High Country Driving Club

Lingua Carriage

Installment V - February 10, 1998:

"Put the cart before the horse"	- reverse the proper order of things
"Mind one's p's and q's"	- pay attention to details. Tavern keepers catering to wagon drivers kept a record on a slate behind the bar of the drivers' consumption - P for a pint, Q for a quart, and reminded them occasionally that their bills were mounting up. Unscrupulous tavern keepers would "pad" the bill so it was encumbant that the driver mind his p's and q's so as not to be taken advantage of.
"Inside information"	- low fare passengers rode on top of the coach or to the left of the driver. The passenger to the farthest left could hear the conversation of the higher paying elite within the coach and therefore was privy to inside information
"Back seat driver"	- Enclosed private coaches had a speaking tube from the back of the interior to the driver's seat in order for the owner to give instructions and directions to the driver. - the owner was "driving from the back" - and you thought mothers-in-law were to blame!

Did You Know?
"Horses and the Gods"
From the earliest times horses were central to Greek life and they occupied a special prominence in Greek mythology. Ares, the god of war, was thought to ride in a chariot drawn by the customary four white horses, symbols of the highest purity, as he preceded the rising sun. Demeter, the goddess of women, marriage and agriculture, was depicted with the head of a black mare, and the priestesses of her temple were referred to as "foals."
Specially honored in the prime horse-breeding area of Thessaly was the god Poseidon. As well as being god of the sea, he was credited with the creation of the horse, and was believed to be "the embodiment of all horses, their god and lord." On occasion, a white horse, considered to be of enormous value in Ancient Greece, was sacrificed in his honor. These horses were always drowned inf deference to Poseidon's own element, rather than being slaughtered with a knife. At Rhodes, for instance, a white horse was driven into the sea drawing a flaming chariot in a ritual to "revive the sun" after the cold, dark winter months.

Helios -excerpt from Encyclopedia of the Horse

The 1768 Edition of Enclyclopaedia Britannica
...continuation of description of carriages
(found under "Mechanics"):

"To confirm these reasonings by experiment, let a small model of a waggon be made, with its fore-wheels 2 1/2 inches in diameter, and its hind-wheels 4 1/2: the whole model weighing about 20 ounces. Let this little carriage be loaded any how with weights, and have a small cord tied to each of its ends, equally high from the ground it rests upon; and let it be drawn along a horizontal board, first by a weight in a scale hung to the cord at the fore part; the cord going over a pulley at the end of the board to facilitate the draught, and the weight just sufficient to draw it along. Then, turn the carriage, and hang the scale and weight to the hind cord, and it will be found to move along with the same velocity as the first; which shews, that the power required to draw the carriage is all the same, whether the great or small wheels are foremost; and therefore the great wheels do not help in the least to push on the small wheels in the road. "

To be continued...

Wheel by again - Installment VI coming!

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