At 11:09 28/07/99 GMT0BST, you wrote:
>Is this how Ulster Unionists coined the phrase left-footers?
>Julia Barrow
I believe this term derives from the design of spade used by Irish
labourers, which required the pressure of the left foot; English labourers
used their right foot.
You may however be speaking wiselier than you realise. I surmised the
existence of a one-legged priest; a more likely explanation may well be
that the pious folk of the "high" Anglican church I mentioned, anxious to
imitate the Catholics in all things, heard the term "left-footers" and
misunderstood it to refer to people who walk with their left foot.
Similar misunderstandings are well documented. A Latin processional rubric
directs that the crucifer, approaching the (closed) church door, should
strike it "cum pede" (i.e. with the foot of the cross, rather as Black Rod
strikes his rod on the door of the House of Commons). One Anglican
crucifer, misunderstanding the rubric, gave the door a mighty kick.
Oriens.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|