imprisonment.

But for many years parole was a term more associated with the military. Prisoners were still involved, but the prisoners were enemy soldiers and the first written sources using the term go back to the early sixteen-hundreds, although the practice extends back to at least the Punic Wars

After being captured soldiers would be offered parole d'honneur. Upon accepting parole enemy soldiers were free to live without being detained but the Word of Honour they offered was to not retake arms against their captors.

This removed the burden of feeding and housing the paroled fighters, while also removing them from battle.

The idea of criminal prisoners being released if they gave their word to not commit further crimes was around at the same time in a limited way but it was the middle eighteen-hundreds before the structured parole we see today began to develop.

And that wraps up this little curlicue of thought, you have my word on that. Now I'm off to read the thoughts of some of the regulars of this little pub.

text by stuartcturnbull picture from

by Francis Abell