Why do pirates wear earrings joke

Feature films and authoritative historical sources bear witness to the wearing of the earring by pirates. This custom was borrowed from the peoples of the Mediterranean. Researchers are considering different versions of following this tradition.

Security insurance

The activity of a pirate is full of dangers encountered in navigation. Naval battles and disease significantly reduced life expectancy. Everything that was mined was spent on land in taverns, in gambling. Burying the treasure also did not serve as a guarantee of security, since the pirate might not return for it.

Guided by these circumstances, the pirates carried their property on themselves. To do this, a hole was made in a gold coin, which was worn around the neck. Their fingers were decorated with massive rings, their ears with earrings. This method acted as a guarantee that they would be adequately buried, regardless of where they lose their lives. Precious metal was a solid insurance policy. You can pay with gold and silver everywhere in the world. There is also an assumption that the product allowed to show their well-being.

Related materials:

Why do sailors have 3 stripes on their collars?

Historians' version

Researchers involved in the topic of why the corsairs had jewelry in their ears have their own opinion on this matter. They believe that this right is assigned to experienced sailors. One of the merits was the crossing of the equator. Also, this right was assigned to those who rounded Cape Horn. There is an opinion that the product symbolizes the taken ship.

Interesting fact: The history of this jewelry, which was originally male, not female, began 7 thousand years ago. In various periods, it was worn by representatives of the nobility, corsairs. Earring in the ear is a sign of an experienced sailor. Gold items were worn by the highest ranks. The rest of the corsairs wore earrings, which are made of copper, bronze and silver.

Earring as a talisman

When considering this issue, the researchers put forward a version that the earring served as a talisman. If one adheres to this point of view, then the hole in the earlobe ruled out seasickness. Gold served as magical protection. It is also believed that the earring was used as earplugs to protect the eardrum from loud noise. They prevented the sailors from being deafened by cannon fire.

An interesting fact: considering in detail the versions that scientists adhere to, it becomes clear that the earring did not act as an attribute of a separate corsair. Some wore it, others didn't. This is due to the fact that the pirate adhered to his preferences in clothing.

Historians also emphasize that until the 18th century, certain regulations regarding clothing were adhered to on the coast. Ordinary people had the right to wear only clothes that are prescribed by law. Confirmation of this fact is the law adopted in England, which introduced a ban on the representatives of the stronger sex to wear jewelry. In case of non-compliance with the norms prescribed in the legislation, sanctions were applied to citizens. Therefore, the assumption is considered that the corsairs, who wore bright clothes, acted against generally accepted rules.

While pirates have a reputation for bloodthirsty criminals, they are also known for being flamboyant fashionistas. This is the image that can be imagined from popular culture. Traditionally, these are middle-aged people in bandanas and wide-brimmed hats. And there is one essential accessory Jack Sparrow and Captain Morgan flaunted: a gold earring.

Exactly when sailors started putting rings in their ears is anyone's guess, but there are a few legends to explain this fashion. The most popular version is that the sailors wore gold and silver earrings to be given a decent burial no matter where they died. Gold and silver have been the accepted form of payment almost everywhere in the world. Keeping a little precious metal in your ear where it wouldn't wash away into the sea was a pretty solid insurance policy.

There is some truth in this myth, historians say. However, the filibusters had little chance of dying a natural death. So, pirates wore earrings to show their wealth. And not just earrings. During the Golden Age of Piracy, corsairs often drilled holes in coins and wore them as necklaces or bracelets. Such decorations on the wrist or on the neck were more secure than a purse. Archaeologists have found a lot of jewelry made from money - so this is not just a myth.

In addition to the down payment for the burial, earrings and jewelry were the objects of the riot. In the 17th and 18th centuries, most of Europe, and especially England, had a set of laws that regulated what the common people could dress and wear. In this way, the ruling class separated themselves from the commoners.

These laws stipulated a list of permitted things, their color. Men were forbidden to wear any jewelry. Violations were punishable by imprisonment and fines. Not surprisingly, these restrictions were ignored and ridiculed by people on the other side of the law. The flamboyant dresses and earrings associated with pirates were a direct challenge.

However, there is no concrete historical evidence of what the pirates actually wore, nor are the specifics of their fashion known. And therefore, there is no certainty that their earrings meant something.

It is believed that corsairs did not actually wear earrings and bandanas. And they were the invention of the 19th century American artist Howard Pyle. When asked to portray pirates for children's books, he took Spanish bandits and peasants as models. So, Pyle's filibusters wore sashes around their waists, scarves... and earrings. Pyle is often credited with popularizing the stereotypical pirate costume. And the image of pirates wearing earrings most likely caught on thanks to his artwork.

Whether it is a myth based on some kind of truth, or truth surrounded by myth, swashbuckling sailors and their earrings are now inextricably linked. Even hundreds of years later, it is not possible to separate the pirates from their treasures as well.

I recently installed an application on my smartphone that publishes interesting notes. It's funny that the latest news in the feed turned out to be just on a pirate theme. I happily started reading, but, unfortunately, I was a little disappointed with the informativeness and level of reliability of the material. And that's why: " Traditionally, sailors were allowed to wear an earring after their first crossing of the equator or after they had rounded Cape Horn. Many of them believed that the earring was a talisman that prevented seasickness or drowning. However, many pirates wore this jewelry for practical purposes - in the event of their death, the earring became a payment for transportation to their relatives so that they could be properly buried. And the pirates who were in charge of firing cannons found even more banal uses for them - earrings served as earplugs during a loud salvo.

This is far from the first source in which I come across such statements about pirate earrings. I am not a historian, and I have not written any dissertations on the life of piracy, but having a small background of knowledge on the history of sea robbery and the life of pirates, I dare to express my opinion on the issue raised: "Why did pirates wear earrings?".

As for the first sentence, there are no complaints about this data, since the pirates really wore an earring after they crossed the equator or rounded Cape Horn. The earring was an attribute that symbolized the maritime experience of the robber, since the same Cape Horn was very dangerous, due to frequent storms, water.

As for a "decent funeral." Here, don’t go to Wikipedia, everything is very clear, the good old logic will help us. The graveyard for a pirate killed in battle has always been the seabed. The robbers were in the raid for weeks or even months. Based on this, we highlight three points:

1. Can you imagine what the smell will be on the ship if all the dead are provided with a worthy Christian funeral, transporting them to their relatives? This time.
2. Was every member of the team familiar with the family tree of each of their craft brothers? Where to send the body? This is two.
3. As for the transportation itself, I don’t think that someone, having received a golden earring in the form of a payment, will undertake to deliver the body of a murdered, and already slightly reeking, pirate to no one knows where. It's three.

By simple reasoning, we come to the conclusion that the earring in the ear of a pirate is clearly not was used for the purpose described above, namely, to deliver the body to relatives for the purpose of its further burial.

Earring like an earplug!?

Earrings in the role of ear plugs (ear plugs). Has the author of the note above ever seen earrings? Usually they are either oval in shape, which does not allow them to fit into the ear, or sharp - trying to insert such an earring directly into the ear canal can easily damage the eardrums. I think it's better to endure the unpleasant loud sound of a cannon volley than to have damaged ears and an object stuck in them.

Yes, the artistic image of a pirate has many inconsistencies with its historical prototype, but these inconsistencies should not be pushed into history and at the same time attributed to them an absurd purpose. Earrings were worn by pirates, but not many, and not for the two reasons that we have just discussed.

Any person who is interested in the sea and maritime topics must have heard about Francis Drake, an English navigator and pirate ... The strait is named after him and connects the southern parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In the north, the strait is bounded by the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, and in the south by the South Shetland Islands (Antarctica). It is the widest named strait on Earth - about 820 kilometers in its narrowest part.

A powerful “Current of the West Winds” passes through the strait - the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Severe storms are frequent in the strait, and Drake Passage storms are among the strongest on the planet - winds of more than 35 m / s and waves above 15 meters are not uncommon here. Icebergs are found in the Drake Passage, mainly in its southern part.

The strait contains the southernmost point of the South American mainland and the American continent - the Diego Ramirez Islands, as well as the legendary Cape Horn. Why is the strait named after Francis Drake? So he opened it and passed through this strait in 1578 on his ship "Golden Doe".
And it was over 400 years ago.

The maritime tradition of allowing a gold earring to be worn in the ear by those who have passed through the Drake Passage dates back to the 17th century. By order of Queen Victoria, who heard about severe storms in the area of ​​​​Cape Horn, often arising from the collision of several cyclones at once, English sailors who passed through the strait were allowed to drink a glass of whiskey in the taverns of English ports at the expense of Her Majesty. The golden earring became a confirmation of this right.

It all started as a tradition in the English Navy. But gradually it became a reward. In modern terms, an earring in the sailors' ear is an international award from the British Admiralty for passing a sailing ship through the Drake Strait.

There are many beautiful legends about the golden earring in the ear. The right to wear it is attributed to sailors passing through the Drake Passage, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, crossing the equator, circumnavigating the world and others. All this exists at the level of legends, but there really was such a fashion among the sailors of the sailing fleet, and the gold earring rather emphasized the luck and wealth of the sailor, and served more as an amulet. Not everyone could afford a gold earring; sailors often wore silver or copper earrings. It has always been considered especially honorable to cross the equator at the point of origin of latitude and longitude - at zero degrees, that is, at the point that sailors call the "center of the Earth" or the "golden point". In the era of the sailing fleet, sailors who crossed the equator in this place received the right to wear a gold earring in their left ear and sit in the port taverns with their feet on the table. If the sailor had to go around Cape Horn more than once, then the "Council of Old Sea Wolves" awarded him a special diploma and an earring, on which Cape Horn and the constellation of the Southern Cross were depicted. Such a sailor had the right ... to paint the nail on the little finger of his left hand, which caused envy among sailors who did not have these "privileges".

The profession of a sailor was dangerous, they often died in the ocean, and their dead bodies sometimes washed ashore. The one who found the corpse buried it and took the earring. Like funeral fees.

There is a sign - if a man has an earring in his ear, then he will not drown. For pirates, this meant a captured ship and served as a kind of table of ranks, if you participated in the boarding team more than ten times, then the earring was of medium size, and if you commanded, then the largest, it goes without saying that only the captain wore it, the second after god on a sailboat!!!
As the ancient Greeks said - there are living people, there are dead people, and there are those who go to the sea ...

Reviews

There was also a tradition among the Cossacks to wear an earring if the serviceman was the only son in the family. He, as a support for elderly parents, tried not to send him into dangerous alterations. Can you keep a Cossack, youth is characterized by carelessness. Unfortunately, now the presence of an earring in a man's ear is already just a fashionable attribute, the real meaning has been lost. As in a joke: "They say, son, pirates, Cossacks and homoxiao wear an earring in their ear. Something I don’t see a ship or a horse in our yard."

I like your stories, informative and not boring, not drawn out and, of course, in the final lines, the conclusion, as it were, a generalization of all of the above.

Earrings have been around since ancient times. And they were not female, but male decoration. In ancient Egypt, they meant a high position in the former society. But in ancient Greece, the earring was a symbol of prostitution.

The Middle Ages became the period when earrings were almost never worn. Since the church forbade ear piercing, most people stopped wearing earrings. However, some categories of people continued to wear such jewelry. These are pirates, gypsies.

Gypsies it was customary to pierce the ear of a boy and put on an earring who was born after the previous child had died.

Pirates put an earring in the ear after the capture of the ship. That is, these categories of people put them on not just as an ornament, but as a symbol that was understandable in the circle of the same people.

In Russia, earrings also symbolized the wealth of different categories of people. So the common people were the owners of earrings made of wood, the merchants wore silver items, and the princes and members of their families possessed and wore gold jewelry, jewelry with rubies and emeralds.

Interestingly, in Russia, one ear was pierced, and an ornament was put into it, which was previously called “lonely”. And the person who wore such an ornament was called an "earring".

During the time of Peter I, earrings again ceased to be popular, because the wigs that were fashionable at that time simply hid these jewelry, so there was no point in wearing them.

During the time of Paul I, women gave their husbands earrings as a talisman against bullets.

In which ear do the Cossacks wear an earring?

Cossacks wear an earring not as an ornament. The custom of wearing them among the Cossacks is associated with their military activities. The earring in the left ear meant that the mother had one son in the family. But the earring in the right ear symbolized that the only son or the last in the family. If he wears earrings in both ears, then this means that he is the successor of the family and its breadwinner, as well as the last of his kind. This meant that during the war he could not be sent to the most difficult battles and put him in mortal danger. The decorations were in the form of a crescent.

In which ear do blue homosexuals wear an earring?

At the end of the 20th century, homosexuals began to wear an earring in their right ear, distinguishing themselves into this category. However, in our time, this symbol has practically lost its symbolic meaning.

In which ear do bikers and rock musicians wear an earring?

Bikers, rock musicians wear an earring in their left ear, which means the individuality and unusualness of their style, as well as belonging to the respective biker society or rock culture.