“Archibald, Certainly Not!”: Words and Weapons no.4

Ein britisches Flugabwehrgeschütz in Aktion, 1917. A British “Archie” anti aircraft gun in action, 1917.

George Robey’s rendition of the music-hall song ‘Archibald, Certainly Not’ perhaps provides  an unlikely accompaniment to the First World War. It deals with the comic archetypes of domestic – and specifically marital – strife. The unfortunate Archibald is subject to continual reproof and correction from the moment he ties the knot. Denied a honeymoon, the opportunity to play cricket, or a piece of roast chicken, Archibald’s endeavours are, in each case, firmly curtailed by the refrain ‘Archibald, certainly not’. Even outside the domestic sphere, Archibald is apparently doomed to identical processes of castigation and control:

I once strolled through a field, and there a mad bull came across.
It gamboll’d with me playfully and quickly won the toss!
Of course I sued the owner, and the day the case was fought,
The judge exclaimed when I said, “Sir, let’s have the bull in court!”

“Archibald, certainly not!
Just show what other evidence you’ve got!”
But he cried when I said, “Please forgo it…
Because I must stand up to show it.
“Archibald-certainly not”

The recurrent patterning by which Archibald’s every endeavour is rebutted and repulsed, was, however, to effect an interesting transfer into the diction of the war. As an article in the Evening News in January 1915 indicates, it was by this point seen as yet another component in the lexical ingenuity of war-time English. While the article draws attention in general terms to ‘the ingenuity of the British soldier in inventing picturesque names for the various engines of destruction brought to bear against him’, Archibald  features as an item of specific interest. It designates ‘for some unknown reason’ the  ‘anti-aircraft gun’, the writer explains.  As in so many other cases, the language of Front and Home Front had apparently diverged. Here, a proper name had inexplicably been used to ‘christen’  an inanimate object. Both, admittedly, began with the same letter but at least in this article the transfer is seen as entirely opaque.

Across the Words in War-Time archive, however, the prevalence of this usage is clear. As a further quotation from December 1914 confirms, for instance, attributions of this kind were already part of common parlance at the Front. ‘High-angle guns firing shrapnel’ are ‘commonly known as “Archibalds”’, the Daily Express explains for the benefit of its own readers. Used with reference to the enemy, Archibald offered a ready personification of agency and attack:

“Pinkers”, “pink forms”, and being “in the pink”.

‘I am still in the pink. Terribly dirty, but as happy as a kid with mud. Still in the same place. Awful slaughter. Two more of our men were wounded last night by a shell. One had three fingers blown clean off’.

This letter was reproduced in the Evening News in October 1914 from where, carefully clipped out (and with in the pink underlined), it made its way into  the Words in War-Time archive.  Originally written by Corporal Bert —- [the surname is elided],  it reassured his family in Walthamstow of his continued good health at the Front.

Royal Library of Belgium; Free Access-Rights Reserved.

Moving from private to public domains, the letter came to participate  in the contemporary recording of war (newspapers such as the Evening News regularly sought out first-hand testimony of this kind, offering, too, the promise of monetary reward for letters that it decided to reproduce).

Seen in term of the archive, however, Corporal Bert’s letter was made part of living history of a different kind. In these terms,  in the pink signalled  a phrase which was, as yet, unattested in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary  (the section dealing with words in the range Ph-Piper had been published eight years earlier, appearing in June 1906). It would, however,  emerge as one of the most characteristic idioms of war-time discourse, constituting a familiar item in letters to and from the Front, as well as being appropriated into a range of other domains.