Before this arctic February passes into what looks to be a coming-in-like-a-lion Martius , one more thing:
"Well, here we are in Baaahth. Baaahth ... don't you know." My students just loved to drop their jaw to the ground in pronouncing--Englishy "ah"-wise--the city they were visiting on their study-tour of "King Arthur's Britain," an overseas-course that I taught some years ago. (I had to point out to them, however, that the Brits would have said the vowel just as we do for our sister-city Bath in North Carolina, Blackbeard's old headquarters, up until English RP/"Received Pronunciation" for it and related forms--called affectionately the "ass-words" among us professional linguinies in the know--shifted late in the 19C. Doesn't "ahsshole" sound ever so much less offensive than our version?) "King" Arthur/Arcturus--a real-life hero unadorned with myth in his day, who was more field-marshall than king--led his combined forces to their greatest victory here at Mons Badonicus (outside of town) in about 500, holding off the ultimately victorious Anglo-Saxons from the western half of Romanized Britain for another 50 years or so.
As a Romanized Celt-aristocrat, Arthur would have been "at Bath" regularly--it was probably one of his western strongholds--and especially on the Ides of Februarius. The 15th. Established during King Numa's reign and carried over into the slightly revised calendar of Julius Caesar--first Roman in Celtic Britain, incidentally--it would have been a holy day for the Commander-in-Chief. He would be celebrating one of the few highlights of a dark and dreary month, the festival of Februatio (see various last posts), in the very middle of the Month of Purification--more literally and practically the month of washing, cleaning, and ritual bathing before Spring Break and the beach. Otherwise, much like today, a most undistinguished month.
Another Commander-in-Chief, General/President George Washington (cheap trick, but etymologically righteous: Old English waesc; ultimately Proto-Indo-European *wat-; origin of all our "water-words.")--also achieved great success against the Anglo-Saxons of his day, and his birthday was just celebrated (by calendrical happenstance this year) on the Ides of February. The 15th. (Don't you just love wonderful coincidences that mean absolutely nothing.) As a matter of fact, this real-life hero, also celebrated at length in recent DM posts (q.v.), has birthdays all over February. Three of them this month, as it happens. All this and Abe Lincoln too.
First of all, the Federal Holiday is still since 1880 officially "Washington's Birthday." NOT Presidents' Day, as some states and every mattress-salesman would have it. Moreover, up until the 1971 Uniform Monday Holiday Act (yay!) his birthday was a one-day affair on every Feb. 22nd, no matter the day of the week, though most jurisdictions had by that time (incl. the Feds) thrown in Monday anyway, if GW's nativity-anniversary came on the weekend. But up until he was 20, the young Colonel (by that time) would have given his birth date as the 11th. And he would have been right--under the "Old Style" (O.S.) Julian calendar. It took almost two centuries for the Brits and their possessions to catch up with the rest of Europe and adopt the "New Style" (N.S.) of the Gregorian. By that time eleven days had been lost to that pesky, true-length of the solar year, one day more than the original ten excised from the "Catholic" calendar (the reason the Protestant English were so dilatory) by Pope Gregory XIII.
Finally, there's one more birthday that Washington is responsible for during this Month of Purification that is February. It involves those "washed" in the blood of war. The Purple Heart. That champion precedent-setter, whom Lighthorse Harry Lee called "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," established what he dubbed the "Badge of Military Merit" during the Revolutionary War. It was to be shaped in the form of a "purple heart," said his Executive Order in 1782, to be awarded to the soldier who had "given his blood in defense of his homeland." Though it fell into disuse after the Revolution, the medal was revived, again by Executive Order, and renamed simply the Purple Heart (after Washington's apt phrase) on Feb. 22, 1932, the 200th anniversary of his Gregorian birth, to honor the wounded in the Great War. Thenceforth it would bear Washington's profile.
This is what my Granddaddy was given in return for a low-profile portion of his hindquarters given up at the Second Battle of the Marne.
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